hmm i have an issue when i import your BP. imgur.com/a/D0bfT Is this a problem with the string or with my client? I double checked if i copied the complete string
@Coreben. I don't know where the problem lies. I just tested in my vanilla game, and I got "blueprint book imported successfully"... and all the blueprints had the correct buildings, etc. Try to import into a completely vanilla game, and make sure your game is updated to the latest version. Also, when you copy the string, go to the google docs page, and press Ctrl+A, (to select All). Then copy & paste.
Hey Kathrine, my game is full vanilla, since i try to get some of the production per time achievements. also im running version 0.15.12 which i think is the latest. Really strange thing...it deletes every building with modules in it and yes i even researched them (which shouldnt be necessary) However, thanks for your answer and keep up with your excellent videos.
You make the best factorio tutorials on the web, hands down. Not forgetting to mention that they are from over 4 years ago. You're speech and play by play are perfect for teaching. Your tone of voice is loving, sweet, kind, and inviting. Your steps to deliver information takes into account your listeners need to know what they are observing, big things and small things. While you actually go through the process a player would/will in game encounter themselves. You put yourself in your audiance's shoes. Great job and content Kat. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. Thank you for helping us.
I followed this processing layout and am loving the results. I recently upgraded to a 4 reactor setup and thanks to the Kovarex setup I have a ridiculous amount of surplus fuel. I’ve also set my reactor inserted to only grab fuel when steam drops below a certain threshold, which has saved me tons of fuel over time.
Nilaus is great, but you're style of teaching is so much friendlier to learning. Not to mention, something you covered that I absolutely couldn't find was the method of sorting the two types of uranium from the belts without them locking up! Lacoste in the other comment said it perfectly. Great tutorial KoS!
maybe a bit late to say this, this game amaze me the most is this whole nuclear feature, from mining the uranium ore to refine it, then at nuclear power plant including heat exchanger, heat pipe, turbine machine. of course this game isn't hardcore nuclear power simulator, but this game offers you a feel that it is you the player make this huge amount of power supply works. I remember the first time i play this game and when i research the nuclear technology i was like whaaaat, cause exactly at that time i am start having power shortage, and when my first nuclear power start working i feel like man this is something i just done to change my entire gameplay, and this kind of feel i never found from other game. and also this is a good tutorial that with clear guidance.
ok so... this was pretty good... i liked what you explained and how you explained it... suggestions.. make those cuts so we can jump to sections would be really nice cause i only needed 1 little part of this.. but good job
I don't always need the full power (solar power during day, over production) of my reactors therefore I store the steam in storage tanks and only input one fuel cell in each reactor at the same time if the steam in storage drops below a certain limit
they keep the heat as the heat exchangers dont use up any heat below 500°C, one other plus side is that you can scale the max power output Independent from the heat production. for example you can use the 2x2 reactor setup the with few turbines early on for optima uranium usage
@@goron111 well the steam keep it's temperature to, it's unrealistic but you can store it at 465°C and the temperature won't decrease, also i have a problem with mod: the iron pipe can't handle more than 465°C and bob power mod allow you to build turbines that can use more temperature than 465°C but you can build pipes that can handle more temperature with bob mod logistic, which i didn't installed first but bob logistic change the craft of logistic component so my whole logistic part of my factory is fucked up, i guess i need to rebuild… To conclude, if you want to install mods, pick modpacks or look for all the mods which are related
Hey KoS, this is a great tutorial, like all of your tutorials, and you're awesome for sharing your blueprints. I did notice your modular two-reactor-belted BP doesn't quite mesh with the 4 and 6 reactor BP's, the reactors are offset a little relative to the exchanger/turbine arrays compared to the other two. They're terrific blueprints all the same, thank you for sharing them, and for the tutorials!
I have to say I just started Factorio and your tutorials gave helped me in getting started. Thank you for taking your time to do this and happy gaming.
@@tylerfehr7883 I think it's the high barrier to entry. I've really noticed that the more difficult a hobby is to get in to, the better the community is. Factorio is an engineering game at it's heart. That's a fairly small niche. It takes time and actual learning to get in to the game, plus, it doesn't have a hundred million dollars devoted to marketing.
We only care about the Holy ratio. All are welcome. Maintain the machine. Keep the forges hot. All hail the machine. But yeah these comment sections are really chill. Lol
@@greyhunter3271 Eh, I'm not really devoted to perfect ratios yet. I'm redoing my spaghetti factory right now to just try to straighten out my supply lines. I'm doing my best to make sure that I've got enough room to expand so that I can add those perfect ratios later, but I just want to make sure the factory can do 100% of it's work on it's own so I can focus entirely on optimizing and expanding it. Maybe I'll just restart and build a whole new factory next to my starter factory with all that delicious unlocked tech. I certainly learned enough lessons about how trains and the railway system worked that I want to tear up and rebuild the entire network again and again. I like that I can just swap my attention to whatever I want to work on whenever I get bored, or if I get a bit too frustrated with a problem. I've killed so many biter bases that I never really bothered building walls around my factory. There's plenty of breathing room between the pollution cloud and the biters. I've basically swapped over to solar energy and accumulators by now. My power grid is probably ridiculous considering the average activity and the needs of my factory.
@BAHAAGAMER_HD No since it doesn't degrade so once you've built enough for what you want you won't produce any energy pollution anymore, and since the pollution fades away / is absorbed by trees, it's better.
Thank you so much! I've been having big problems with the old setup since the changes to heat pipes so this will let me get my factory back on track again
I love these tutorials, and I'd love a quick tutorial on when you should use trains, I haven't ever dabbled in them in a way that is actually useful. Even more specific things like how to use rail signals or chain signals would be even better. I want to make the most efficient factory I can and I don't yet understand how trains are better than belts.
Don't be sorry -- I really enjoy hearing from everyone who takes the time to comment! They are on my list, and I hoping to get to them fairly soon. Quick answer about trains -- the main benefit is that they are faster and cheaper than belts when it comes to transporting mass amounts of materials medium-to-long distances.
I'm contemplating your design for the urarium loop. I'm just building my 2nd factory so I'm still figurting everything out. What I did was make a loop with the 238 on the outside, kovarex enrichment unloading on the inside. And somewhere a splitter that filters the U-238. (now the complicated part in explaining :P) on the other side of the spliter I have the feed from the uranum ore processing. So basically the U238 is on a constant loop, and the feed from the ore processing is filling in the gaps. Only thing I've got to still figure out is how to get the excess U235 off, I still am doing that manually. But love your videos, you have a very good way of explaining things and a pleasant voice to listen too.
Thanks for a really good tutorial. One thing that would be nice to see covered is how to store the energy. I believe that in recent patches the empty fuel cell is output at the end of the process (which makes sense but wasn't previously the case) and you can then set up a system that stores the steam in tanks and have the turbines feed from the tanks on a per-need basis. You can then have a circuit setup that checks if there is an empty fuel cell in the output chest amount of steam in the tanks is bellow some threshold and only start a new process if that is the case. Otherwise the nuclear plants will just discard the excess energy which is a shame. ..... not that it makes much sense that we can store steam in tanks without it cooling, but there you go. At any rate, I'd be interested in these setups.
The problem with those kinds of setups is that your energy needs will be fluctuating CONSTANTLY as you build a larger and larger factory, and thus it would be very difficult to figure out how much time you have on x number of tanks at any given period. U-235 is so cheap to produce, I feel like it's not a good use of time to set up those rube-golderberg-esque setups. There are lots of tutorials on the Factorio forums, Reddit and Steam if you desire to play with combinators. Practically speaking, though, setting that up is not worth the effort.
Right, but if your power output is too low then you have a problem no matter what, and if it is too high then the extra power is wasted. Unless you have a buffer I don't see how nuclear power can be used effectively on its own, but it would have to be used in conjunction with steam or solar that scales with your current power draw. I must be missing something. If your tanks empty that means that you need another pair of reactors, just as you need to scale up any power system as your factory expands.
