Tips for Nuclear Energy in Space?

[megamagicmonkey]

Trying to get a platform ready for the trip to Aquilo. Nuclear seems the best options since solar definitely won't cut it out there and other systems of energy are either disqualified or seem inefficient. Nuclear really seems to only way to go. That said after trying to build a similar system to what I have on Nauvis I learned very quickly how inefficient it is to try and maintain a long-term fuel cell supply with things like fuel cell reclamation and kovarex enrichment.

So does anyone have any tips? How many reactors would folks recommend? Do I do any kind of on-platform manufacturing for these reactors, or just resupply whenever the ship hits Nauvis? How long should I expect my outings to be with how many fuel cells? How many heat exchangers/turbines should I be looking at? I could really use some guidance, particularly anything data-driven. It'd be a big help.

[Fel]

Uranium fuel cells stack up to 50, a single cell lasts 200 seconds in a reactor.
Even without doing some circuit network to only put in cells when the heat starts to go down, a stack of cells in a single generator lasts you 10,000 seconds, which means about 2 hours and 45 minutes of constant operation.
That should be more than enough time even for a relatively slow platform to do a round trip, and that is only with 1 slot worth of cells.

Even if you had several reactor for their bonus, you could easily send up several stacks of cells as well.

Space platforms don't necessarily need to be making everything from scratch, even if the rocket capacity is not that high (1/5th of a stack for cells).

[Leveler]

Nuclear power is not necessary for Aquilo travel. In my first play through, my main space platform used solar panels only until I switched to fusion. All panels at least rare quality, maybe about half epic quality and some few legendaries.

Gun and rocket turrets does not need power to shoot. Sure, production was often slowed down in Aquilo orbit because low power, but that is not a problem if you already have everything you need stored before going there. I think I had something like 8 storage tanks for both fuel and oxidizer and 2k yellow magazines and 1k yellow rockets as travel condition.

[zerassar]

I managed going to aquilo using efficiency modules and mostly common and uncommon solar panels.

[Nero]

Our first Aquilo ships used one reactor with 2 heat exchangers, 4 turbines and a single steam tank.
Hook that tank to the arm extracting the spent cell and make the other one activate on output.
They ran for >50 hours and still didn’t use up the first stack of fuel cells.

The new generation runs on fusion.

[Defektiv]

I only brought a single reactor with 2 stacks of fuel to Aquilo because the first time I tried to bring rocket fuel and didn't get the base running before running out of rocket fuel. The first thing I had to do was get rocket fuel production online and then I put a burner near the reactor, set the reactor inserter to only put in fuel if it dropped below 520 degrees and set the burner inserter to insert rocket fuel at 540 degrees. The reactor hasn't burned a single fuel cell since but its sitting there in case something goes really wrong.

I had a reactor on the space ship that flew there but it doesn't need it unless I set up in orbit for a long time. It buffers enough fuel and ammo to sit without a lot of power for quite a while. With the tiny stack size on cells I just don't find it incredibly fun or useful to use reactors outside of Nauvis except for small scale temporary start-ups.

[Evilsod]

Solar in space around Aquilo is still plenty high enough to power your platform, it's only on the planet where it's completely useless beyond starting out. You can even stick a few accumulators in empty spaces to even out the occasional spike.

[Nonotorious]

My tip is to set a request on the nauvis landing pad for used fuel cells because you don't really want them anywhere else and if you make a dump request on your platform it might dump it on a random planet.

[Fel]

Originally posted by Nonotorious:

My tip is to set a request on the nauvis landing pad for used fuel cells because you don't really want them anywhere else and if you make a dump request on your platform it might dump it on a random planet.

You make the all requests based on a specific planet, it doesn't matter if it's requesting or dumping, they are only active when above the planet in question.

[Nonotorious]

Originally posted by Fel:

Originally posted by Nonotorious:

My tip is to set a request on the nauvis landing pad for used fuel cells because you don't really want them anywhere else and if you make a dump request on your platform it might dump it on a random planet.

You make the all requests based on a specific planet, it doesn't matter if it's requesting or dumping, they are only active when above the planet in question.

Except we did that and my friends ship would continually dump it wherever it wanted, despite having unload turned off over every other planet. Maybe it was a bug? Idk, but the safe bet is to just leave the dumping request to the planets cargo bays and then offload it or do whatever.

[RiO]

Originally posted by megamagicmonkey:

solar definitely won't cut it out there

I'm running a platform from/to Aquilo that nearly manages to survive out there on just rare solar panels. If I'd bump them to epic; it'd have consistent surplus, even while foundries are working to produce plates for ammo.

[kremlin]

Originally posted by Nero:

Our first Aquilo ships used one reactor with 2 heat exchangers, 4 turbines and a single steam tank.
Hook that tank to the arm extracting the spent cell and make the other one activate on output.
They ran for >50 hours and still didn’t use up the first stack of fuel cells.

The new generation runs on fusion.

Now it lets you wire the reactors themselves to read temperature, which can be used instead of a steam tank to clock the fuel insertion.

[Nero]

Originally posted by kremlin:

Originally posted by Nero:

Our first Aquilo ships used one reactor with 2 heat exchangers, 4 turbines and a single steam tank.
Hook that tank to the arm extracting the spent cell and make the other one activate on output.
They ran for >50 hours and still didn’t use up the first stack of fuel cells.

The new generation runs on fusion.

Now it lets you wire the reactors themselves to read temperature, which can be used instead of a steam tank to clock the fuel insertion.

I know, but I think its a lot simpler to read the steam reserves rather than figure out how warm your reactors will be after the heating cycle.

Setups without enough buffer tanks tend to waste a lot of heat.
My setups are usually sized in a dimension where ~25% of planned max load is the current, average energy drain of 10mins.
Doesn't really matter if you always run at 80%+ of capacity but its really different if you build an oversized setup before upscaling the factory.

[Z0MBE]

I would use tanks and essentially a circuit that efficiently consumes fuel when you least need it so - use tanks yknow and then make a circuit taht adds 1 single fuel every time steam in tanks falls below a threshold on the lower end, 2000 - 4000 . so just try to prolong as much as possible the time it would take.

[FranicK]

Take advantage of efficiency modules and beacons to reduce energy costs.

[ZBRUH10]

I put 3 reactors in mine (bit overkill), and I always have at least 190 (might also be overkill based on previous comments) cells in the hub, then they are STACKED on the belt for more storage, and circuit controlled inserted: if temperature < 700 (might be too high) AND fuel = 0 then insert 4 cells. I works perfectly fine, just had some trouble getting the water first, but after first Aquilo trip it was fine.