Gaming Minecraft Nuclear engineering

MachJok

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Mods: Industrial Craft 2, Redpower 2, BuildCraft, Too many items, Single Player Commands.

I decided to do a bit of nuclear engineering. Power is so hard to come by in Minecraft and using the Buildcraft engines is tedious because of the required cool down time. So with that I decided I wanted to make a safe nuclear facility that could contain a worse case meltdown within the containment vessel. reactors come in 3 basic parts: Reactor -> Pressure Vessel -> Containment Vessel. What you see is the containment and it keeps the boom inside if the pressure vessel surrounding the reactor fails. The pressure vessel acts also as a coolant container to keep the reactor from going boom. I will be using the largest possible reactor at 5 chambers. To see what a 1 chamber can do when it melts down go to: http://youtu.be/EHNxcKBuA6M and go to 1:20 <-that reactor is 1 chamber. Needless to say my challenge was daunting to say the least. Probably best to make this away from ANYTHING.

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The workers did an excellent job laying down the foundation and spherical containment units. Each unit is 25 block in diameter. This will be an excellent site!

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With the initial containment complete, the empty reactors go into their new homes centered exactly in the containment. 1 central reactor and 5 attachment chambers. So far no issues have been raised with the construction and all is proceeding well.

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Since the reactors are now in place, it was time to put up the rotating beacons OF SCIENCE! I heard some snickering from the workers about female anatomy....purely coincidental I assure you. :cool:

Someone asked how far away could see the reactors.
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All the way to the view distance limiter. Oh well back to work.

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The control room was installed and the lock completed. I only can show photos of the waiting area since the control room itself is yet to be placed.
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There is a lock lever and a button for exit.

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The logic was not too difficult for the master electrician. The lock is easily reconfigurable for any combination. This new fangled redpower stuff is awesome.

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Meanwhile, Work was progressing on the reactor pressure vessels. A water tank up top with pistons open to allow water. When power is applied the pistons close. This is a safety design ensuring if power is ever lost cooling will always be available to the reactor. The whole floating thing was addressed later.

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The structure was secured to the walls. The first round of testing began with a reactor filled with uranium and allowed to become super-critical. As you can see the pressure vessel failed to contain the explosion but did a very good job. The containment vessel was breached and an engineering redesign was implemented resulting in a pressure vessel floor 3 blocks thick and a suppression pool of water at the bottom. The bottom 2 layers of concrete on the platform were also replaced with reinforced stone, the same material as the containment vessels.

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The HV power converter was installed and testing resumed

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Success! No breach in testing with a full reactor gone super-critical. Much better than the blast pattern in the video! No more redesigns. A nuclear bomb was placed instead of a reactor for 1 test and the containment vessel was not breached...there was some external damage to the concrete from high level radiation.

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Drat. Well one more. The Rotating Beacon of SCIENCE! was replaced with just a red light. The switching was causing lag spikes which is not beneficial for nuclear operations...The workers are rolling over laughing at what they are now calling the "Nuclear n:censored:s of Science."

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More testing. Destructive testing. 12 nuclear bombs were placed over the control room and detonated. The containment vessels were not breached. The control room was damaged beyond repair... somewhere.
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Oh there it is. The hole in the connecting line on the right reactor was not damaged. A worker forgot to finish the construction before the test....

More as it happens. Next up will be the reactor configuration for the uranium and coolant cells. WE'RE COOKING WITH GAS NOW!
 
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APDAF

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You know if you run running water past the reactors it will cool them.
And you can make them more compact if you want to.
 

MachJok

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You know if you run running water past the reactors it will cool them.
And you can make them more compact if you want to.

Thanks for the suggestion, I already ensured there is running water around all sides of the reactor. My goal was to make sure nothing escaped in case of catastrophic failure. Now if there was a way to remotely measure power output that would be awesome. I may make 1 reactor a breeder.

No power - Pistons open:
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Power - Pistons closed (maintenance configuration):
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Ark

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How on earth did you get all those mods to work together? Even with ID resolver it's just buying me a one-way ticket to crash city.

I really wish Notch would include better mod support, getting a lot of them to worth together is a bloody nightmare.
 
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jangofett287

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thats not alot of mods. Industrial craft and RedPower are the only ones that add blocks. If you think that's a lot of mods, you should see the Technic pack!
 

Ark

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thats not alot of mods. Industrial craft and RedPower are the only ones that add blocks. If you think that's a lot of mods, you should see the Technic pack!

I downloaded that and have been playing with it for the past day. Only installed a couple of the optional mods.

I've got a decent system, but for some reason I keep taking really bad FPS hits, like when I tunnel down next to an active miner or something. Does Industrial Craft come with a really heavy CPU load?
 
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