I love making those sort of setups though in the quest for efficiency! It can be as much, or even more, fun trying to optimise a process as trying to scale up a process. Not sure anyone would play factorio if they didn't like Rube Goldberg-ish machines :P
A different approach for the kovarex process -- you can use a u235 overflow mechanism for generating the u235. Basically; there is a limited buffer to the number of u235 that can be accepted in the centrifuges - it's on the scale of roughly 83 if I recall correctly. If you have a circular belt where the outer part of belt is fed u238 and the inner part of the belt is fed u235; then you wire all u235 that's generated in a centrifuge to go back into the centrifuge -- you need to make sure that you have 3 blue inserts in front of the centrifuge to guarantee that 100% of the u235 gets captured; you'll accumulate u235 until you hit the centrifuge's buffer saturation point at roughly 83 u235... in which case, on the scale of 1 or 2 u235 will move past the 3 blue inserts and you can filter all u235 coming out of the saturated centrifuges into your other systems; at which point your kovarex loop will become a pure u235 generator. The disadvantage to using this technique is that it'll take about 40-50 minutes before a given centrifuge reaches it's saturation point; the advantage is that it requires absolutely no circuit logic, set up the system once and go work on other systems for a while and your kovarex generator will be working before you know it.
theres a slight inefficiency with your korvax processing, if you use the circuit network you can ensure theres ALWAYS no more than 40 u-235 in the korvax process, instead of having unnecessary amounts of u-235 going around the way i did it, was setting a timer that ensures everytime korvax enrichment finishes, a inserter will take out 1 u-235 then wait for the process to finish
wow, thats an impressivly quick response thats true, when you get a few thousands of u-235 it doesent really matter, but automation early on takes forever, so being able to get a stack of multiple refiners that dont require more than 40 u-235 really saves time ^^ ps. awesome video, keep up the good work ^^
what I suggest which might be better system is this.put the ore a outside belt with red insertors feeding the centrofusers.then have a belt on inside and one on the other side.have filter inserters one for 235/238.then have either one then t junction onto one belt so each are sorted to each side.this way if the 238 backs up the 235 wont.for the enrichement I have one belt to take the 238 away with a filter insertor then run the belt up the end of the ore processing with a chest been loading/unload onto the side of the belt where the 238 is.when there excess of 235 belt to the other belt where just 235 is been put on.that way u never have 235 stuck on the belt mixed among the 238
At the 17:27 mark, we see that 6 reactors require 80 heat exchangers - yet the layout shows 7 x 12 exchangers = 84 exchangers. I'm running into water supply issues and just wondering if that has something to do with it.
If you use the BPs from the drive, the 6x reactor setup has 7 lines of HEs/Turbines. Each of those needs its own water connection. (The few extra HEs/Turbines are not relevant to the setup, since it is based on how much water throughput per pipe.)
Has the ratio changed for heat exchanger to turbine? exchanger is 103/s and turbine is 60/s. Wouldn't that balance out at 3 exchangers to 5 turbines? (309/300) I'm new, so I'm probably missing something.
Thanks for the ratios and the setup. Just one question, Why not let the result of one centrifuge directly feed the next centrifuge in a circular fashion. Then have a chest between the first and last. then take out whatever is greater than 40?
Thank you so much for taking the time to create and upload these videos. As well as sharing the blueprints. I think i have seen your name pop up in some twitch streams and have seen your megabase playlist. Is that still viable in the current version of Factorio please ? Would love to have a try of playing along with the videos :)
The concepts in the Megabase series are still very valid, though some things like science recipes have changed, and also we have the new splitter functionality, so it wouldn't be necessary to calculate the drop-off points for the lanes of iron/copper, etc. You could simply shift all the items with the splitters, then add new materials later in the bus. After the MP series I'm doing with Caledorn, I will be doing a new vanilla series :-)
Wouldn't it be possible to get a 400% bonus if you surrounded a reactor by 4 others? I have not tested it yet, but I mean theoretically you could manually fill the central reactor.
Might be worth mentioning that you can put the reactors in a 3x3 grid and the middle one will get a 400% bonus. But you will have to feed it fuel cells manually as well as remove the spent once. :)
I always wait till I get Kovarex then let it run for a while before building reactors, Kovarex combined with spent fuel reprocessing and my Uranium mines almost shut down. Because Kovarex takes so much U-235(40 units per centrifuge) to get started, I start it before I need reactor power and set up a continuous recycling system only inputting U-238 when needed and let it run, after you get 40 centrifuges it will output 41 extra u-235 every cycle and should cover all your U-235 needs for reactors, bombs and nuclear fuel cartridges plus you won't have to figure out what to do with all that extra U-238. Of course that is for an medium average size base, a megabase would definitely require a larger processing facility.
Hey Katherine, is there a way to prevent centrifuges from taking more than 40 35 each time so each one of them just run with 40 and leave the +1 for other purposes ? I mean finding a way with wires etc... I'm struggling with this... Thanks for your videos :)
Yes. There are various complicated circuit arrangements that you can do. I recommend searching the Factorio forums / Steam, as there are some usable builds there. In my own playthroughs I have not found such precision necessary, since I always have sufficient production.
I struggled to get my head around this too. I found this YT video (plus blueprint in the description): ruclips.net/video/6dVPkyzgOqc/видео.html Basically, it's a tile-able set-up of enriching centrifuges. You belt feed the U-238 in (like you would with furnaces and assemblers), but the clever bit is a circuit network on the output line (U-235 only due filter inserters). It basically pulls the 40 pieces needed to kick-start the process again and lets the 41st piece go. With that, you can belt it away, put it in a provider chest etc. You still need to manually kick-start each centifuge the first time, but that's pretty trivial considering it all just runs automatically after that.
I look forward to the trains tutorial. I've put 139 hours into Factorio myself by now, and i'm sure you have a few multiples of that yourself, but i still find your videos fun and enlightening. Can always learn something new, even if it's just a different way of doing the same thing, but better!
Why the steam turbines aren't running with full capacity when you have this _optimal_ setup? The steam turbines say that their maximal electricity production is 5.8 MW, but I haven't found any explanation on how to achieve that. With some of my setups some of the steam turbines run on this maximal capacity and some don't produce anything, and some other setups produce this homogeneous result, that you also have, where all of them run on the same _sub-maximal_ capacity. Would like to have them all run on the maximal capacity - any ideas on how to achieve that?
Such a great tutorial, I really appreciate this. I am new to the game and got tired of just constantly expanding steam power, it seems like every few hours of playing it became a chore to provide more power (I could be doing something wrong, but I tend to go with the default solution of "if there isn't enough, just make more"). Currently trying to stack up on Uranium 235 before I build an actual reactor, but the loop system you showed to create more 235 is so handy. The only thing I'm dreading is the mass amount of U-238 that I'll have laying around. I've seen some people saying to use it for uranium ammo, but since I am new I am playing with enemies/biters off. I don't really need uranium ammo, but maybe I'll produce it just to get rid of excess, and to prepare myself for playing the game with biters on.
Eventually you will run out of 238. However, if it keeps stacking up, just shoot the boxes. Simple. Done. Also, you don't need masses of 235 to start a reactor. Just mine a couple pieces, and that will keep your reactors running for AGES... and the centrifuges (even without kovarex) will produce enough.
@@KatherineOfSky I ended up with far more 235 than what was probably necessary, and since everything else in my factory was producing well enough, I went ahead and went (kind of) all out with a 4 reactor build as you show in your video. Completely overkill. I'm now producing almost 4 times the amount of power I ever have drawn at max times when I was using simple coal/steam energy. But hey, at least I don't have to add more boilers and steam engines every other day that I play. I think the max power draw I ever noted in my factory was 140mw, and now I'm producing far beyond that. At least I can focus on other things instead of energy supply for the time being.
