Fission Reactor

This page is for Fission Reactors in NuclearCraft.

Fission Reactors
A fission reactor consists of a controller and a reaction chamber. The reaction chamber is then filled with your choice of Reactor Cells, Coolers and Graphite blocks. Building the reaction chamber is simple. Choosing the right combination and configuration of parts to go inside is tricky!


 * 1) Start by building a reaction chamber from Reactor Casing blocks.
 * 2) Place a Fission Controller against one of the reactor casing blocks.
 * 3) Place a combination of Reactor Cells, Graphite Blocks and Coolers inside the reaction chamber.
 * 4) Insert a Fuel Rod into the controller.
 * 5) Apply a redstone signal to the controller to turn it on.


 * The reaction chamber may have any internal size from 1x1x1 to 24x24x24. Any cuboid shape is valid - it doesn't need to be a cube.
 * Note that only the faces need blocks - putting reactor casing on the edges will often result in the controller being unable to determine the position and size of the reactor chamber.

Constructing Your Reactor
This section details the mechanics of how NuclearCraft's fission reactor components interact.

Managing heat and power, while getting the best efficiency, is the core challenge of NuclearCraft's fission reactor.


 * Each block inside a Fission Reactor either creates power and heat, removes heat, or modifies the way in which the blocks interact.
 * The position of blocks relative to each other is very important. Some blocks get boosts from being adjacent to others, some won't work unless adjacent to another.

Reaction Chamber Blocks
The following blocks should be placed down inside the reaction chamber.

Reactor Cell
This is the main component that creates energy and heat.


 * Each cell produces the heat and power listed for the fuel you are using. For example, if you're using TBU Fuel, which has a power of 60 and a heat of 18, a reactor containing a single Reactor Cell will produce 60 RF/t and 18 H/t. A reactor containing two, non-adjacent Reactor Cells and using TBU fuel, will produce 120 RF/t and 36 H/t.


 * Reactor cells placed against each other have a higher efficiency, and multiply their power and heat output. A reactor with two adjacent Reactor Cells and TBU fuel, will have an efficiency of 200% and produce 240 RF/t but will produce 108 H/t.

Graphite Block
The main job of graphite blocks is to provide a small boost in efficiency for a small boost in heat. Although the graphite block will generate additional heat wherever it is placed in the structure, it will only generate extra energy if adjacent to at least one Reactor Cell. The additional power generated per graphite block is equal to baseRF*noCells/8 RF/t, and the extra heat generated per graphite block is baseRF*noCells/16 H/t. In addition, when placed between two Reactor Cells, they act as a linker between the cells, providing both the standard boost and increasing the efficiency of the Cells as if they were adjacent. e.g. A TBU-fuelled reactor with two Reactor Cells and a Graphite Block between them runs at 212% efficiency, producing 255 RF/t and 115 H/t.

Coolers
As the name implies, coolers remove heat from the reaction chamber. There are several different types of cooler and each has its own set of conditions under which it operates.
 * Empty Cooler - Crafting item, used to craft the coolers
 * Water Cooler - The simplest cooler, must touch a Reactor Casing.
 * Redstone Cooler - This cooler must touch a Reactor Cell.
 * Quartz Cooler - This cooler must must touch a Graphite Block.
 * Gold Cooler - This cooler must touch a Redstone Cooler and a Water Cooler.
 * Glowstone Cooler - This cooler must touch two Graphite Blocks.
 * Lapis Cooler - This cooler must touch a Reactor Cell and a Reactor Casing.
 * Diamond Cooler - This cooler must touch four water cells in the same plane.
 * Liquid Helium Cooler - This cooler must touch one Quartz Cooler and one Reactor Casing.
 * Enderium Cooler* - This cooler must touch exactly three Reactor Casings. (This means it can only be used on the 8 corners inside the reaction chamber)
 * Cryotheum Cooler* - This cooler must touch two Reactor Cells.
 * Active Fluid Cooler - This cooler requires liquid coolant to be piped into the reaction chamber via a Buffer. Inside the chamber, the fluids must be piped from the reactor port to the coolers. Active coolers cool the reactor at a maximum of 250% (500% in the upcoming v2.8) the rate of the regular passive coolers of the same type but any liquid piped into them gets destroyed at a maximum rate of 0.25 mB/t (0.5 mB/t in the upcoming v2.8). Water will be the most practical for most players, but more expensive coolants are extremely effective at removing heat.
 * Supercooler - Supercoolers are not used in Fission Reactors.

