The Core: My max-height reactor setup

[Curunir]

Greetings, Tekkiteers!

 

Thanks to jakalth's and others' help, I have mostly mastered the art of building Big Reactors, also known as Yellorium Reactors. Ever since I found out that max height for a reactor frame is actually 48 blocks (with 32x32 max for the base), I wanted to build myself a "stalk" with as many turbines directly attached as I could fit.

 

 

This reactor is running now. I am calling it The Core.

 

At 20 Turbines, it is surely not the absolute maximum I could have done. The spacing between Turbines could be smaller, the Turbines could be larger or even more numerous. But keep in mind that even this setup takes both over 1000 Cyanite and Enderium ingots to build, not to mention the tons of iron and graphite. The Turbines are fashioned after jakalth's "gold standard" 8-Enderium-block size with just 424 mB/t of steam going into each for slightly below 5000 RF/t. That is an overall output in the 96.000 to 97.000 RF/t range, enough to drive the four Laser Drills around it comfortably. The reactor core produces around 8.200 MB/s of steam continuously at 90% control rod setting, close enough to the ideal 8.480 to not bother optimizing right now.

 

And here is the gallery for your enjoyment. Feel free to ask about further details.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 23, 2014 by Curunir

[M1r077]

Hello Curunir, nice setup that you have here.

I'm curious to know what is the efficiency of this monster and also the number of ingots it eats in an hour.

[Curunir]

Sure, here is the Reactor interface:

 

And one of the Turbines:

 

All Control Rods are at 90%, so I could easily get more steam and upsize the Turbines.

The values in the interface do oscillate a bit, but fuel usage is around 0.140mB/t all the time, so that is 2.8 mB/second (at 20t/s), 168 mB/minute and 10080 mb/hour. So, almost exactly ten ingots per hour for a sustained ~96000 RF/t. Factoring in the Tesseract loss, the Drills are not maxed out, but still running fast enough to not bother upgrading right now.

[M1r077]

To be full speed you'll need to setup your lasers a z 128 at least anyway =)

 

Really nice numbers anyway.

 

Do you mind if I ask you your texture pack name and link by the way ?

Edited June 25, 2014 by M1r077

[Curunir]

When I built it, I didn't know about the z-axis optimization. I'll raise them to z=128 when I work on it next time.

 

The texture pack is just Sphax PureBDCraft. Somebody posted a download link for a manually patched version a while back, and I have been using that ever since. The problem with Sphax is that their license explicitly forbids offering patched versions, so everybody has to do this by themselves, or so I heard.

Note that only the interface shots are with Sphax, the reactor pictures are still with vanilla textures.

Edited June 24, 2014 by Curunir

[jakalth]

So that's the monster you were talking about a while back.  Very nice!  Definitely a cool looking setup.  And you've still got room to add more turbines if you do a little squeezing, as well as enough extra reactor power to run the added turbines.  But, adding more turbines wouldn't look as good.  Very nicely done.

 

If you were to add more power, your best bet would be to expand the turbines, making them longer and adding another half or full ring of enderium to each along with increasing the number of rotor blades by the same amount.  The increase in steam usage scales evenly, so doubling the ring and blades should only double the steam demand.  Or, adding half again more, should only increase the steam usage by half again more as well.

Edited June 23, 2014 by jakalth

[Curunir]

Sure, I know. Straight doubling them in length is probably my best bet, or adding 50% length to each and opting for more Turbines. The thing is, I have nothing that needs any more power right now, and no more projects I want to do.

 

The mods I have not done much (or anything) with yet are the ones that never interested me much anyway, namely Computercraft, RIM, MFFS, Atomic Science and, yes, Galacticraft. I find all of those tedious and boring. And what I have built runs fine on the existing setup. I think it will stay that way for a while.

Edited June 24, 2014 by Curunir

[HeatHunter]

I built most of my turbines using mffs

 

really handy to dublicate things beneth protecting your main base from griefers...

 

galacticraft is fine if you want to built something in space (no pitch black rooms anymore)

[Gio²]

Hm, I found 4 fuel rods in the corners filled with cryrotheum to be more efficient (a 5x5x5 with that layout produces 2000 mb/t easily).

Looks great tho. Will definitely build something like this someday, because its awesome.

Edited June 24, 2014 by Gio²

[Curunir]

The Plus-Shape is proven to be the most efficient 5x5 design because it has higher fertility than four corner rods or an X-Shape. Try two identical-sized frames and you will see what I mean. Temperature will be higher with the Plus-Shape, but still manageable with decent coolant and Control Rods, and the higher fertility will reduce fuel consumption.

[Digdug83]

I think in general you just want the rods squashed together no matter the dimensions. After that I think it's a matter of coolant:rod ratios and what percentage you set each rod to. Having played around in creative with four different ways to configure 36 10m rods in a 12x12x12 reactor the only real difference is fertility rate among them. My 12x12x12 has the best fertility and overall efficiency with all 36 rods smashed into one big structure. The difference is small but noticeable in fuel consumption (0.20mB/t vs. 0.26mB/t or higher). Actually, I think I got better consumption:power values with my setup than with a 5x5x48 design using the plus shape. Temperatures were about the same but I got almost 1K RF/t more from my cube and for slightly less consumption despite the cube having 360 rods vs. the plus' 270. My cube has almost a 2:1 ratio of coolant to rods though so that probably explains it.