@@cheeseburgerwalrus499 The biggest power draw will come if/when you start using moduled builds... you'll need MANY more times the reactors to power those :-)
Has something major changed since this video was released? (and blueprints published) I tried the 2 reactor model blueprint (chests, not belts) ... ratio of 2R : 16HE : 27ST : 2OSP ... should be getting me 160MW The turbines spun up as expected once the heat exchangers got to 500ºC, but each turbine was only doing ~1.5MW (because they're only getting 16/s steam instead of the full 60/s). I checked the heat exchangers, and it seems that only the two nearest the shoreline were actually producing steam at full capacity (103/s). I checked the two offshore pumps and sure enough neither were doing the full 1200/s. I feel like it has something to do with fluid mechanics; the distance the water needs to travel between offshore pump and first heat exchanger. Although I do recognise that there's 20 lengths of pipe for each 'run' and the wiki says that should still be doing 1169/s. I tested an offshore pump direct into a storage tank, and it ran at 1200/s (until the tank was full).
Ok, turns out I'm a dumbass! I didn't realise that steam turbines, even when in a nuclear setup, throttle themselves based on the power your factory needs. I'd been using an array of steam turbines (not steam engines) with the coal-powered boilers as a stop-gap, a slightly wobbly but generally stable 90MW array, before getting a decent amount of U-235 / fuel cells. It's my first ever play-through of Factorio, so I thought I was being smart by not dismantling the coal-powered array until I was sure the new 2-reactor setup could handle the load. Of course, the fact that the coal-powered array existed meant that the nuclear setup wasn't really trying. As soon as a dismantled it, the nuclear spun up properly. All not lost though ... through this trial and error, I've realised by placement should be properly up against the shoreline instead of a little inland (my first choice). As I spotted that my water throughput is only at ~66/100 and therefore I'm only getting 2/3 output from each turbine (~4.3MW).
My apologies - was referring to the Uranium Enrichment process. I got the feeling you were inferring that the Productivity Modules affected the ratios.
The devs seem to have based it off of real science as much as they can(i.e. the way power works is identical to how actual electricity works in terms of mathematics in the game), and since no reactor ever goes 'boom' if it goes wrong, you'll be safe
If you want it to go boom if you do it wrong; there's the 'Realistic Reactor' mod. It makes the reactors WAAAY more complicated and it forces you to use circuit logic to even use the reactors. For example... the temperature will continuously go up until it reaches 1000 degrees C; and it will pop and produce fallout. You need to feed water into the reactors to cool them down and the water needs to be fed into a cooling tower to cool the hot water that comes out of the reactor. But in vanilla factorio -- the reactors are either on or off; they'll never melt down.
The centrifuge setup doesn't seem to be working for me. I've loaded it with 50 uranium, ran a few cycles, and not a single unit of ore was placed on the belt. The moment ore is starting to get loaded back into the centrifuge, the amount of ore detected decreases vs. the actual amount, and the loader will not output the excess on the belt since it always detects less than 40.
Centrifuges (and all other machines) load until they have double the required amount, so about 80 in the machine, (plus or minus any from stack bonus). In the very early stages, you can micromanage the amounts until you get enough for more and more centrifuges to run automatically. This setup isn't intended to feed count-perfect amounts into the centrifuges, since after only a short time, those tiny amounts are irrelevant.
Sure, but it is still inefficient at loading a line of centrifuges then, unless as you said you just load everything manually. Probably needed something with combinators to actually remove every 41th unit
It does automatically remove excess uranium -- I have 2 lines from this blueprint running for hours in my factory. I would recommend initially feeding each machine 40 units, but after that, you can completely forget about it. Like I said, those tiny extra amounts soon become irrelevant. (ATM, I have over 4k U-235 sitting in chests, after hours of complete automation using this setup...) If you want a more complicated combinator setup, there are others on the internet.
I'm just getting into nuclear power and ran into a weird problem. I have two reactors with 100% bonus, 8 boilers and 14 turbines. They are producing about 35MJ, which seems a bit less than expected if 80MJ is the maximum. Both sets of boilers have their own pump and water pipe. I'm not quite sure what I am doing wrong...
Check the numbers on the screen -- for 2 reactors, you need 16 heat exchangers and 27 turbines, (and 2 water pumps). You should be able to get 160 MW from the setup.
KatherineOfSky oh yes, I got the maximum wrong. But the number still seems a bit low when just one reactor should be able to push out 40MJ and I'm not getting even that with two reactors and two sets of turbines. :)
Maybe you factory is not requiring more than those 40 MJ. Remember: You can only produce as much power as you a have resistance (demand) in the network :)
Dammit, my uranium setup backs up with too much Uranium 238 which means the 235 cant come around again to feed into the machines. Not sure how i can solve this problem.
It's possible to end up with too much if you don't mine enough and let the process run away. I use combinators to turn kovarex off if I have more than 1:19 U235:U238 (1:13 I think I read somewhere if you factor in fuel cell reprocessing).
Soo, just got back into the game within the past day and noticed we finally have nuke power (and weapons and ammunition to boot, just missing the fatman launcher turret lol), kinda surprised plutonium wasn't tossed in side by side with uranium as that was more of a challenge for both making power and weapons.
KatherineOfSky I wonder why. BTW, can one use the splitter filtering to avoid using that normal chest part of the uranium filter? Just split the 235 odd, put the 238 in the chest row, and stream them into the centrifuges. Also, you could wire the inserted for the 2nd inserted for the centrifuge row to not insert if the box has less than, say, 20 pieces of 235. That way, the first one will always get topped off first.
Is there any reason to have more than 1 U235 to every 19 U238? I let my Kovarex run away for a little while and ended up with way more than that so now I've shut it down for a while.
I don't like how the centrifuges make 100% "boom stuff uranium" at random. I'd much rather these things stringed together enriching uranium gas by 2% each time and moving on to the next, removing the depleted uranium gas down another line to be "metalized" for later use. If you wanted to make a bomb you would need at least 45 of these together (>90% boom stuff), some real work mid-game. That way you can adjust the potency of fuel, or use a breeder reactor instead of koravex/magic (they magically remove 3 neutrons from the uranium) to make even more (MOX) fuel or "boom stuff plutonium". Breeder reactors need >20% enriched core to even start.
If I'm not using 7 steam turbines, I'm wasting the uranium fuel or does it consume the fuel slower? (at the moment I have one nuclear reactor and only 1 heat exchanger connected to 2 steam turbines)
Help! I'm only getting about 210MW out of my 4 Reactor setup. I see I need 5 pumps, but I don't seem to be getting the water into the system correctly. How do I attached 5 pumps in a smart way? Especially given the fact there is only 4 pipes and I assume the last pump needs to add water to all four pipes.
You should have each pipe on a separate pump -- don't attach them together -- the fluid mechanics in the game are weird.. If you are using my BPs, each pipe needs its own pump. If this is a design that you've created, it sounds like the array is too long -- you need to move some boilers to a separate pipe, since pipe capacity does have limitations.
I used yours, but for your 4 reactor setup, there are only 4 pipes and 5 pumps are needed to get maximum output. It isn't the end of the world to build another, setup, but yea - I was just curious/wondering about the setup.
I just checked the BP -- you don't need 5 pumps. Each column of steam turbines is 20 machines long, served by one pump. Each turbine consumes 60/s * 20 = 1200 /s. 1 water pump produces 1200 fluid/s. It's perfectly matched.
Hey Katherine,, Im confused,, my game/map apparently has no green patches and more worryingly, there is no 'Nuclear' anything to be found in the research list,, any ideas whats going on? I have only had the game a week.
soo... how much water do i need to get the 6 power plant to work properly? i got 20 water pumps on it and it gets 0.1 water. and like 10 of the turbines working.
