Heat exchanger and Steam turbine

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

Hello,
can someone link me a layout for a small base, like max 5 steam turbine. Also, which fuel should I use for the Heat exchanger?

Thank you

[The Chaotic Coder]

Heat exchangers plug into nuclear reactors using heat pipes. Heat pipes connect to the back side of the exchanger (opposite where the steam comes out) and they connect to the reactor at the corners and side points (you can see a thing on the reactor that looks like a heat pipe, this is where to connect to).

The reactor takes fuel cells made from Uranium to make the heat, and then the heat exchanger makes steam for the turbines.

Nuclear power plants are BIG. you can make one with only 5 turbines if you really want, but you'll be wasting a ton of fuel. Reactors continue to use fuel at a fixed rate regardless of how much power you actually need, unless you do some clever control circuits to turn things on/off as needed.

So, yeah, if you're only using 5 turbines worth of power, it'd be a lot easier to just stick with regular steam until your factory is a lot bigger.

[The Chaotic Coder]

Here's a really quick tutorial on how nuclear power works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd4lOWZhlDs

... but this one by KatherineOfSky goes much more in depth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA21zrqMMq0

KatherineOfSky is pretty much the best all-around tutorialist for Factorio, if you haven't already you should check out her YouTube channel. There's a ton of stuff on there that will really improve your factory.

[Bullet-Tooth Tony]

thank you !! I totally miss "the uranium ore" part which I still dont know where i can get it... I'll watch your guide now!! cheers

[The Chaotic Coder]

Neither one of those videos is mine, I just searched & linked them.

You'll have to explore quite a bit to find uranium. Depending on your map generation settings, it can be pretty far from the start location and hard to find. When you do find it, it's a bright green ore that glows at night -- kind of pretty, and standing near it doesn't even hurt you!

[KatherineOfSky]

@jchardin: thank you so much for the compliment!

[The Chaotic Coder]

Originally posted by KatherineOfSky:

@jchardin: thank you so much for the compliment! :8bitheart:

You're welcome :)

By the way, if I comment on your videos on YouTube I'm "John73 John"