Fission Reactor and Supercritical Power Generation Tutorial

Note: In versions 0.6.0 dev25 and earlier, the fission reactor has a bug(This bug has been fixed in version 0.6.0 dev26): When the heat output of the fuel rod recipe multiplied by the number of parallel fuel rods is less than 6, the fission reactor will experience cooling anomalies. Specifically affected are: single Thorium fuel rods with less than 6 parallel rods, four-rod Thorium fuel rods with 1 parallel, two-rod Thorium fuel rods with 1 or 2 parallel, single Uranium fuel rods with 1 parallel, and two-rod Uranium fuel rods with 1 parallel. If you wish to use the above fuel rods, you need to increase the number of parallel rods.

A fission reactor is a very interesting machine; it is both a production machine and a power generation machine.

But when we use it, we must first figure out what kind of machine we want to use it as.

When we use it for production, we want it to run as fast as possible, consume the least material and produce the most output.

When we use it to generate electricity, we want it to run at the right speed, producing more steam with fewer fuel rods, to generate more and longer-lasting electricity.

(Since the amount of fission product required for the process is very small, it is completely sufficient to only make a power generation pile, and there is no need to make both.)

Upon careful consideration, it is difficult to achieve both of these objectives simultaneously, so it is best to design the breeder reactor with one objective in mind.

Let's analyze the parameters of the fission pile first(Optional)

Instant coolant output = Consumption x Overclocking Coefficient = (Demand x Coolant Coefficient) x (Supply / Demand), Demand cancels out, resulting in instant coolant output being Coolant Coefficient * Supply. It can be seen that Supply is a value completely determined by the placement of cooling components, while the Coolant Coefficient is fixed.

Therefore, the instantaneous coolant production, that is,the instantaneous steam production, depends only on the arrangement of the cooling components, and the arrangement for maximum supply is known to be the 172 cooling component checkerboard arrangement

Total steam output per run = Instantaneous coolant output x Recipe actual duration = Coolant factor x Supply x Recipe duration / Supply x Demand
= Coolant factor x Recipe duration x Recipe heat x Actual parallel x Current temperature / 1500

So the steam output of a single fuel rod = coolant factor x recipe duration x recipe heat generation x current temperature/1500

Thus we can find that the total amount of steam that a single fuel rod of a certain type can produce depends only on temperature, all other values are fixed

Also, we noticed that the actual runtime duration is the runtime duration of a single fuel rod * the number of fuel rods (because the overclocking coefficient calculation process was divided by the actual parallelism), and the runtime duration of a single fuel rod is only affected by temperature and the arrangement of cooling components. The lower the temperature, the shorter the runtime duration.

Therefore, the conclusion is: To quickly produce nuclear waste, the reactor temperature needs to be as low as possible and the number of cooling components as high as possible ; to generate power with steam, the reactor's steam production rate needs to roughly match the consumption rate of the supercritical turbine, the number of cooling components should be appropriate, and the reactor temperature should be as high as possible

So fast breeder reactors can be divided into two types: low-temperature reactors for production and high-temperature reactors for power generation.

Based on the calculations above, we can build a 172-cooling-component(cooling and fuel components are arranged in an alternating checkerboard pattern, with cooling components in the corners)fission reactor, feed in NaK alloy from the start, and keep the temperature at298kto achieve maximum speed, and set the configurable maintenance hatch to 0.8x to quickly complete the recipe.

You can choosethe Quad MOX Fuel Rod with the highest nuclear waste outputfor production, ora single Thorium Fuel Rodfor production. The latter has a slightly longer recipe time, but its recipe heat generation is extremely low, so its actual operating time is about 1/8 that of the Quad MOX Fuel Rod; its production performance will not be much worse than Quad MOX.(Note: the selection here is based on the shortest recipe time. A shorter recipe time also means the least steam production. If you have requirements for steam output, you can refer to the fuel rod selection for the power generation reactor.)

No need for any turbine return water, no need for explosion protection measures, but if you already have a steam turbine, you can make use of steam and high-pressure steam for power generation, howevera heat exchanger is necessary, unless you plan to specifically produce distilled water or use steam turbine return water to cool the reactor.

