2N-Reactor, ultra-compact (EPD 187 kW/Tile)

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VampireSilence
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2N-Reactor, ultra-compact (EPD 187 kW/Tile)

Post by VampireSilence »

Hello everyone,

after many months of tesselating my world with solar panels, i finally brought myself to take a look at nuclear reactors.

I was annoyed by the space solar panels take, which i usually had to clear from biters etc. before. So i spent several days with fiddling around with nuclear reactors, debugging, reconstructing and so on and ultimately came up with this design. My goal was to improve as many aspects as possible that annoyed me regarding solar panels. I guess its useful anywhere between lategame and megabases.

Please tell me if you like it and what i could improve any further. :)

Blueprint:



Features:

- stripe design
- ultra-compact layout (5,34 Tiles/MW)
- infinitely extensible in both directions
- even 2D-tileable, but tricky due to the massive stripe width
- 367 to 400% efficiency (asymptotic increasing with number of reactor stripes)
(e. g. 383% efficiency at 2x12 reactors, 392% efficiency at 2x24 reactors and so on)
- energy production density: 187 kW/Tile
- density increasable by removing the outer roboport-row or the tanks at the ends of the stripes
(but i felt like having a minimal amount of tanks is safer)
- NO need for fuel moderation, reactors never reach 1000 °C under full load
- blueprint grouped by 2x6 reactors (representing 6 stripes)
- still possible to end the lane at any stripe you like
- fuel-fed by robots (easy convertable to belts *)
- water-fed by direct pumps (easy convertable to an external pump system **)
- beautified wiring
- completely buildable by robots, due to integrated roboports
- shared/balanced ressources between stripes: heat, steam, electricity (obviously)

*, **: you will find 2 rows at each side of a stripe with accumulators. You can swap those for a belt and/or pump system setup, in case you dont like robots and/or dont build it at water using landfill

Important: Electricity of top- and bottom side of a stripe is NOT connected by itself. Connect each half seperately or place a single pole next to the reactors at any end of the reactor chain to connect them.

:arrow: Land-only version: viewtopic.php?p=562099#p562099

Preview:
(chain of 12 stripes)

Image

1 hr under full load (24 stripes / 7520 MW):

Image

Symbolic space comparison between this and solar panels for the same amount of energy:

Image
Last edited by VampireSilence on Fri Feb 25, 2022 1:32 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: 2N-Reactor, ultra-compact (EPD 383 kW/Tile)

Post by foamy »

How did you get your figure for energy density? By my count, your design (excluding the outer roboports & power) is 334 tiles wide by 60 long, for a total area of 20,040 tiles. It outputs, even in the ideal of an indefinitely tiled design, 3840 MW, which comes to ~191KW/tile. I think you might've forgotten to account for the mirrored side.
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Re: 2N-Reactor, ultra-compact (EPD 187 kW/Tile)

Post by VampireSilence »

You are right, plus i calculated it before adding the outer roboports, which adds another unconsidered 5 tiles in height. I corrected all those numbers and updated my post. Thanks for pointing this out to me.
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Re: 2N-Reactor, ultra-compact (EPD 187 kW/Tile)

Post by burninghey »

Never assume it's running on full load 100%.

Add some logic, does not need to be very complex, just replace 1 roboport or two. Sadly I can't tell you how exactly because I'm not at my home now, but it's possible to make a very compact circuit, smart enough to start itself without human interaction after bot building.

In this screenshot download/file.php?id=63990 every single reactor has it's own load control + some indication lights + backup power in the inner circle
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Re: 2N-Reactor, ultra-compact (EPD 187 kW/Tile)

Post by NotRexButCaesar »

burninghey wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 3:39 am Never assume it's running on full load 100%.

Add some logic, does not need to be very complex, just replace 1 roboport or two. Sadly I can't tell you how exactly because I'm not at my home now, but it's possible to make a very compact circuit, smart enough to start itself without human interaction after bot building.

In this screenshot download/file.php?id=63990 every single reactor has it's own load control + some indication lights + backup power in the inner circle
Or assume nuclear fuel cells are free.
Ⅲ—Crevez, chiens, si vous n'étes pas contents!
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Re: 2N-Reactor, ultra-compact (EPD 187 kW/Tile)

Post by VampireSilence »

burninghey wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 3:39 am In this screenshot download/file.php?id=63990 every single reactor has it's own load control + some indication lights + backup power in the inner circle
Ok, do you have some blueprint you could send me? Then i try to adapt it to my reactor.
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Re: 2N-Reactor, ultra-compact (EPD 187 kW/Tile)

Post by burninghey »

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Last edited by burninghey on Thu May 27, 2021 3:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2N-Reactor, ultra-compact (EPD 187 kW/Tile)

Post by burninghey »

VampireSilence wrote: ↑Thu Mar 04, 2021 10:19 am
burninghey wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 3:39 am In this screenshot download/file.php?id=63990 every single reactor has it's own load control + some indication lights + backup power in the inner circle
Ok, do you have some blueprint you could send me? Then i try to adapt it to my reactor.
https://factorioprints.com/view/-MaiIsi8XHzEbB2TCQPU
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Re: 2N-Reactor, ultra-compact (EPD 187 kW/Tile)

Post by Premu »

I also have 2N-design which is easily expandable. It's based on another example I found on this forum, I just simplified it a little bit. You need to build this on a long lake. This design is even more compact and achieves 219 kW/tile. This is possible as the outgoing strips are not as wide as a reactor. So you combine 2x6 reactors with 5 of those strips, and you get an almost perfect ratio.