Five years late on a response... oh well. Current stats for this would be... each heat exchanger can handle 10 MW. A 6 power plant with a 2x3 configuration has 4 reactors with two neighbors and 2 reactors with three neighbors; so 40*3*4+40*4*2; or roughly 800 MW. So... that reactor design will support 80 heat exchangers. Each heat exchanger consumes 103 units of water per second; each water pump supplies about 1200 water per second. So one water pump will support exactly 11.65 heat exchangers; round that up to 12 heat exchangers and accept the fact that your system will stop working as expected if it's at 97% or greater electrical consumption capacity. So 80 heat exchangers will require only 6.66 water pumps; or about 7 water pumps. One issue you'll have to deal with directly is pipe flow loss over distance. A pipe that's 1 unit long will support 6000 units of fluid per second. A pipe that's 10 units long will support 1344 units per second. A pipe that's 100 units long will support only 1033 units of water per second. So... if you use one pump for every 10 units of pipe; then you can guarantee that you'll successfully transport the full 1200 units of water to the set of 12 heat exchangers that you were expecting. So... the reason why you have 20 water pumps not working is probably because of water throughput loss. Pumps between pipes are necessary to mitigate this loss. Fluid mechanics at large volumes are horribly painful to deal with in this game. Look up "factorio fluid system"; it's not intuitive at all.
question on your kovarex set up. I have been using that from your blueprint. after mine is running to complete the line, the out put off 235 and 238 starts to back up. I end up with so many 235s that the 238s can't get through. does this happen on yours? I have started adding a line of filter inserters to take off the 235 and put it back on a single side of the belt to keep it clear.
I have not had that happen to me until all my U-235 was backed up. (And then I effectively just shut down ore processing all together since I had enough 238 to last for ages!) That's a valid concern, however. I will re-do the BP so that 235 has priority.
That's the krastorio mod that does that. If you want to turn hollywood cartoon style radiation off you can use this console command by pulling up the console with the '~' button: /kr-disable-radioactivity Alternatively -- you can have your construction robots build the infrastructure on the ore patch from a distance.
@@KatherineOfSky thanks for a quick answer!! i didnt know those were a thing (still learning)... ill check to see if i have beacons or if i need to research them.
Wow! My base is puny and simplistic compared to this. I want to start with the nuclear process for the fun of it. I have about 200 hours in this game, and have never even put down a single piece of rail yet. Thanks for the video!
You're very welcome! Indeed, most ore settings are plentiful for launching a rocket. Only when you get to launching multiples do you really need to venture further afield with trains. I quite enjoy designing rail networks, so I like to put my resources at low frequency!
I did the tutorial on a test map :-) One U-235 makes 10 fuel cells, and each fuel cell lasts 200 seconds. Thus, one kovarex process process produces enough U-235 to power 40 reactors for a single cycle of the process. (This is without modules of any kind.)
A 1x2 reactor setup is a good one to start with. Extending that to a 2x2 reactor setup may be desirable in the future. You can attempt arbitrary 2xN setups if you don't mind running all the math behind the power output to steam turbine to boiler ratios yourself. In my opinion; that's the fun part of setting up one of these things. The one hard and fast rule you need to make sure that you follow in vanilla factorio is that you need to make sure that your water throughput for each cluster of boilers is at a consistent 1200 units of water per second; which means that you absolutely need to use pumps for water you're moving from a water source; if you do this, your reactors can continue to output expected consistent power even under 90% load.
I'm confused I used your exact blueprint to make the 2 reactors and I'm getting half the effeciency you were my turbines are at like 10% performance in getting less power from two than I was from one
the reactors are at 1000 and the heat all around looks good the only difference i can think of is that my water pumps are about twice as far away as yours are in the video but the water pressure is at 98-100 everywhere so i dunno
I found the issue I had one heat exchanger at the front one tile to far not sure how I did that but it was putting it out of range of the water pipe and was at 0 effeciency
Well I take that back thought that would fix it but for some reason my steam turbines are still showing 17/60 fluid consumption but it doesn't seem to be a water issue since all the exchangers are getting water and the steam pipes are at 500C and 99 steam all the way across bah whatever I can live with it I guess
Your demand isn't high enough to get full power from them. That's a good thing, as it's better to have more than you need, than not enough. As your electricity consumption increases, your fluid consumption increases, so basically, you're using less than 30% of what your turbines are capable of.
I updated the BP Book to include a new design for Kovarex Processing, which eliminates any clogging due to extra U-238 on the lines.
Fantastic. We haven't solved that problem yet, so I'll be interested to see what you came up with. Thanks.
hmm i have an issue when i import your BP.
imgur.com/a/D0bfT
Is this a problem with the string or with my client? I double checked if i copied the complete string
@Coreben. I don't know where the problem lies. I just tested in my vanilla game, and I got "blueprint book imported successfully"... and all the blueprints had the correct buildings, etc.
Try to import into a completely vanilla game, and make sure your game is updated to the latest version. Also, when you copy the string, go to the google docs page, and press Ctrl+A, (to select All). Then copy & paste.
Hey Kathrine,
my game is full vanilla, since i try to get some of the production per time achievements. also im running version 0.15.12 which i think is the latest. Really strange thing...it deletes every building with modules in it and yes i even researched them (which shouldnt be necessary)
However, thanks for your answer and keep up with your excellent videos.
I dont see the kovarex blueprint in the google drive, where is it?
You make the best factorio tutorials on the web, hands down. Not forgetting to mention that they are from over 4 years ago. You're speech and play by play are perfect for teaching. Your tone of voice is loving, sweet, kind, and inviting. Your steps to deliver information takes into account your listeners need to know what they are observing, big things and small things. While you actually go through the process a player would/will in game encounter themselves. You put yourself in your audiance's shoes. Great job and content Kat. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. Thank you for helping us.
You've really touched my heart with your comment. Thank you so much
I know this tutorial was made 6 years ago, but man is it great! Thanks so much for making these! I look forward to viewing more of your tutorials.
Thanks! All the data is still the same, the devs didn't change nuclear in all theat time. Glad you found it useful!
2k hours in on Factorio, and this is still my go-to for nuclear answers. Love your stuff, KoS. Thank you.
I followed this processing layout and am loving the results. I recently upgraded to a 4 reactor setup and thanks to the Kovarex setup I have a ridiculous amount of surplus fuel. I’ve also set my reactor inserted to only grab fuel when steam drops below a certain threshold, which has saved me tons of fuel over time.
I always watch about five minutes of a KoS videos and then get so excited about what I have learned, I have to go play Factorio.
First time going nuclear, accidentally made 50 nuclear reactors (1 stack).. I wondered where all my copper was going.
Oh dear! Sale at the mall! XD
I think they made the stack size 10 now in 0.16.
Nilaus is great, but you're style of teaching is so much friendlier to learning. Not to mention, something you covered that I absolutely couldn't find was the method of sorting the two types of uranium from the belts without them locking up! Lacoste in the other comment said it perfectly. Great tutorial KoS!
Thanks!
maybe a bit late to say this, this game amaze me the most is this whole nuclear feature, from mining the uranium ore to refine it, then at nuclear power plant including heat exchanger, heat pipe, turbine machine. of course this game isn't hardcore nuclear power simulator, but this game offers you a feel that it is you the player make this huge amount of power supply works. I remember the first time i play this game and when i research the nuclear technology i was like whaaaat, cause exactly at that time i am start having power shortage, and when my first nuclear power start working i feel like man this is something i just done to change my entire gameplay, and this kind of feel i never found from other game.
and also this is a good tutorial that with clear guidance.
