Uranium Power

Power generation with atoms.

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Re: Uranium Power

Post by Fatmice »

Light wrote: Indeed it did.

The vanilla reactor system is quite interesting to say the least. After a lot of testing, the vanilla method can produce a lot of power with minimal upkeep. The only downside was that fuel creation is entirely based on randomness, so it typically takes many hours to get the enrichment recipe going. However, once enrichment begins, you never run out of fuel and the need to mine uranium ore is reduced considerably just to obtain a tiny bit of U-238 you'll need every now and then.

Despite the time consuming enrichment process, there's no issue generating 10GW+ with just a tiny enrichment setup. The reactors are quite powerful due to the neighbor bonus, granting the heat of a dozen or more reactors in just a tiny cluster, while also not using as much fuel to do so.

Some data from my tests:
- At 2 hours, the 40 U-235 for enrichment is obtained.
- At 3 hours, enough U-235 is obtained from enrichment to sustain 11.2GW worth of reactor turbines at 100% burn. (My enrichment setup was small, so it could support 50GW+ if scaled up more.)
- 73,841 Uranium ore was used to get 40 U-235 (It is random, but still a considerable amount)
- No impact on my UPS

Despite it being very powerful, it's still too simple for my tastes. Not to mention productivity modules can be used in the miners, the centrifuge sorting process, and even creating fuel cells if you wanted to, which I didn't for my tests as that would be too overpowered.

I look forward to hearing your observations about it and if it impacts any plans you had with your mod going forward.
I have not even play tested it. From the sound of your tests, it will definitely impact everything. However, I am sort of glad that creating GW of power is easier now. This means fluid throughput must have been tweaked a lot.

I will have to redesign the mod from the ground up to accommodate for the changes. I may have to eliminate the PWR reactor line...or maybe not. :) It all depends on play testing the "vanilla" 0.15.

You said "fuel cell"? What is that? :D
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Current release: 0.6.6 - Requires 0.14.x
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Re: Uranium Power

Post by Marc90 »

So that means the reactor setup in my .14 save will not work in .15 without any changes?
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Re: Uranium Power

Post by Light »

Fatmice wrote:
Light wrote: Indeed it did.

The vanilla reactor system is quite interesting to say the least. After a lot of testing, the vanilla method can produce a lot of power with minimal upkeep. The only downside was that fuel creation is entirely based on randomness, so it typically takes many hours to get the enrichment recipe going. However, once enrichment begins, you never run out of fuel and the need to mine uranium ore is reduced considerably just to obtain a tiny bit of U-238 you'll need every now and then.

Despite the time consuming enrichment process, there's no issue generating 10GW+ with just a tiny enrichment setup. The reactors are quite powerful due to the neighbor bonus, granting the heat of a dozen or more reactors in just a tiny cluster, while also not using as much fuel to do so.

Some data from my tests:
- At 2 hours, the 40 U-235 for enrichment is obtained.
- At 3 hours, enough U-235 is obtained from enrichment to sustain 11.2GW worth of reactor turbines at 100% burn. (My enrichment setup was small, so it could support 50GW+ if scaled up more.)
- 73,841 Uranium ore was used to get 40 U-235 (It is random, but still a considerable amount)
- No impact on my UPS

Despite it being very powerful, it's still too simple for my tastes. Not to mention productivity modules can be used in the miners, the centrifuge sorting process, and even creating fuel cells if you wanted to, which I didn't for my tests as that would be too overpowered.

I look forward to hearing your observations about it and if it impacts any plans you had with your mod going forward.
I have not even play tested it. From the sound of your tests, it will definitely impact everything. However, I am sort of glad that creating GW of power is easier now. This means fluid throughput must have been tweaked a lot.

I will have to redesign the mod from the ground up to accommodate for the changes. I may have to eliminate the PWR reactor line...or maybe not. :) It all depends on play testing the "vanilla" 0.15.

You said "fuel cell"? What is that? :D
The offshore pump pushes water at 1200/s. Fluids seem to move very rapidly which is awesome.