Heat Exchanger, ME input hatch marked to input 10k hot NaK alloy, place infinite water hatch, ME output hatch, The Heat Exchanger does not use a configurable maintenance hatch, just place an automatic maintenance hatch

Reactor, set the Configurable Auto Maintenance Hatch to 0.8x, set the Input Bus to 1 Quad MOX, set the Stock Input Hatch to pull NaK alloy(Do not pull distilled water!), there is no need to do the shutdown temperature control part, it's impossible to explode, about 4s per Quad MOX, There is no need to input multiple rods, two rods take 8s, three rods 12s, Inputting multiple rods actually has the same effect as batch processing

Read fuel rods from the main network(Subnet storage bus connected to the main network ME interface, filtered to fuel rods), output depleted fuel rods to the main network(Subnet output bus connected to the main network ME interface, filtered to depleted fuel rods), the subnet only needs three disks:
Disk A is whitelist-marked in the Cell Workbench for sodium-potassium alloy, hot sodium-potassium alloy, and supercritical sodium-potassium alloy;
Disk B is marked in the Cell Workbench for steam and high-pressure steam(If you don't use steam, you can also omit this disk);
Disk C is an item disk and does not need marking
It doesn't matter if steam Disk B is full; the heat exchanger's ME output hatch is infinite, so no voiding is needed

ThenPut 1kb of sodium-potassium alloy into the ae, then insert some fuel rods, and just turn it on and run it

Low-temperature pile construction completed here

On the basis of the low-temperature pile, the subnet adds 2 disks, one labeled distilled water and the other labeled supercritical steam.

Heat exchanger ME input bin add marker 1kb supercritical sodium-potassium alloy and 2MB distilled water

Supercritical Reactor, Greatly reduce the number of cooling components, adjusted the configurable maintenance hatch to 1.2x, added an explosion-proof device

The anti-explosion device is as follows, the threshold transmitter monitors the distilled water stock, the machine stops when the distilled water stock is less than 200k, and restarts when it is greater than 1600k(i.e., less than transmitter, upper limit 1600000, lower limit 200000, transmit and stop when below 200k) , below is the me inventory input bin(Input Sodium-Potassium Alloy) , the machine control overlay is set to 1 - Inverted , the middle is the thermal sensor, set to Normal - 1450 - 1500, the right is the machine control bin, set to Enabled - 1 - Normal

This way, the machine will, at1456Kproduce supercritical steam, maximizing fuel rod durability
Of course, it can also be adjusted to 800K to produce high-pressure steam for large steam turbine power generation

Any fuel rod will do, because fuel rods don't affect output speed; they only differ in durability, and fuel rods are all cheap.
You can choosea single Naquadah fuel rod(burns the longest) ora single MOX fuel rod(also produces some nuclear waste)
Note, For uranium, MOX, and Naquadah fuel rods, single rods are the most profitable.
But thorium fuel rods are special:Thorium fuel rods: dual > quad > single, and single rods actually have the lowest heat value.

Supercritical Steam Turbine, with ZPM Rotor Holder + High-Speed Mode + Attachment Module + High-Speed Steel-E Rotor, on Normal difficulty produces 1.5A UEV, consumes steam at a rate of 2.29KB/s, i.e. a supercritical sodium-potassium steam output of 1.43125b/s, while when Cooling Components are not adjacent, each Cooling Component's supercritical sodium-potassium alloy output is fixed at 160mb/s; calculation shows that 9 Cooling Components are just enough to meet demand, and practical verification also shows the calculation is correct.

Simple calculation: Divide the supercritical steam consumption rate (which can be seen directly in the main machine) by 1600 and then by 160 to get the number of cooling components that need to be placed

However, because the grid will be full, and once it's full the supercritical steam turbine will stop, there will still be a problem of insufficient distilled water for circulation. But the automatic shutdown device for insufficient distilled water has already been introduced above, so it's harmless.

Supercritical steam is worthless, supercritical steam turbineIt is recommended to use HSS-E rotors, then switch to Ampro rotors

The power generation of a single supercritical generator is as follows(Magic Coating is unavailable in version 056b; refer to the 060 dev25 values)

Normal Difficulty:

Expert Difficulty:

Supercritical power generation with extremely low operating and maintenance costs(Expert full adjustment requires continuous rotor consumption)Provides continuous power until the UHV stage; at the UHV stage, you can directly switch to the Large Naquadah Reactor as the main power generation method