Grats! Nuclear is a big step!
really great video, now I have to go binge watch all of your factorio vids. Goodbye week/month/year
ok so... this was pretty good... i liked what you explained and how you explained it... suggestions.. make those cuts so we can jump to sections would be really nice cause i only needed 1 little part of this.. but good job
I don't always need the full power (solar power during day, over production) of my reactors therefore I store the steam
in storage tanks and only input one fuel cell in each reactor at the same time if the steam in storage drops below a
certain limit
goron111 you really want to keep them going all the time because of the long heating up times
they keep the heat as the heat exchangers dont use up any heat below 500°C, one other plus side is that you can scale the max power output Independent from the heat production.
for example you can use the 2x2 reactor setup the with few turbines early on for optima uranium usage
@@goron111 good idea
@@goron111 well the steam keep it's temperature to, it's unrealistic but you can store it at 465°C and the temperature won't decrease, also i have a problem with mod: the iron pipe can't handle more than 465°C and bob power mod allow you to build turbines that can use more temperature than 465°C but you can build pipes that can handle more temperature with bob mod logistic, which i didn't installed first but bob logistic change the craft of logistic component so my whole logistic part of my factory is fucked up, i guess i need to rebuild… To conclude, if you want to install mods, pick modpacks or look for all the mods which are related
Hey KoS, this is a great tutorial, like all of your tutorials, and you're awesome for sharing your blueprints. I did notice your modular two-reactor-belted BP doesn't quite mesh with the 4 and 6 reactor BP's, the reactors are offset a little relative to the exchanger/turbine arrays compared to the other two. They're terrific blueprints all the same, thank you for sharing them, and for the tutorials!
That's correct.
With you, nuclear is ... beautiful... and cristal clear!! Good idea to 'write' the ratios & numbers in the video itself.
I have to say I just started Factorio and your tutorials gave helped me in getting started. Thank you for taking your time to do this and happy gaming.
seems like I've stumbled across a nice corner of youtube, every here is so friendly...
Welcome to the channel TheFotoPhinish!
Yeah I was pleasantly surprised. It seems everyone who plays this game on the subreddit or related youtube channels are so mature and willing to help.
@@tylerfehr7883 I think it's the high barrier to entry. I've really noticed that the more difficult a hobby is to get in to, the better the community is. Factorio is an engineering game at it's heart. That's a fairly small niche. It takes time and actual learning to get in to the game, plus, it doesn't have a hundred million dollars devoted to marketing.
We only care about the Holy ratio. All are welcome. Maintain the machine. Keep the forges hot. All hail the machine.
But yeah these comment sections are really chill. Lol
@@greyhunter3271 Eh, I'm not really devoted to perfect ratios yet. I'm redoing my spaghetti factory right now to just try to straighten out my supply lines. I'm doing my best to make sure that I've got enough room to expand so that I can add those perfect ratios later, but I just want to make sure the factory can do 100% of it's work on it's own so I can focus entirely on optimizing and expanding it.
Maybe I'll just restart and build a whole new factory next to my starter factory with all that delicious unlocked tech. I certainly learned enough lessons about how trains and the railway system worked that I want to tear up and rebuild the entire network again and again.
I like that I can just swap my attention to whatever I want to work on whenever I get bored, or if I get a bit too frustrated with a problem. I've killed so many biter bases that I never really bothered building walls around my factory. There's plenty of breathing room between the pollution cloud and the biters. I've basically swapped over to solar energy and accumulators by now. My power grid is probably ridiculous considering the average activity and the needs of my factory.
I find myself suddenly becoming a supporter of nuclear power
Nuclear power is clean power
@petor I was moreso commenting on IRL nuclear haha
It’s just like Air Travel or Genetic Engineering, it sounds scary until you understand how it works, then it sounds great
@@petormemes its not, solar power needs the construction of solar panels which are inefficient and take up too many resources
@BAHAAGAMER_HD No since it doesn't degrade so once you've built enough for what you want you won't produce any energy pollution anymore, and since the pollution fades away / is absorbed by trees, it's better.
This base looks amazing, I'm genuinely excited to achieve this on my own save
Have fun!
Wow, so amazing and helpful too. Your really good at explaining. Understand that you have the patience for this and us too !
Glad you found it useful!
Thank you so much! I've been having big problems with the old setup since the changes to heat pipes so this will let me get my factory back on track again
Have you got the blueprints up? I can't see them on the google drive
You're welcome! They are sorted at the top: BP Book - Nuclear Power
I love these tutorials, and I'd love a quick tutorial on when you should use trains, I haven't ever dabbled in them in a way that is actually useful. Even more specific things like how to use rail signals or chain signals would be even better. I want to make the most efficient factory I can and I don't yet understand how trains are better than belts.
I've found a different comment saying the same thing and your reply. Sorry for adding some duplication in your comments. :P
Don't be sorry -- I really enjoy hearing from everyone who takes the time to comment! They are on my list, and I hoping to get to them fairly soon. Quick answer about trains -- the main benefit is that they are faster and cheaper than belts when it comes to transporting mass amounts of materials medium-to-long distances.
I'm contemplating your design for the urarium loop.
I'm just building my 2nd factory so I'm still figurting everything out. What I did was make a loop with the 238 on the outside, kovarex enrichment unloading on the inside. And somewhere a splitter that filters the U-238. (now the complicated part in explaining :P) on the other side of the spliter I have the feed from the uranum ore processing.
So basically the U238 is on a constant loop, and the feed from the ore processing is filling in the gaps.
Only thing I've got to still figure out is how to get the excess U235 off, I still am doing that manually.
But love your videos, you have a very good way of explaining things and a pleasant voice to listen too.
Thanks for a really good tutorial. One thing that would be nice to see covered is how to store the energy. I believe that in recent patches the empty fuel cell is output at the end of the process (which makes sense but wasn't previously the case) and you can then set up a system that stores the steam in tanks and have the turbines feed from the tanks on a per-need basis. You can then have a circuit setup that checks if there is an empty fuel cell in the output chest amount of steam in the tanks is bellow some threshold and only start a new process if that is the case. Otherwise the nuclear plants will just discard the excess energy which is a shame.
..... not that it makes much sense that we can store steam in tanks without it cooling, but there you go.
At any rate, I'd be interested in these setups.
The problem with those kinds of setups is that your energy needs will be fluctuating CONSTANTLY as you build a larger and larger factory, and thus it would be very difficult to figure out how much time you have on x number of tanks at any given period. U-235 is so cheap to produce, I feel like it's not a good use of time to set up those rube-golderberg-esque setups. There are lots of tutorials on the Factorio forums, Reddit and Steam if you desire to play with combinators. Practically speaking, though, setting that up is not worth the effort.
Right, but if your power output is too low then you have a problem no matter what, and if it is too high then the extra power is wasted. Unless you have a buffer I don't see how nuclear power can be used effectively on its own, but it would have to be used in conjunction with steam or solar that scales with your current power draw.
I must be missing something. If your tanks empty that means that you need another pair of reactors, just as you need to scale up any power system as your factory expands.
I love making those sort of setups though in the quest for efficiency! It can be as much, or even more, fun trying to optimise a process as trying to scale up a process. Not sure anyone would play factorio if they didn't like Rube Goldberg-ish machines :P
You remain one of the best tutorial providers there are. Hope everything goes ok. :)
Thank you so much!
just tonight I was looking for ratios on nuke power. I needed to expand. this is so helpful. thanks
You are very welcome!
Thanks. I am not quite at that point yet, still mining the uranium. But nice to have the plans for how to go forward.
Wow, new to the game (1 week), and this is completely mind-blowing.
A different approach for the kovarex process -- you can use a u235 overflow mechanism for generating the u235. Basically; there is a limited buffer to the number of u235 that can be accepted in the centrifuges - it's on the scale of roughly 83 if I recall correctly. If you have a circular belt where the outer part of belt is fed u238 and the inner part of the belt is fed u235; then you wire all u235 that's generated in a centrifuge to go back into the centrifuge -- you need to make sure that you have 3 blue inserts in front of the centrifuge to guarantee that 100% of the u235 gets captured; you'll accumulate u235 until you hit the centrifuge's buffer saturation point at roughly 83 u235... in which case, on the scale of 1 or 2 u235 will move past the 3 blue inserts and you can filter all u235 coming out of the saturated centrifuges into your other systems; at which point your kovarex loop will become a pure u235 generator. The disadvantage to using this technique is that it'll take about 40-50 minutes before a given centrifuge reaches it's saturation point; the advantage is that it requires absolutely no circuit logic, set up the system once and go work on other systems for a while and your kovarex generator will be working before you know it.