The fuel cells are the vanilla method of turning uranium into a liquid, storing it in a container and pouring it in the reactors fuel chamber. Basically it's like gasoline with no waste aside from the empty canister which you can recycle for a bit of residue that built up on the walls of it, haha.
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Re: Uranium Power

Post by Fatmice »

Marc90 wrote:So that means the reactor setup in my .14 save will not work in .15 without any changes?
Likely not. 0.15 Broke everything.
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Re: Uranium Power

Post by mcwaffles2003 »

Fatmice, is there any chance in the future of different reactor types?

i think a progression of heavy/light water reactors, breeder reactors, and molten salt reactors might be a great addition if its in line with your interests. only 2 new ores would need to be generated (plutonium and thorium) and it would make nuclear management much more difficult and interesting.I guess more materials could be required such as the intermediary isotopes of breeders.
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Re: Uranium Power

Post by Fatmice »

mcwaffles2003 wrote:Fatmice, is there any chance in the future of different reactor types?

i think a progression of heavy/light water reactors, breeder reactors, and molten salt reactors might be a great addition if its in line with your interests. only 2 new ores would need to be generated (plutonium and thorium) and it would make nuclear management much more difficult and interesting.I guess more materials could be required such as the intermediary isotopes of breeders.
I just got down to playing with 0.15. I am thinking of new reactor type yes. MSFR will probably be it. I am likely to improve on the current vanilla reactor, but investigating how to do so to restore the steam->water cycle. This will be quite disruptive so the mod for 0.15 will not be compatible with previous version.
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Re: Uranium Power

Post by mcwaffles2003 »

Fatmice wrote:
mcwaffles2003 wrote:Fatmice, is there any chance in the future of different reactor types?

i think a progression of heavy/light water reactors, breeder reactors, and molten salt reactors might be a great addition if its in line with your interests. only 2 new ores would need to be generated (plutonium and thorium) and it would make nuclear management much more difficult and interesting.I guess more materials could be required such as the intermediary isotopes of breeders.
I just got down to playing with 0.15. I am thinking of new reactor type yes. MSFR will probably be it. I am likely to improve on the current vanilla reactor, but investigating how to do so to restore the steam->water cycle. This will be quite disruptive so the mod for 0.15 will not be compatible with previous version.
that sounds awesome, take your time dude, great fan of what youve made so far. cant wait to see what comes out later.
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Re: Uranium Power

Post by ZombieMooose »

I know you're probably already busy on this, but looking forward to a 0.15 release. Missing your complexity.

Cheers.
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Re: Uranium Power

Post by Fatmice »

diongham wrote:I know you're probably already busy on this, but looking forward to a 0.15 release. Missing your complexity.

Cheers.
Yes, my mind is already planning things out. I'm waiting for 0.15.7. It apparently promises direct R/W to temperature for reactor, heat pipes, and heat exchangers. This is big and needed for what I want to do.

In the mean time, I'm fleshing out idea for a reactor control building to administrate a reactor block made of vanilla-like reactor. This building will allow refueling of a 3x3 or whatever square blocks of vanilla-like reactor. This building transparently handles the fueling and removal of spent fuel for the reactor block. You can send circuit signal to this building to "throttle" the reactor block, turn off some or all of the reactor within the block, query how much burn time you have left, trigger refueling. These are things I can do immediately to release a mod update. I will tweak the mod to use vanilla uranium ore and only add fluorite. My reprocessing chain and enrichment will be tweaked to provide alternatives to the vanilla processes.

Beyond this, I am still thinking of how to account for steam expenditure in the steam turbines! Any great idea is welcome...The reason this is needed is you must know how much steam disappeared to recreate it as water that can go back in a close loop without creating a mass imbalance. The accounting need to be as light on UPS as possible...I do not know how to do this without making a new type of turbine.