Notes:
 * If a cooler's conditions are not met, the block will not cool anything!
 * Sub-conditions must also be met! E.g., a Gold Cooler must be placed against an active water cooler. If the water cooler isn't against the casing, then it isn't active so it does nothing, and neither does the gold cooler.
 * Enderium and Cryothermium coolers require the Thermal Expansion to be installed.

Reactor Configuration
The main challenge in NuclearCraft is figuring out how to arrange reactor cells, graphite blocks and coolers. Placing reactor cells next to each other boosts efficiency but results in a lot more heat. Using graphite blocks can increase the efficiency and add space to insert more coolers. Diamond, Enderium and Cryotheum coolers do a lot of cooling, but may be too expensive for you before late mid-game.

This subsection is for suggestions and tips on how to proceed with this task. Your mileage will vary so be careful. In this process you'll have to go in and out of the reaction chamber quite often so you might want to replace two Reactor Casing blocks with a Reactor Door.

After you've built the reaction chamber and chosen which fuel you want to use, place down a single reactor cell then put in a fuel rod in the controller. The controller will show the figures for efficiency, power and heat. Now go back in and place another reactor cell. Check the controller and see how the numbers have changed. You'll need to experiment, a lot!


 * If you can afford them, put 8 Enderium coolers in the chamber, one in each corner. That's 32 Enderium Ingots in total.
 * Coolers can share other coolers. E.g., you can place a redstone cooler against any or all faces of a reactor cell.
 * Diamond Coolers must be placed in a cross pattern, between 4 water coolers. This pattern can be tessellated! I.e., two diamond coolers can share two water coolers.
 * Think in three dimensions! Just because you can repeat a pattern, doesn't mean you should. For example, you have an exposed face of a reactor cell. Don't just put a Redstone Cooler there. Look around to see what other blocks are nearby. It may be smarter to use a Lapis cooler (100 H/t) than a Redstone cooler (80 H/t) because there's a reactor wall nearby.
 * Think in combinations! When you're looking at a space in the reactor, try to think of all combinations and see which is the best. Although a Lapis Cooler is more effective than a Redstone Cooler, it might be smarter to use a Gold Cooler because there are Redstone and Water coolers nearby.
 * Be careful with active coolers. You need piping internally to take the fluids from the Reactor Port to the cooler. While this can be of great benefit (doubling the effectiveness of some coolers), the space required to run the pipes might be more effectively used for passive coolers.
 * A reactor can have a lot of empty space if you want. If your chamber is much larger than needed for the number of Reactor Cells you're using, you'll have room to run pipes to active coolers. However you won't be able to use as many of the coolers that require to be touching a Reactor Casing.
 * You can put "foreign objects" like torches and chests inside a reactor.
 * You can use transparent reactor casings if you like, although unless you have piping or other stuff inside, there won't be much to look at.



The most efficient reactor core design consists of alternating Graphite and Reactor cells in the pattern R-G-C-G-C-R, where R is the repeating unit. This design can be repeated 3-dimensionally, and indefinitely for infinitely increasing efficiency. 1 9*9 layer of this pattern will generate 922% efficiency, and a 9*9*9 core has an efficiency of 5126%. However, this also dramatically increases heat and power, and active cooling is a must for cores bigger than 5*5*5.

Note: This is no longer true in later versions of NuclearCraft (v2.9a and above) due to the changes made to the fission reactor rules. The theoretical maximum efficiency for fission reactors in these later versions is ~816%

Saving Fuel
A fission reactor will continue to operate, even if the internal energy buffer is full. To avoid wasting fuel, a tool such as the RF Monitor from RFTools can be employed to send a redstone signal to the Fission Controller if the buffer is below a certain percentage. Note that the presence of a redstone signal turns the reactor on.

Preventing a Meltdown
A fission reactor that overheats will "melt down", a process in which random blocks of the structure become lava blocks. Placed against the controller block, a comparator will emit a signal if the heat level exceeds 50% - this is configurable. By inverting this signal and feeding it back into the controller, the reactor will only operate if the heat level is below 50%. Note: This doesn't save fuel, it just prevents the reactor from melting down.

The existence of the Blast Block suggests that explosions may be planned for future versions of the mod.

Fuel Calculator
Reddit user /u/Snarklord created a spreadsheet to assist with Fission fuel calculation.

https://www.reddit.com/r/feedthebeast/comments/7p4u5i/nuclearcraft_best_fuel_calculator/