Thanks, been struggling for setup ideas for power. Having serious power issues and this will help.
Have fun!
This is great! Such a great video explaining the process. Thank you so much!
thank you, this was very helpful! Nuclear reactors in the game were very confusing to me at first
theres a slight inefficiency with your korvax processing, if you use the circuit network you can ensure theres ALWAYS no more than 40 u-235 in the korvax process, instead of having unnecessary amounts of u-235 going around
the way i did it, was setting a timer that ensures everytime korvax enrichment finishes, a inserter will take out 1 u-235 then wait for the process to finish
I'm not bothered if there's extra in the machine. When it gets to the end of the line, it's in a box anyway :-)
wow, thats an impressivly quick response
thats true, when you get a few thousands of u-235 it doesent really matter, but automation early on takes forever, so being able to get a stack of multiple refiners that dont require more than 40 u-235 really saves time ^^
ps. awesome video, keep up the good work ^^
what I suggest which might be better system is this.put the ore a outside belt with red insertors feeding the centrofusers.then have a belt on inside and one on the other side.have filter inserters one for 235/238.then have either one then t junction onto one belt so each are sorted to each side.this way if the 238 backs up the 235 wont.for the enrichement I have one belt to take the 238 away with a filter insertor then run the belt up the end of the ore processing with a chest been loading/unload onto the side of the belt where the 238 is.when there excess of 235 belt to the other belt where just 235 is been put on.that way u never have 235 stuck on the belt mixed among the 238
Thank you so much for showing multiple setups! Great video!
Your videos are awesome!!! Thanks for the dedication, you're super cool :)
Thank you so much! :-) I really appreciate your kind words.
At the 17:27 mark, we see that 6 reactors require 80 heat exchangers - yet the layout shows 7 x 12 exchangers = 84 exchangers. I'm running into water supply issues and just wondering if that has something to do with it.
If you use the BPs from the drive, the 6x reactor setup has 7 lines of HEs/Turbines. Each of those needs its own water connection. (The few extra HEs/Turbines are not relevant to the setup, since it is based on how much water throughput per pipe.)
Thanks for all of your Tutorials !
You are very welcome!
Thanks for making such a clear tutorial on this, super helpful!
Hold up you could separate the fluid tanks on a fluid wagon back then?
Yep
thanks a whole bunch for this and the oil tutorial! iv really learned a lot from them.
Has the ratio changed for heat exchanger to turbine? exchanger is 103/s and turbine is 60/s. Wouldn't that balance out at 3 exchangers to 5 turbines? (309/300) I'm new, so I'm probably missing something.
Thanks for the ratios and the setup.
Just one question, Why not let the result of one centrifuge directly feed the next centrifuge in a circular fashion. Then have a chest between the first and last. then take out whatever is greater than 40?
That's another option! There are many ways to do the sertup.
KatherineOfSky it only works using loaders though
Thank you so much for taking the time to create and upload these videos. As well as sharing the blueprints. I think i have seen your name pop up in some twitch streams and have seen your megabase playlist. Is that still viable in the current version of Factorio please ? Would love to have a try of playing along with the videos :)
The concepts in the Megabase series are still very valid, though some things like science recipes have changed, and also we have the new splitter functionality, so it wouldn't be necessary to calculate the drop-off points for the lanes of iron/copper, etc. You could simply shift all the items with the splitters, then add new materials later in the bus.
After the MP series I'm doing with Caledorn, I will be doing a new vanilla series :-)
way too complicated for me to understand i'll come back in a few weeks when i've sussed the robots & their infrastructure
@@dunkmastercloud4818 now i am wondering as well
Trival detail...it will be slightly faster if you use stack size or 2 and just test on condition of >= 42
Wouldn't it be possible to get a 400% bonus if you surrounded a reactor by 4 others? I have not tested it yet, but I mean theoretically you could manually fill the central reactor.
Yep, people have done that. I need to automate the process, so I am happy with the 300% bonus.
Watching this makes me think i'm not that great of a strategist as i thougt i was!.. But i love see you do this!
just realised this is not your first time around Factorio... I should go back.. Back to the beginning! Back when it all started!
Thought it was easy.. Man was i wrong.. i got lost at the video list..
Hi Joe! If you are looking for a series to start with, my most popular is Entry Level to Megabase :-) ruclips.net/video/mxlpQMJt8XA/видео.html
@@KatherineOfSky well i guess i will forget about sleeping the next week! Thank you!
Wow, this is the biggest problem in my factory (lack of Power, that is). I Just couldn't make the nuclear Power work, thanks KOS.
Might be worth mentioning that you can put the reactors in a 3x3 grid and the middle one will get a 400% bonus. But you will have to feed it fuel cells manually as well as remove the spent once. :)
Full Automation or Bust! XD
Great Guide! That is a lot of power. Is that map in peaceful mode?
I used two different maps to record the tutorial. They both had plenty of biters.
really good and informative video
thanks for sharing this tutorial!
The x6 Nuclear Power Blueprint in your Googledrive is missing the left Heatpipe (if you build it Reactors on top)
Thank you! Fixed.
:-) is a very nice build thx to you and Mike c
I always wait till I get Kovarex then let it run for a while before building reactors, Kovarex combined with spent fuel reprocessing and my Uranium mines almost shut down.
Because Kovarex takes so much U-235(40 units per centrifuge) to get started, I start it before I need reactor power and set up a continuous recycling system only inputting U-238 when needed and let it run, after you get 40 centrifuges it will output 41 extra u-235 every cycle and should cover all your U-235 needs for reactors, bombs and nuclear fuel cartridges plus you won't have to figure out what to do with all that extra U-238.
Of course that is for an medium average size base, a megabase would definitely require a larger processing facility.
Hey Katherine, is there a way to prevent centrifuges from taking more than 40 35 each time so each one of them just run with 40 and leave the +1 for other purposes ? I mean finding a way with wires etc... I'm struggling with this...
Thanks for your videos :)
Yes. There are various complicated circuit arrangements that you can do. I recommend searching the Factorio forums / Steam, as there are some usable builds there. In my own playthroughs I have not found such precision necessary, since I always have sufficient production.
@@KatherineOfSky Ok thx I will make deeper searches ! Bests
I struggled to get my head around this too. I found this YT video (plus blueprint in the description): ruclips.net/video/6dVPkyzgOqc/видео.html
Basically, it's a tile-able set-up of enriching centrifuges. You belt feed the U-238 in (like you would with furnaces and assemblers), but the clever bit is a circuit network on the output line (U-235 only due filter inserters). It basically pulls the 40 pieces needed to kick-start the process again and lets the 41st piece go. With that, you can belt it away, put it in a provider chest etc.
You still need to manually kick-start each centifuge the first time, but that's pretty trivial considering it all just runs automatically after that.
Hi Katherine, could you please make a tutorial on trains and everything related? And thanks for this awesome Nuclear Power tutorial :)
You are very welcome! I have train tutorials on my list!
I look forward to the trains tutorial. I've put 139 hours into Factorio myself by now, and i'm sure you have a few multiples of that yourself, but i still find your videos fun and enlightening. Can always learn something new, even if it's just a different way of doing the same thing, but better!
Why the steam turbines aren't running with full capacity when you have this _optimal_ setup? The steam turbines say that their maximal electricity production is 5.8 MW, but I haven't found any explanation on how to achieve that. With some of my setups some of the steam turbines run on this maximal capacity and some don't produce anything, and some other setups produce this homogeneous result, that you also have, where all of them run on the same _sub-maximal_ capacity. Would like to have them all run on the maximal capacity - any ideas on how to achieve that?