The addition on 0.15.7 will hopefully allow me to make the MSFR. It will be a unique reactor in its own right.
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Fatmice
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Re: Uranium Power

Post by Fatmice »

0.15.7 is out and I am giddy with excitement. I also have a solution for steam-counting. :D Welcome back closed steam/water cycle!
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Re: Uranium Power

Post by alexgor »

does you have any release date ?
very excited about your mod too! want to start 0.15 with marathon with you mod )
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Re: Uranium Power

Post by Fatmice »

alexgor wrote:does you have any release date ?
very excited about your mod too! want to start 0.15 with marathon with you mod )
I don't know for sure but hopefully in a week? Not all functionality will be restored but I'm trying to restore as much as I can and expand on where vanilla offered newer avenue.

At the moment, I'm trying to add a reactor control building that can control a connected block of vanilla-like reactors, henceforth cores. Fueling is handled through this building. This will immediately open up different block designs.

I also want individual core control through circuit, an advance feature that players are not required to utilized but available for those who want to play with them.

Last I want to restore the close water/steam loop. But we'll have to see since things are in flux with water/steam.
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=46337#p266896

Those are top three priorities I am working on before releasing. After that I can add more stuff.
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Re: Uranium Power

Post by Vadise »

I am so glad to see that the mod is actually alive. I was worried I wasn't seeing posts in the mod portal forum. I wanted to ask one particular thing though. If you plan to upscale the size of all your buildings here at all, basically to somewhat equalize the total volume of a fully equipped mod reactor with a fully equipped vanilla one. Or if the sizes will remain the same?
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Re: Uranium Power

Post by Fatmice »

Vadise wrote:I am so glad to see that the mod is actually alive. I was worried I wasn't seeing posts in the mod portal forum. I wanted to ask one particular thing though. If you plan to upscale the size of all your buildings here at all, basically to somewhat equalize the total volume of a fully equipped mod reactor with a fully equipped vanilla one. Or if the sizes will remain the same?
I will for now use vanilla gfx until custom ones are made. I will try to reuse some of the previous gfx. Initially the update for the mod will be an extension on top of vanilla, then I will work on MSFR, which is its own reactor apart from vanilla.
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Re: Uranium Power

Post by Vadise »

So what would be the plan? Integrate with vanilla uranium, add fluorite, modify the vanilla reactor to take the mod's fuel rods and strip all the mod models for the first 0.15.x release? Hopefully the mod models will make a comeback, because I find the vanilla graphics for everything nuclear.. I dont know. Not a fan of those. As in.. the reactor looking like a cyborg head.
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Re: Uranium Power

Post by Fatmice »

Vadise wrote:So what would be the plan? Integrate with vanilla uranium, add fluorite, modify the vanilla reactor to take the mod's fuel rods and strip all the mod models for the first 0.15.x release? Hopefully the mod models will make a comeback, because I find the vanilla graphics for everything nuclear.. I dont know. Not a fan of those. As in.. the reactor looking like a cyborg head.
You prefer my gray nuclear reactor? It was always a stand-in that needed replacement. :lol:

The plan is to integrate and modify the behavior of the vanilla reactor in addition to adding new reactor. The latter is after the first 0.15.x release. I can keep the 3x3 and 5x5 reactor gfx for now but they will need new gfx ;)
I do plan to reuse gfx where it can be reused.
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Re: Uranium Power

Post by Fatmice »

I have good news everybody! I found something that will allow me to release an update to the mod without gutting it! I'm sure you will be very happy to know this will allow you to update from the current release without much issues. Hurray! :D
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Re: Uranium Power

Post by Mobius1 »

Fatmice wrote:I have good news everybody! I found something that will allow me to release an update to the mod without gutting it! I'm sure you will be very happy to know this will allow you to update from the current release without much issues. Hurray! :D
Nice!! Waiting on the update!
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Re: Uranium Power

Post by ssfsx17 »

After playing with vanilla nuclear a bit, there are definitely a lot of good gameplay mechanics introduced. In terms of game design, intuitiveness, and encouraging the player to use filter inserters and logic circuits, the vanilla nuclear is better. But I still much prefer Uranium Power's realism. "Satisfaction" is subjective, but I simply feel much more of it from the total realism mods.
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Re: Uranium Power

Post by afk2minute »

Hello,

How is development going?
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