Nuclear Reactor stays at 500C?

[Zeighy.Games]

So, I was able to finally play with the Nuclear Reactor, and when I was testing it out it kept it's temperature at 500C even when there's no more fuel being used. Of course, I can't boil water in the heat exchanger for the turbines at exactly 500C, but my main question is that if this is intended to stay at 500C?

I mean, I personaly don't mind... Does this mean I can easily ramp up the heat to start making steam as soon as I put in fuel? Right? I won't have to waste a fuel and a half ramping up from 15C to 500C.

[TigerXtrm]

500c is the minimum temp anything related to the reactor will stay at once it's been warmed up once. As far as I know that's intentional (otherwise you'd have to waste a fuel cell every single time the reactor cools down). The tradeoff is that a reactor will burn fuel regardless of how much heat is used by the heat exchangers. So if you don't build a system of some sort to regulate the fuel cell intake into the reactors you will be wasting tons and tons of fuel.

[Zeighy.Games]

That's good to know.... I'm still waiting to finish my Kovarex research before I properly set up nuclear power. It's good to know I won't have to waste fuel warming up in the event I run out of fuel on the reactor each time.

[AlexMBrennan]

As far as I know that's intentional (otherwise you'd have to waste a fuel cell every single time the reactor cools down)

That's not really the right way to think about this: if the heat exchangers didn't stop producing steam when the reactor falls below 500C then the residual heat energy would be turned into low temperature steam, which would be used by the steam turbines. "Saving" a fuel cell now just means that your stockpiled steam will run out faster.

[Zeighy.Games]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

As far as I know that's intentional (otherwise you'd have to waste a fuel cell every single time the reactor cools down)

That's not really the right way to think about this: if the heat exchangers didn't stop producing steam when the reactor falls below 500C then the residual heat energy would be turned into low temperature steam, which would be used by the steam turbines. "Saving" a fuel cell now just means that your stockpiled steam will run out faster.

Ideally, you would think that's how it should work...

Maybe on more advanced setups, you can use a pump as a valve to divert "normal" steam into a regular steam engine when the exchangers are cooling down and to pump high temp steam into turbines when the exchangers are running normally.

[Horoai]

Originally posted by zaghy2zy:

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

That's not really the right way to think about this: if the heat exchangers didn't stop producing steam when the reactor falls below 500C then the residual heat energy would be turned into low temperature steam, which would be used by the steam turbines. "Saving" a fuel cell now just means that your stockpiled steam will run out faster.

Ideally, you would think that's how it should work...

Maybe on more advanced setups, you can use a pump as a valve to divert "normal" steam into a regular steam engine when the exchangers are cooling down and to pump high temp steam into turbines when the exchangers are running normally.

The nuclear mod had such a feature where you could read all kinds of stats from a reactor core including core and steam (water) temperature. It pretty much required you to put a pump between tanks/engines and reactor to ensure only 100° warm water is transfered. I liked that a lot.

[Nailfoot]

The nuclear reactors use fuel so sparingly, and U235 is SO abundant once you get your initial 40 pieces, I wouldn't worry about the reactors running all of the time.

Unless your world has very rare uranium patches, you simply can't use up uranium fuel cells as fast as you can make them.

Its not efficient though.