[jakalth]

Yeah, there are a lot of factors that alter efficiency and power output of a reactor.  The + shape reactor is a very good design, but in a large scale, where space is not an issue, there are better ways to do it.  And I can second Digdug83's findings when it comes to comparative reactors.  Tall thin reactors don't scale as well as wider reactors, but there is something to say about the aesthetics of a tall thin reactor.

 

The higher the coolant to rods ratio, the easier it is for the reactor to be fine tuned for peak efficiency.  But, the difference in cost of construction can sometimes make this irrelevant.

[Curunir]

I should note that The Core is not just a thin stalk for aesthetical reasons. If it was any wider, it would produce way too much steam - it runs at 90% Control Rods already as it is.

To fine-tune steam output, scaling reactor height might be a useful option in an otherwise good layout. Too bad mine is at max height, because it could use two or three more blocks in height to get to that optimal 8480 mB/t.

Or maybe ErogenousBeef allows for finer steps in Control Rods one day, not just 10% steps, but 1%.

[Digdug83]

I should note that The Core is not just a thin stalk for aesthetical reasons. If it was any wider, it would produce way too much steam - it runs at 90% Control Rods already as it is.

To fine-tune steam output, scaling reactor height might be a useful option in an otherwise good layout. Too bad mine is at max height, because it could use two or three more blocks in height to get to that optimal 8480 mB/t.

Or maybe ErogenousBeef allows for finer steps in Control Rods one day, not just 10% steps, but 1%.

Yeah I was kind of surprised you couldn't alter them by 5% increments at least. I'd also love it if you could set all rods simultaneously if you prefer. Setting 400 rods to 90% manually was probably the biggest chore of my creative reactor lol.

[M1r077]

I'd also love it if you could set all rods simultaneously if you prefer. Setting 400 rods to 90% manually was probably the biggest chore of my creative reactor lol.

Actually you can do that using a computer craft:

Edited June 26, 2014 by M1r077

[Digdug83]

I'm sure I could do all manner of things with CC, but that means programming (no matter how basic) and I have a severe allergy to such things

[M1r077]

Just put a computer in front of the computer port and clicking the computer to type 3 lines : 

lua
local reactor = peripheral.wrap("back")
reactor.setAllControlRodLevels(x)

I don't really call that programming ...

But setting up or having to change more that 10 control rods settings by hand would piss me off so badly ....

Just to say ... I was just feeling so sorry for the work you've achieved ...

 

EDIT: Typo corrected

Edited July 17, 2014 by M1r077

[Curunir]

There are two ways to automate reactor settings, one through ComputerCraft and one through a redstone controller thing. I have tried neither so far, but maybe that redstone stuff is more up your alley.

[Digdug83]

Alright I'm sorry to necro this but I'm having a fit trying to get your CCraft solution working M1r077. It's doing exactly nothing when I slap a computer in front of the port and type out those lines.

 

I decided to build a maximum size reactor and now have 300 rods to configure. As I'm not completely insane I don't want to do them manually but so far this computer is making me want to do bad things to my actual computer...

Edited July 16, 2014 by Digdug83

[efflandt]

Perhaps you did not notice the typo:

 

local reactor = peripheral.warp("back")

 

should be

 

local reactor = peripheral.wrap("back")

 

And "x" should either be a value or assigned a value before:

reactor.setAllControlRodLevels(x)

 

BTW I use 0% control rod settings. Instead I pulse the reactor off with rednet PRC whenever it gets too hot. Although, that is difficult to explain. It is a combination of ON when temperature below x OR square wave single pulse (which runs it cooler than steady state, but does not drop it out as long as kicking it out on temperature alone, so it runs steadier without such wide swings). And it gets a bit more complicated than that on an oversize or passive reactor. But it runs higher efficiency than cranking in fuel rods.

Edited July 16, 2014 by efflandt

[Digdug83]

As I have no experience with CCraft I wouldn't know if it was a typo or not lol. I'll look into it though, thanks.

 

Edit: I'm an idiot and forgot I could do all this with the Rednet Port in BR itself.

 

For those who might be curious I built a 32x32x48 reactor in creative. I gave it 300 rods grouped together in the center and filled the rest with cryotheum (300 rods equaled 1/3 of the total interior space, giving me a 2:1 coolant ratio). I used rednet ports to set the control rods to 98% to keep it under 900C (hovers around 780C but 97% would push it to just over 1100C). It's currently producing just over 310 KiRF/t and producing right around 1.26mB/t of waste. Reactivity ranges close to 615%.

 

I was curious whether this setup, at optimal fuel burnup temperatures, would be enough to power 16 laser drills (320 KiRF/t) and sadly it's not. Including the 25% loss from the tesseract (400 KiRF/t total) I would have to take the rods up to 97% which would push it over optimal temperature and increase fuel burn up by about 50% (1.9mB/t). Still, it's one helluva reactor to say the least and now that I think about it 2 of the 16 drill foci don't actually do anything in Tekkit according to Reddit so maybe I don't need that much power anyway

Edited July 16, 2014 by Digdug83