Reactors + heat exchangers
Image

The whole turbine setup:
Image

It does not have any buffers or controlled shutdown to optimize fuel usage, it just runs through. As the purpose of such a reactor is typically to provide for a megabase, I don't really care about the usage of Uranium which I have in massive amounts, but the lot more limited supply of UPS. And this buffer mechanics are typically pretty bad for UPS.
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Re: 2N-Reactor, ultra-compact (EPD 187 kW/Tile)

Post by VampireSilence »

burninghey wrote: ↑Thu May 27, 2021 3:20 pm
VampireSilence wrote: ↑Thu Mar 04, 2021 10:19 am
burninghey wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 3:39 am In this screenshot download/file.php?id=63990 every single reactor has it's own load control + some indication lights + backup power in the inner circle
Ok, do you have some blueprint you could send me? Then i try to adapt it to my reactor.
https://factorioprints.com/view/-MaiIsi8XHzEbB2TCQPU
Hey, i returned to factorio 2 weeks ago :) i had a little break, but i still had your request in mind and looked at what you posted.
Well this blueprint has 2 basic mechanics.
1) It counts how many uranium fuel cells where put in/out and keeps them equal, so basically it limits the inner nuclear reactors cell capacity to 1 instead of 5.
2) Is a bit more complex. It enables outputting inserters only if the standalone accumulator is at least 2% charged (or above), so inputting inserters are kept equal here as well. But the only power source for this accumulator is a solar panel.

So whats the point of this blueprint? It limits cell capacities, so you have additional 16 cells per blueprint free on your belts (amazing^^), but consumption is the same and it stops working at night.

What i was thinking about was a reactor which reacts to power consumptions and stops working when itself isnt needed. But i tried that one with 4 GW spare energy and it still got fueled.
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Re: 2N-Reactor, ultra-compact (EPD 187 kW/Tile)

Post by burninghey »

VampireSilence wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 6:12 pm
burninghey wrote: ↑Thu May 27, 2021 3:20 pm
VampireSilence wrote: ↑Thu Mar 04, 2021 10:19 am
burninghey wrote: ↑Wed Mar 03, 2021 3:39 am In this screenshot download/file.php?id=63990 every single reactor has it's own load control + some indication lights + backup power in the inner circle
Ok, do you have some blueprint you could send me? Then i try to adapt it to my reactor.
https://factorioprints.com/view/-MaiIsi8XHzEbB2TCQPU
So whats the point of this blueprint? It limits cell capacities, so you have additional 16 cells per blueprint free on your belts (amazing^^), but consumption is the same and it stops working at night.

What i was thinking about was a reactor which reacts to power consumptions and stops working when itself isnt needed. But i tried that one with 4 GW spare energy and it still got fueled.
Hey, glad you are back. But i had some off time as well ... :D

Solar is there for 2 reasons:
- start without external power supply
- maintain logistics and logic in case of power shortage
It does not "stop working at night".

It needs a bit of time to prime itself. After that, it reacts to power consumption and limits fuel cell usage.

My main goals for this design were:
- smart fuel consumption
- build by robots
- compact
- fail safe vs. power shortages
- start without user interactions

Especially the last one was quite tricky. Most smart reactor designs i had tried before, needed some user interaction (insert first fuel manually) or were way too complicated to wrap my head around it.
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Re: 2N-Reactor, ultra-compact (EPD 187 kW/Tile)

Post by VampireSilence »

I just double-checked your blueprint again and it still doesn't start at night.
Tbh i don't see the point in building it that way. Why don't you simply use a power-oneway to a seperated and buffered circuitry for the inserters?

At least for my linear reactor chain it would be way more feasible to build it like that.
Image

(Power-oneway, running from right to left / green to red.)

Another approach could be to simply use 2 seperate circutries right from the start, one running into the base-pool and the other one running into the reactor maintenance-pool.

Besides that maybe consider an entirely different power concept for your base: This reactor to build up a static base power supply and then some additional smaller reactors which then can be dependent on your actual power consumption to cover those variations.
Take my base for example. I produce 840 GW and my consumption is around 820 GW +/- 5 GW, so this difference of 25 GW could be realized by flexible reactors. But honestly i dont care, cause its not as much compared to the rest.
Last edited by VampireSilence on Thu Feb 24, 2022 1:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: 2N-Reactor, ultra-compact (EPD 187 kW/Tile)

Post by VampireSilence »

I just finished a land-only version for you land-fill haters :P

Image



- Fuel input and nuclear waste ouput by blue belt (beware, this means you are limited to 4500 stripes / 9000 reactors!)
- Water input by train (water buffer: 400k / 40 sec)
- Intended train setup: 1+4
- Train circulation: Anti-clockwise
- Recommended train schedule conditions: { [5 seconds elapsed] OR [water = 0] OR [inactive for 2 seconds] }
- I highly recommend to have (reactors / 12) trains running on it simultaneously and to have water filling stations on both ends of the reactor chain
- Not as compact as before (5,68 Tiles/MW, EPD 176 kW/Tile)
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