You need to be using maximum power in your factory: the game throttles all forms of steam engines to only produce what is needed.
@@KatherineOfSky Okay. Thanks for the info 👍
Such a great tutorial, I really appreciate this. I am new to the game and got tired of just constantly expanding steam power, it seems like every few hours of playing it became a chore to provide more power (I could be doing something wrong, but I tend to go with the default solution of "if there isn't enough, just make more"). Currently trying to stack up on Uranium 235 before I build an actual reactor, but the loop system you showed to create more 235 is so handy.
The only thing I'm dreading is the mass amount of U-238 that I'll have laying around. I've seen some people saying to use it for uranium ammo, but since I am new I am playing with enemies/biters off. I don't really need uranium ammo, but maybe I'll produce it just to get rid of excess, and to prepare myself for playing the game with biters on.
Eventually you will run out of 238. However, if it keeps stacking up, just shoot the boxes. Simple. Done. Also, you don't need masses of 235 to start a reactor. Just mine a couple pieces, and that will keep your reactors running for AGES... and the centrifuges (even without kovarex) will produce enough.
@@KatherineOfSky I ended up with far more 235 than what was probably necessary, and since everything else in my factory was producing well enough, I went ahead and went (kind of) all out with a 4 reactor build as you show in your video.
Completely overkill. I'm now producing almost 4 times the amount of power I ever have drawn at max times when I was using simple coal/steam energy. But hey, at least I don't have to add more boilers and steam engines every other day that I play. I think the max power draw I ever noted in my factory was 140mw, and now I'm producing far beyond that. At least I can focus on other things instead of energy supply for the time being.
@@cheeseburgerwalrus499 The biggest power draw will come if/when you start using moduled builds... you'll need MANY more times the reactors to power those :-)
Very nice video. Well done and thank you.
thanks katherine, again found this video very informative! ;D
Hello from México, love your videos!
Hi Issac!
Has something major changed since this video was released? (and blueprints published)
I tried the 2 reactor model blueprint (chests, not belts) ... ratio of 2R : 16HE : 27ST : 2OSP ... should be getting me 160MW
The turbines spun up as expected once the heat exchangers got to 500ºC, but each turbine was only doing ~1.5MW (because they're only getting 16/s steam instead of the full 60/s). I checked the heat exchangers, and it seems that only the two nearest the shoreline were actually producing steam at full capacity (103/s). I checked the two offshore pumps and sure enough neither were doing the full 1200/s.
I feel like it has something to do with fluid mechanics; the distance the water needs to travel between offshore pump and first heat exchanger. Although I do recognise that there's 20 lengths of pipe for each 'run' and the wiki says that should still be doing 1169/s. I tested an offshore pump direct into a storage tank, and it ran at 1200/s (until the tank was full).
Is your water too far from the end of the array? Are you *consuming* enough power to make the turbines run at full?
Ok, turns out I'm a dumbass!
I didn't realise that steam turbines, even when in a nuclear setup, throttle themselves based on the power your factory needs. I'd been using an array of steam turbines (not steam engines) with the coal-powered boilers as a stop-gap, a slightly wobbly but generally stable 90MW array, before getting a decent amount of U-235 / fuel cells. It's my first ever play-through of Factorio, so I thought I was being smart by not dismantling the coal-powered array until I was sure the new 2-reactor setup could handle the load.
Of course, the fact that the coal-powered array existed meant that the nuclear setup wasn't really trying. As soon as a dismantled it, the nuclear spun up properly.
All not lost though ... through this trial and error, I've realised by placement should be properly up against the shoreline instead of a little inland (my first choice). As I spotted that my water throughput is only at ~66/100 and therefore I'm only getting 2/3 output from each turbine (~4.3MW).
Glad you found the issue! First playthrough and tackling nuclear is very impressive! Keep having fun with the game! :-)
+KatherineOfSky - why do productivity modules change the ratio on the Kovarex Enrichment Process? Are you sure?
Unfortunately, you can no longer use productivity modules in the Kovarex Process centrifuges.
My apologies - was referring to the Uranium Enrichment process. I got the feeling you were inferring that the Productivity Modules affected the ratios.
I couldnt find your blueprints conrerning the kovarex processing!
forget, found it! :D
Thanks Katherine!
How are you using the productivity modules in those centrifuges? I get the message that its not allowed when I try.
You can use them for ore processing, but not for the Kovarex process.
Can u please do a train station that is efficient cause I just can't find one that works for me.
will it all go boom if i do it wrong?
Nope, You'll just get less (or no) power.
The devs seem to have based it off of real science as much as they can(i.e. the way power works is identical to how actual electricity works in terms of mathematics in the game), and since no reactor ever goes 'boom' if it goes wrong, you'll be safe
well, stored flamable fluids and explosives dont explode whilst being destroyed or shot. I'd expect that a tankwaggon full of petrol gas would explode
If you want it to go boom if you do it wrong; there's the 'Realistic Reactor' mod. It makes the reactors WAAAY more complicated and it forces you to use circuit logic to even use the reactors. For example... the temperature will continuously go up until it reaches 1000 degrees C; and it will pop and produce fallout. You need to feed water into the reactors to cool them down and the water needs to be fed into a cooling tower to cool the hot water that comes out of the reactor. But in vanilla factorio -- the reactors are either on or off; they'll never melt down.
Thank you for the video. It really helped.
You're welcome!
This was wonderful! Thank you
The centrifuge setup doesn't seem to be working for me. I've loaded it with 50 uranium, ran a few cycles, and not a single unit of ore was placed on the belt.
The moment ore is starting to get loaded back into the centrifuge, the amount of ore detected decreases vs. the actual amount,
and the loader will not output the excess on the belt since it always detects less than 40.
Centrifuges (and all other machines) load until they have double the required amount, so about 80 in the machine, (plus or minus any from stack bonus). In the very early stages, you can micromanage the amounts until you get enough for more and more centrifuges to run automatically. This setup isn't intended to feed count-perfect amounts into the centrifuges, since after only a short time, those tiny amounts are irrelevant.
Sure, but it is still inefficient at loading a line of centrifuges then, unless as you said you just load everything manually. Probably needed something with combinators to actually remove every 41th unit
It does automatically remove excess uranium -- I have 2 lines from this blueprint running for hours in my factory. I would recommend initially feeding each machine 40 units, but after that, you can completely forget about it. Like I said, those tiny extra amounts soon become irrelevant. (ATM, I have over 4k U-235 sitting in chests, after hours of complete automation using this setup...) If you want a more complicated combinator setup, there are others on the internet.
does the neighbor bonus affect the rate of fuel consumption, or does it just massively boost efficiency?
It makes the fuel produce more power. But the time for fuel depletion doesn't change.
KatherineOfSky do you actually need both to be running? Or just having a few reactors together is a passive bonus?
I love your tutorials
So is this the new Nuclear Power plant set up or the old one? I heard they changed some things like how far heat can travel for instance.
This is the new one. (The other video says "OLD" in the title)
KatherineOfSky awesome thanks!
I'm just getting into nuclear power and ran into a weird problem. I have two reactors with 100% bonus, 8 boilers and 14 turbines. They are producing about 35MJ, which seems a bit less than expected if 80MJ is the maximum. Both sets of boilers have their own pump and water pipe. I'm not quite sure what I am doing wrong...
Check the numbers on the screen -- for 2 reactors, you need 16 heat exchangers and 27 turbines, (and 2 water pumps). You should be able to get 160 MW from the setup.
KatherineOfSky oh yes, I got the maximum wrong. But the number still seems a bit low when just one reactor should be able to push out 40MJ and I'm not getting even that with two reactors and two sets of turbines. :)
Maybe you factory is not requiring more than those 40 MJ.
