Do you circuit your nuclear power to trigger on buffer level?

[Viceroy Günther von Lichler]

If so, when do you set it to trigger? I have conventional powerplants set to trigger at 85% buffer level so they pick up the slack mostly during the night, but i don't know enough about nuclear power to understand where to fit them in the system.

[MechBFP]

Making a Kovarex setup without bots is extremely easy. Just need to use a handful of splitters and make sure to set the input priority so it always uses resources coming out of the Kovarex centrifuges first before any other resources, and then just dump the overflow extra U-235 using another splitter into a couple steel crates before processing it to fuel and it will run for like 100 hours before getting full.
The biggest pain in the ass is getting the process started because you want at least 80 U-235 before starting the process, otherwise you need to move stuff around by hand for like 30 minutes until the supply builds up.

[Ambrsale]

Yes, I do use buffer and reactor triggers on buffer steam is uder some amount.
I still early megabase with 4GW nuclear reactor and consumed like 1.1 - 1.5 GW

FPS/UPS feels good, but last patch I have sudden random rare freezes for some seconds.

[AlexMBrennan]

If you're low on power, it takes too much time for it to start running.

The first time you start the reactor it takes some time to reach 500C but obviously it doesn't cool down below 500C unless you go out of your way to rip out the reactors and rebuild them.

If fuel is already inside, it always uses fuel, unlike regular boilers that take only what is needed.

There is no reason to ever control nuclear.

Yes, but unlike your boilers the nuclear reactor can store a considerable amount of energy in the form of heat. There is no reason to use that heat to generate electricity if solar power is available which is why solar panels take priority over steam turbines.

[Katitoff]

Premu eredeti hozzászólása:

snip

I wanted to add "unless you're building megabase", but lost the thought while writing the post.

That being said, there is still no need for kovarex even for 24 nuclear reactors on semi-decent ore patch(assuming you're processing it all smoothly).

And given OPs concerns, I don't think he is anywhere near starting megabase yet.

[MechBFP]

Katitoff eredeti hozzászólása:

That being said, there is still no need for kovarex even for 24 nuclear reactors on semi-decent ore patch(assuming you're processing it all smoothly).

As mentioned by someone else that is wrong. To anyone reading this, ignore this person because it is terrible, terrible advice.

[Katitoff]

MechBFP eredeti hozzászólása:

Katitoff eredeti hozzászólása:

That being said, there is still no need for kovarex even for 24 nuclear reactors on semi-decent ore patch(assuming you're processing it all smoothly).

As mentioned by someone else that is wrong. To anyone reading this, ignore this person because it is terrible, terrible advice.

I can tell the exact same thing about you based on this post....
At 0 productivity upgrades and no modules, it takes 7 miners to produce enough to keep 1 reactor running.
Scale that apropriately to productivity upgrades for miners and productivity modules for centifuges and assembler and you'll have enough, given a patch that can take enough miners.

And cut the crap that its "not working" or "its wrong", because you clearly have no slightest idea about ratios on mining and processing uranium.

And don't worry, I too was terrified of using nuclear power before kovarex until I did the math and put it to the successful test in game.

[astrosha]

200 seconds per fuel. 2000 seconds per fuel recipe (since you get 10 fuel per iteration). It takes 19 238 and 1 235 to make the fuel (ignoring the Iron Plate as inconsequential).

This means you need 1 235 every 2000 seconds. With 0.7% chance of it happening (you can expect to get 7 for every 1000 cycles, or 10,000 uranium ore mined). With a 12 second cycle time, that is 12,000 seconds for 7 235, or around 1700 seconds for each.

That's an average, and yes, it can work that way. Relying on it, however, can be a bit problematic, as you can get all 7 front loaded, rear-loaded, could get less than those 7, could get more than those 7. If one is around 5 minutes (300 seconds) late, you may not have the fuel ready for the next refuelling of the reactors, and then where would you be?

Does it work? It should. Is it optimal? just use Kovarex and eliminate the worry.

[knighttemplar1960]

I'm not sure why people are arguing about kovarex or no kovarex. The first thing I research after getting the ability to process Uranium is Kovarex. I don't like swimming in U-238, and usually by the time I have Kovarex research finished I have produced 40 U-235 and am ready to get it started.

I didn't have time to expand my base so much that I have to jump from my pre-nuclear power set up to nuclear power set up to satisfy my power demands. After kovarex has run a few cycles (while I'm setting up my first nuclear plant for that base) I have more than enough nuclear fuel for that first reactor (I usually just set up a 2x2 reactor set up for that first one) and it provides all the power (and more) than I need to expand the base further. I just have to make sure that I expand things proportionally which i do by occasionally checking my power supply when I set out power poles for the current expansion.

Both systems work. Its not a question of is one better than the other its just a question of play style and personal preference.

[bluemonkey]

In my first nuclear setup, I setup a trigger condition using the main grid. I immediately decided that was unnecessary effort and that building nuclear meant using nuclear.

I control the fueling rate based on a steam tank (or a few) within the reactor complex and my base becomes entirely a mix of solar & nuclear just as fast as I can rip out the boilers.

[LordBawa]

Nuclear reactors are very unresponsive to input supply adjustments and are not an efficient way to control electrical production. And reactors (like conventional boilers) just produce steam, not electricity.

A better strategy is to run reactors at full power, then control how much steam is directed to turbines. Excess steam can be either stored, transported to outpost power plants in tanker cars or forwarded to a coal liquefaction set up and converted to some other usable material (my preferred end product is rocket fuel).

[Morsk]

Nailfoot eredeti hozzászólása:

Brown outs are a different issue. You should not allow your power situation to ever get that low, even if dozens of laser turrets fire at the same time. Consistently monitoring your power graph will let you know when it is time to bring more power generation online.

That's good enough for everything else, but not combinators. If I build something it's to see how well it works, and I can't learn anything if any error is "Eh, maybe it lost power briefly?" It can also happen when rearranging power poles, and there is no warning. We'll never know if we did it or not.

[Exgene]

My 0.02: Once I get nuclear up, I control the fuel cell burn rate based on steam reservoir. Nothing too complex - I have enough tanks to hold more than a full cell's steam worth of power. When the reservoir gets low, dump in a single cell to each reactor.

This game is about learning, and optimization. The circuit to control my reactor was not 'wasted time', it was as fun as automating anything else. And now I'm not wasting fuel cells (abundant resource or not, waste is waste). It's blueprinted now, so it only takes a bit of time to re-implement each new game.

[Z0MBE]

I just always suggest the transformer mod tbh, it makes power management helpful. Also the reactor interface mod is amazing for reactors - all of these can really help managing a nuclear power plant. I'd say more too, I learned how to use the combinator system, you can make a condition that forces a buffer to get filled and then wait till it empties that you can easily apply to reactors.

[AzKat 🐔]

I just let them go 24/7 and don't bother with solar power.