Nuclear reactor complex - as built by an electrical engineer

[daniel]

launcher crashes every time i try to play

[CbotL6]

Wow great job!

[Torezu]

I was about to warn CbotL6 for needlessly necro'ing a post (been playing catchup on the forums), when I realized that I would sticky this if I could, so I think I'll just bump it instead.

To add some content and avoid a needless bump, question for the OP if he's still around: did you do anything with the world after you made the plant, or was this the sole creation in this world, and for fun?

[Ajax2422]

I've been trying to convert this world to Tekkit (for use on my server), but it whitescreens every time. I know the wireless redstone mod is completely different, so I tried breaking all the transmitters and receivers, but it still whitescreens. I've also tried making a schematic of it and pasting that into a working world (both with and without wireless). Still no luck.

I managed to get all my worlds from vanilla into Tekkit without too many problems (had to break all railcraft blocks and replace once in Tekkit), so I don't know what the problem is. Is it this world, or Technic->Tekkit conversion?

[Torezu]

Technic -> Tekkit conversion is...almost impossible for someone not extraordinarily dedicated to doing so, with the high number of block ID issues and different mods.

[Ajax2422]

Ah, okay. If RP2, IC2 and BC are mostly the same, I wouldn't mind manually replacing some blocks. It's the whitescreen instead of just removing all the incompatible blocks that's the problem. :/

I saw a Tekkit -> Technic MIDAS list once, I suppose I could just run that backwards (if I can find it again...)

[littleweseth]

I was about to warn CbotL6 for needlessly necro'ing a post (been playing catchup on the forums), when I realized that I would sticky this if I could, so I think I'll just bump it instead.

To add some content and avoid a needless bump, question for the OP if he's still around: did you do anything with the world after you made the plant, or was this the sole creation in this world, and for fun?

No, I did nothing else with the world. The build was for fun - it was a nice engineering challenge.

The modifications to game mechanics in Minecraft 1.2.5 complicated things somewhat. Because snowmen no longer produce snow underfoot, there is no longer a way to get a massive number of snowballs for free, and the snowball-based cooling system no longer works as designed.

My current redesign (in progress) is based on water buckets. I have a prototype that achieves ~ 2000 EU/t with water bucket cooling, which requires something on the order of 6-10 water buckets per second (I don't have the calculation sheets handy to check.) The main problems are to do with ensuring a steady flow of water buckets - they tend to come in "spurts" - and extracting the spent buckets (much more complicated than ice blocks in this regard.)

An extra problem is getting the system running from a black start - the buckets tend to jam up in the system, and it tends to require a fair bit of manual intervention to get it running.

The one saving grace is that new Tekkit/Technic versions include the thermal monitors from Nuclear Control, which make nuclear reactors nearly impossible to explode. I have a thermal monitor hardwired to stop the reactor at 8000 heat, which entirely prevents meltdowns from occurring (ever). The elaborate safety systems in my original build are no longer required.

[littleweseth]

Since someone is probably interested, here's what a 10 bucket/sec CASUC system looks like in operation:

Water buckets are created using a bunch of deployers in front of a pool of water. Empty buckets are passed through a redpower2 relay at the bottom, and full buckets are extracted by a redpower2 filter at the top.

When pulsing the deployers at max speed (400ms), they actually evaporate water blocks faster than the liquid physics regenerates them. The water pool must be at least 5 blocks deep in order for it to work.

The buckets are piped into four RP2 relays attached to the reactor core. The relays are necessary to "smooth" the flow of buckets. Each relay attempts to output an item every 400ms, so four relays give the desired insertion rate of 10 items/sec.

Space is constrained near the reactor core, so the water bucket extraction is actually *external* to the containment chamber. The extraction system consists of four RP2 retrievers set to retrieve empty buckets only.

Finally, there's a SCRAM system, which consists of dozens of RP2 retrievers set to retrieve any and all items from the reactor. When activated, the entire contents of the reactor are instantaneously sucked out into a chest in one clock tick.

This entire design is still in prototype - there are several things I'm not happy with (as mentioned above.) Complicated logic will probably be required for starting and stopping the cooling system so as not to jam the buckets and make it un-restartable.

[littleweseth]

New prototype - third redesign attempt. This time I focused on getting the thing working with no regard for prettiness or fancy controls.

The bucket cooling loop is as short as possible. There are still hundreds (thousands!) of buckets in it, and they're all moving all the time.

More writeups and screenshots to follow.

[fabricator77]

The modifications to game mechanics in Minecraft 1.2.5 complicated things somewhat. Because snowmen no longer produce snow underfoot, there is no longer a way to get a massive number of snowballs for free, and the snowball-based cooling system no longer works as designed.

Actually Snowgolems do produce snow, just only in certain biomes, basically Mojang did something with that humidity value in all biomes. Anyway, Snowgolems work correctly in any snow/ice biome (obviously), but also in Ocean, River and Swamp biomes.

I've been trying to convert this world to Tekkit (for use on my server), but it whitescreens every time.

I finally managed to get it to load by deleting EE from my mods folder, then rebuilt all the things that were broken. Block ID changes in: Singularity Compressor, Wireless redstone, and most annoyingly of all, the railcraft concrete blocks.

I've fixed almost all of it, but need another day or so to check all the wiring and paste it into a suitable biome/map.

[littleweseth]

Actually Snowgolems do produce snow, just only in certain biomes, basically Mojang did something with that humidity value in all biomes. Anyway, Snowgolems work correctly in any snow/ice biome (obviously), but also in Ocean, River and Swamp biomes.

Hah. I didn't know that. Finally, a reason to build in snow biomes!

I finally managed to get it to load by deleting EE from my mods folder, then rebuilt all the things that were broken. Block ID changes in: Singularity Compressor, Wireless redstone, and most annoyingly of all, the railcraft concrete blocks.

I've fixed almost all of it, but need another day or so to check all the wiring and paste it into a suitable biome/map.

That's real dedication. :)

[zbayne]

Actually Snowgolems do produce snow, just only in certain biomes, basically Mojang did something with that humidity value in all biomes. Anyway, Snowgolems work correctly in any snow/ice biome (obviously), but also in Ocean, River and Swamp biomes.

I finally managed to get it to load by deleting EE from my mods folder, then rebuilt all the things that were broken. Block ID changes in: Singularity Compressor, Wireless redstone, and most annoyingly of all, the railcraft concrete blocks.

I've fixed almost all of it, but need another day or so to check all the wiring and paste it into a suitable biome/map.

you should upload it, would make my day

--edit--

using most of the design from littleweseth, I am working on a tekkit version. most of the logic is done, though a bit of work is left. On the other hand i have added shields, heat monitoring and I have dabbled a bit in making it computer controlled(rp2), at the moment there is just a password failsafe, but i want to remove the button resets and instead make them words.

early images, http://imgur.com/a/MxjPO

--edit--

computer now only lets one set of doors being open and activates a similar scram system to empty reactors. working on it being able to control how much ice is produced, and scaling up production when needed because currently it is supplying 2 reactors but i want it to be scale-able.

--edit--

computer images

[briggsred]

I'm impressed at the electrical substation design, I myself was trying to come up with a fairly realistic representation but yours takes the cake. I think I'll use your substation design everywhere I can because its not only aesthetically pleasing, its also efficient. I'm building my first substation for a geothermal building. Although 300m EU is too much for something like that, I'll scale it down to 100 million. Thanks for the inspiration!

[willhoot]

It looks amazing and I don't know if anyone else has already suggested it but you might want to change your display and logic processing to comp craft and add additional reactor vessels

[littleweseth]

It looks amazing and I don't know if anyone else has already suggested it but you might want to change your display and logic processing to comp craft and add additional reactor vessels

The logic was "hardwired" with RP2 logic gates for reliability. Logic gates always work. ComputerCraft programs could crash. It would certainly be embarrassing to lose the entire reactor due to a software glitch. :)

[willhoot]

The logic was "hardwired" with RP2 logic gates for reliability. Logic gates always work. ComputerCraft programs could crash. It would certainly be embarrassing to lose the entire reactor due to a software glitch.

unless you had the default to auto scram, actually I would make the default even for RP2 to be to scram. and I was mostly suggesting to use it as a interface you could still run the logic on RP but that could be underground where it doesn't make the control room huge but have the massive light panel replaced with a single screen or maybe a handful of monitors. that way the containment vessel to control room ratio is more accurate. just like you can run most of the reactor logic on one logic system (if it's wired correctly) for more than one reactor (the only issue is that they wouldn't act independently (if one scrams they all scram) and you could run most of the support hardware as one for more than one reactor (as I said before if it is piped correctly).

[elmarko98]

This is really cool! I've also got an idea on what you should do next: finding a use for 300 million eu!

[littleweseth]

This is really cool! I've also got an idea on what you should do next: finding a use for 300 million eu!

Make 300 UU matter.

[cmwatford]

Make 300 UU matter.

wouldn't that be kind of a waste? UU matter isn't really used for anything other than iridium and making diamonds. By the time you can build a plant like that a few dozen diamonds should be a drop in the bucket. You could make other things but they really seem like a waste of good uu matter.

[littleweseth]

wouldn't that be kind of a waste? UU matter isn't really used for anything other than iridium and making diamonds. By the time you can build a plant like that a few dozen diamonds should be a drop in the bucket. You could make other things but they really seem like a waste of good uu matter.

I beg to differ. My server's economy is based around UU-matter - we trade thousands of UUM at a time.

[cmwatford]

I beg to differ. My server's economy is based around UU-matter - we trade thousands of UUM at a time.

Well I guess it's different if you're using it at as a server currency. Otherwise I think my point stands. How did that idea come up though? I'm interested in how uu came be a curency on your server.

[Mageleon3860]

This is extremely impressive i have a similar design on my legit world but what you would suspect is that its hard to get enough resources

But i got a question i have been using ice instead of water but is ice more efficient?

Love the idea of UU-Matter has currency my mate uses industrial coins i belive there called idk what there called he renamed then to Pounds

[littleweseth]

Well I guess it's different if you're using it at as a server currency. Otherwise I think my point stands. How did that idea come up though? I'm interested in how uu came be a curency on your server.

Because I have heavy restrictions on automatic mining, and Equivalent Exchange is banned completely, UU-matter is the easiest way to get resources without mining by hand. Oddly, the main focus is on producing large arrays of HV solar panels, which feed into mass fabricators and produce yet more UUM. One player has an automated solar panel factory and he's doing a roaring trade - he takes people's UUM, converts it into solar panels, and makes a 10-20% profit.

This is extremely impressive i have a similar design on my legit world but what you would suspect is that its hard to get enough resources

But i got a question i have been using ice instead of water but is ice more efficient?

Love the idea of UU-Matter has currency my mate uses industrial coins i belive there called idk what there called he renamed then to Pounds

We use IndustrialCraft credits (coins) as well, but in a slightly different way. I implemented recipes that make 7 UUM = 1 iridium ore, and 9 iridium ore = 1 IC2 coin. This makes 1 IC2 coin equal to 63 UUM - a lot more portable when you're trying to lug thousands and thousands of UUM to the solar panel factory. (Naturally, the default recipe for IC2 coins is disabled.)

[Mageleon3860]

We use IndustrialCraft credits (coins) as well, but in a slightly different way. I implemented recipes that make 7 UUM = 1 iridium ore, and 9 iridium ore = 1 IC2 coin. This makes 1 IC2 coin equal to 63 UUM - a lot more portable when you're trying to lug thousands and thousands of UUM to the solar panel factory. (Naturally, the default recipe for IC2 coins is disabled.)

well were making the coins the lowest currency and making something else the highest, but i don't know whats extremely hard to get.

[cmwatford]

I think I'll start a currency thread in the tekkit forum so we can move this discussion there. I'll link to it. Done, here is the link: http://forums.technicpack.net/threads/server-economies.22701/