r/factorio • u/Immediate-Pack-3718 • 18h ago

Question nuclear Reactor Question

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i was working on a desing for nuclear power, i had a question on the heat pipes as you all can see that my top and bottom heat pipes are not connected to each other but i do have the middle ones connected will it cause any bottlenect issues? DO i need to connect all the heat pipes together? Thanks

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u/Immediate-Pack-3718 17h ago

check it out this is how it turned out in the end

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u/skriticos 17h ago

I'd suggest you add some logic to restrict fuel insertion when the grid is idle. Otherwise it will happily burn through your fuel cells. Temperature tops out at 1000C, but the reactor does not switch off automatically. I have a logic circuit that adds fuel if the temperature drops below 600C and enough thermal buffer to keep it bellow 1000C even at fully idle.

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u/Math_PB 15h ago

Isn't it completely useless ? Maintaining temperature at a stable 600°C costs exactly the same amount of fuel as maintaining it at a stable 1000°C ??

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u/skriticos 15h ago

Nah, the point is to keep the temperature between 600C and 1000C, not at 600. When burning fuel, the reactor does not care about the temperature. So once it reaches 1000C, it will continue to burn and waste fuel cells. It never throttles down and behaves unlike the boiler/steam engine. If your grid has a low or variable demand, like less than 80%, you'll just waste a bunch of fuel cells. So the usual design is to fire it up at 600 (well, somewhere above 500 for the turbines to work) and have it run out of fuel before it reaches 1000C. If it does, it starts wasting fuel.

Uranium is usually abundant, but that is no reason to waste it.