Remember: You can only produce as much power as you a have resistance (demand) in the network :)
Fabian you are correct, that was the case :) Tested by shutting down my other power generation and the number increased instantly. Thanks!
wow, this is sooo confusing!! im still stuck at oil, now this :o
Such a great video! Thank You
Dammit, my uranium setup backs up with too much Uranium 238 which means the 235 cant come around again to feed into the machines. Not sure how i can solve this problem.
You can add chests for 238, or change one to an active provider (but make sure you change it back once you get enough 235).
It's possible to end up with too much if you don't mine enough and let the process run away. I use combinators to turn kovarex off if I have more than 1:19 U235:U238 (1:13 I think I read somewhere if you factor in fuel cell reprocessing).
Soo, just got back into the game within the past day and noticed we finally have nuke power (and weapons and ammunition to boot, just missing the fatman launcher turret lol), kinda surprised plutonium wasn't tossed in side by side with uranium as that was more of a challenge for both making power and weapons.
Thanks for this!
Question: Did they remove the fluid tank segmantion?
Yep
KatherineOfSky I wonder why.
BTW, can one use the splitter filtering to avoid using that normal chest part of the uranium filter? Just split the 235 odd, put the 238 in the chest row, and stream them into the centrifuges.
Also, you could wire the inserted for the 2nd inserted for the centrifuge row to not insert if the box has less than, say, 20 pieces of 235. That way, the first one will always get topped off first.
12:24 suddenly pipe-duck :-D
Is there any reason to have more than 1 U235 to every 19 U238? I let my Kovarex run away for a little while and ended up with way more than that so now I've shut it down for a while.
If you are making a lot of atomic bombs, you'll need a ton of 235.
That explains it - haven't researched A-bombs yet. Thanks!
I don't like how the centrifuges make 100% "boom stuff uranium" at random. I'd much rather these things stringed together enriching uranium gas by 2% each time and moving on to the next, removing the depleted uranium gas down another line to be "metalized" for later use.
If you wanted to make a bomb you would need at least 45 of these together (>90% boom stuff), some real work mid-game. That way you can adjust the potency of fuel, or use a breeder reactor instead of koravex/magic (they magically remove 3 neutrons from the uranium) to make even more (MOX) fuel or "boom stuff plutonium". Breeder reactors need >20% enriched core to even start.
Great video thank you!
If I'm not using 7 steam turbines, I'm wasting the uranium fuel or does it consume the fuel slower? (at the moment I have one nuclear reactor and only 1 heat exchanger connected to 2 steam turbines)
The fuel burns at a constant rate, whether or not you are using all the power it provides..
Help! I'm only getting about 210MW out of my 4 Reactor setup. I see I need 5 pumps, but I don't seem to be getting the water into the system correctly. How do I attached 5 pumps in a smart way? Especially given the fact there is only 4 pipes and I assume the last pump needs to add water to all four pipes.
You should have each pipe on a separate pump -- don't attach them together -- the fluid mechanics in the game are weird.. If you are using my BPs, each pipe needs its own pump. If this is a design that you've created, it sounds like the array is too long -- you need to move some boilers to a separate pipe, since pipe capacity does have limitations.
I used yours, but for your 4 reactor setup, there are only 4 pipes and 5 pumps are needed to get maximum output. It isn't the end of the world to build another, setup, but yea - I was just curious/wondering about the setup.
I just checked the BP -- you don't need 5 pumps. Each column of steam turbines is 20 machines long, served by one pump. Each turbine consumes 60/s * 20 = 1200 /s. 1 water pump produces 1200 fluid/s. It's perfectly matched.
Hey Katherine,, Im confused,, my game/map apparently has no green patches and more worryingly, there is no 'Nuclear' anything to be found in the research list,, any ideas whats going on? I have only had the game a week.
Nuclear is only available in the experimental version: steamcommunity.com/app/427520/discussions/0/1319961868331763542/
Ah!! that would be it then!! lol,,, many thx for quick reply!
soo... how much water do i need to get the 6 power plant to work properly? i got 20 water pumps on it and it gets 0.1 water. and like 10 of the turbines working.
Five years late on a response... oh well. Current stats for this would be... each heat exchanger can handle 10 MW. A 6 power plant with a 2x3 configuration has 4 reactors with two neighbors and 2 reactors with three neighbors; so 40*3*4+40*4*2; or roughly 800 MW. So... that reactor design will support 80 heat exchangers. Each heat exchanger consumes 103 units of water per second; each water pump supplies about 1200 water per second. So one water pump will support exactly 11.65 heat exchangers; round that up to 12 heat exchangers and accept the fact that your system will stop working as expected if it's at 97% or greater electrical consumption capacity. So 80 heat exchangers will require only 6.66 water pumps; or about 7 water pumps.
One issue you'll have to deal with directly is pipe flow loss over distance. A pipe that's 1 unit long will support 6000 units of fluid per second. A pipe that's 10 units long will support 1344 units per second. A pipe that's 100 units long will support only 1033 units of water per second. So... if you use one pump for every 10 units of pipe; then you can guarantee that you'll successfully transport the full 1200 units of water to the set of 12 heat exchangers that you were expecting. So... the reason why you have 20 water pumps not working is probably because of water throughput loss. Pumps between pipes are necessary to mitigate this loss. Fluid mechanics at large volumes are horribly painful to deal with in this game. Look up "factorio fluid system"; it's not intuitive at all.
@@gilian2587 not to mention they are about to redo fluids entirely :P
@@petrino I'm curious to see how their new model works. : )
question on your kovarex set up. I have been using that from your blueprint. after mine is running to complete the line, the out put off 235 and 238 starts to back up. I end up with so many 235s that the 238s can't get through. does this happen on yours? I have started adding a line of filter inserters to take off the 235 and put it back on a single side of the belt to keep it clear.
I have not had that happen to me until all my U-235 was backed up. (And then I effectively just shut down ore processing all together since I had enough 238 to last for ages!) That's a valid concern, however. I will re-do the BP so that 235 has priority.
KatherineOfSky I didn't think about how much 238 I had at that point. I probably did have enough to run my nuke power for ages. lol
I have just updated the BP book with a better Kovarex process -- now there will be NO clogging! :-)
KatherineOfSky I'll have to see what your solution was to see how I did compared to yours. 😁
How do I avoid getting radiation sickness when I go to plant the drills?
You must be using a mod. Vanilla doesn't give you radiation sickness . (Ask on the forums for that specific mod)
@@KatherineOfSky so you don't take damage when you approach the raw uranium??
@@Blade666324 No, not in vanilla
That's the krastorio mod that does that. If you want to turn hollywood cartoon style radiation off you can use this console command by pulling up the console with the '~' button:
/kr-disable-radioactivity
Alternatively -- you can have your construction robots build the infrastructure on the ore patch from a distance.
That voice is so soothing...
Does this still work after the heat coil patch?
Yep
Great vid thanks
is "inserter mode of operation" in the base game or is it a mod?
Base game. Options show up when you connect a red or green wire.
how are your centrifuges working that fast. mine are like 1/10th the speed
Beacons with speed modules.
@@KatherineOfSky thanks for a quick answer!! i didnt know those were a thing (still learning)... ill check to see if i have beacons or if i need to research them.
They are the "Effect Transmission" tech :-)
Do all the ratios here still hold in the modern day factorio?
Yes
Wow! My base is puny and simplistic compared to this. I want to start with the nuclear process for the fun of it. I have about 200 hours in this game, and have never even put down a single piece of rail yet.
Thanks for the video!
You're very welcome! Indeed, most ore settings are plentiful for launching a rocket. Only when you get to launching multiples do you really need to venture further afield with trains. I quite enjoy designing rail networks, so I like to put my resources at low frequency!
Love it!
How many reactors did you have in this game? :O Each centrifuge running the conversion can support 4 reactors without any speed modules.
I did the tutorial on a test map :-) One U-235 makes 10 fuel cells, and each fuel cell lasts 200 seconds. