Starting a thread for people to post and pick apart each other's reactor designs. After several days of research, trail and error, here is mine:

RimAtomics powered Mountain base
Other mods: RT Switch, RT Fuse, doors expanded and wall light - extended colors.


This reactor is set up to be completely underground. Heat from the cooling radiators is vented through the open-roofed trade beacon room and vents out on the far side. Running one fully fueled reactor at 60% is sufficient to power a fairly large base and room temperatures rarely gets above 65c.



Some lessons learned:

- Always have two reactors - Only run one at a time while your colonists perform maintenance and refueling on the other. They should be in separate rooms well shielded from each other. The reactor room should be 11x11 tiles to allow space to upgrade to the largest reactor type as your power demands increase.

- Batteries - Reactors need power to start. Establish battery banks and other sources of backup power to allow time to repair and restart a reactor after a SCRAM event. Use RT Fuse mod to mitigate zzzzt events.

- Isolate your power grids when scarce power is needed. Three switches in and around the control room cut power plant off from the rest of the base, increasing your battery life.

- Create a layout that ensures irradiated materials stay isolated from the rest of the base. All places in yellow are in radiation zones. This includes your research reactor which can experience catastrophic failures. Color coding just makes it easier to track (mod: wall light - extended colors).

- Ensure your zoning is setup so only colonists in radiation suits can access the reactor. It doesn't hurt to identify a couple high intelligent colonists equipped with rad suits to act as your reactor workers.

- EDIT: Something I didn't realize until later, fuels rods lose efficiency over time. So event though the console may say a rod is projected to last several years, the amount of power it puts out will be significantly less towards the end of it's lifetime. Rods at the center of the reactor have a shorter lifespan due to increased heat than rods in the outer edges, So if you notice your base is suddenly struggling for power, you need to either increasing your power setting or replace some rods early.

Mountain Base Reactor
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1771417943

Mountain Base Reactor (wiring)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1771413885

Mountain Base Reactor (cable Routing)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1771413608

Mountain Base Reactor (heat map)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1771414017

Mountain Base Reactor (Console view)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1771418221


Go ahead. Tell me everything I got wrong.