Nuclear ratio?

[Your Majesty Padded Gamer]

Can someone dumb this down into English for me? I read the wiki page for how this stuff works and quite frankly, I can't wrap my head around it. Why isn't there just some magic number for it like with steam engines?

Heck, I'll even take a design that I can just copy and paste into my factory. I don't mind that.

[Warlord]

I wish there was a magic number. I don't understand why steam turbines take a fraction of a heat exchangers generation, rather a nice even number like (for instance) 2 turbines per exchanger.

Maybe we should bug the devs about that.

Anyway, I've only built a large nuclear design once, and I eye-balled it.

Edit: IIRC, it is 4 exchangers per reactor, plus another set of 4 for each adjacency bonus. Two reactors near eachother gives each reactor one bonus each, so that would be 8 exchangers each. A 2x2 setup of reactors gives 2 bonuses to each reactor, so 12 exchangers each. The number of turbines is... I think about 1.7 turbines per exchanger. If you wanna be lazy, just hook them up to the exchangers exactly like you do for steam engines. The second turbine in each pair will of course be running a little slower because it isn't getting enough steam, but it's a lot easier to setup and do the math for.

[Your Majesty Padded Gamer]

Originally posted by Warlord:

I wish there was a magic number. I don't understand why steam turbines take a fraction of a heat exchangers generation, rather a nice even number like (for instance) 2 turbines per exchanger.

Maybe we should bug the devs about that.

Anyway, I've only built a large nuclear design once, and I eye-balled it.

Edit: IIRC, it is 4 exchangers per reactor, plus another set of 4 for each adjacency bonus. Two reactors near eachother gives each reactor one bonus each, so that would be 8 exchangers each. A 2x2 setup of reactors gives 2 bonuses to each reactor, so 12 exchangers each. The number of turbines is... I think about 1.7 turbines per exchanger. If you wanna be lazy, just hook them up to the exchangers exactly like you do for steam engines. The second turbine in each pair will of course be running a little slower because it isn't getting enough steam, but it's a lot easier to setup and do the math for.

Thank you so much for the advice! :D That will help out a lot in my next Factorio stream. I just got the research unlocked and wanted to test out the new 0.15 update.

[KatherineOfSky]

I have a video tutorial here. (If you're just looking for ratios, they are toward the end of the video).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA21zrqMMq0&list=PL4o6UvJIdPNpm9szThfI-2y3Bv0c3rPlB

[Hedning]

Nuclear reactors produce 40MW + 40MW for each adjacent reactor. If you make a double row that ends up being 160(n-1)MW total. (n is the number of reactors)

Heat exchangers produce 10MW. This is why the ratio to steam turbines isn't as easy, because insted the ratio to nuclear reactors is simple. Just divide the power produced by the reactors by 10 and you'll get how many heat exchangers you need.

Steam turbines are similar to steam engines. They are based on boilers and offshore pumps which use fluid as the even base rather than energy. They take 60 steam per second. That's exactly 1/20 of an offshore pump and exactly the same as a boiler. Converting to energy (500 degrees) that turns out to be 5.82MW (conversion factor is 97kW/unit of steam). Divide your total power produced by your heat exchangers with 5.82 and you'll get the number of steam turbines required.

All things are still limited by heat flow in heat pipes and fluid flow in normal pipes. Fluid flow can be increased with pumps but I recommend not trying to do more than 1200 steam per second in a pipe. If you are having flow rate problems in heat pipes you just have to make them shorter or add more.

Heat flow in heat pipes is rather limited, so make sure your last heat exchanger can still get over 500 degrees even when everything is being used. Unlike boilers nuclear reactors will simply waste all energy not reaching the heat exchangers. If you see any reactor at 1000 degrees you are probably wasting energy.

[citizen^ Baya]

Originally posted by Hedning:

Nuclear reactors produce 40MW + 40MW for each adjacent reactor. If you make a double row that ends up being 160(n-1)MW total. (n is the number of reactors)

Heat exchangers produce 10MW. This is why the ratio to steam turbines isn't as easy, because insted the ratio to nuclear reactors is simple. Just divide the power produced by the reactors by 10 and you'll get how many heat exchangers you need.

Steam turbines are similar to steam engines. They are based on boilers and offshore pumps which use fluid as the even base rather than energy. They take 60 steam per second. That's exactly 1/20 of an offshore pump and exactly the same as a boiler. Converting to energy (500 degrees) that turns out to be 5.82MW (conversion factor is 97kW/unit of steam). Divide your total power produced by your heat exchangers with 5.82 and you'll get the number of steam turbines required.

All things are still limited by heat flow in heat pipes and fluid flow in normal pipes. Fluid flow can be increased with pumps but I recommend not trying to do more than 1200 steam per second in a pipe. If you are having flow rate problems in heat pipes you just have to make them shorter or add more.

Heat flow in heat pipes is rather limited, so make sure your last heat exchanger can still get over 500 degrees even when everything is being used. Unlike boilers nuclear reactors will simply waste all energy not reaching the heat exchangers. If you see any reactor at 1000 degrees you are probably wasting energy.

Has this ratio changed in updates over the past few years?

Also thanks for the answer, very detailed.

[The_Mell]

Uff, necro of a seven old thread...

Originally posted by citizen^ Baya:

Has this ratio changed in updates over the past few years?

No, ratio have not changed.

[Warlord]

Haha, here I was about to give advice, only to find the EXACT SAME ADVICE already posted by myself.

[brian_va]

Originally posted by Warlord:

Haha, here I was about to give advice, only to find the EXACT SAME ADVICE already posted by myself.

gotta admire that consistency.

[Warlord]

Originally posted by brian_va:

Originally posted by Warlord:

Haha, here I was about to give advice, only to find the EXACT SAME ADVICE already posted by myself.

gotta admire that consistency.

Glad to at least see that it was still accurate. Meaning the underlying systems in nuclear power haven't changed. There's been a few necros here in Factorio in which my reply is now flat-out wrong, and had been called out on it through no fault of mine.

[brian_va]

Originally posted by Warlord:

and had been called out on it through no fault of mine.

and who's fault is it that you failed to prepare for future changes????

[Warlord]

Originally posted by brian_va:

Originally posted by Warlord:

and had been called out on it through no fault of mine.

and who's fault is it that you failed to prepare for future changes????

I tried to infiltrate the devs to ensure absolutely no changes were ever made! But... they caught me in the coal chute...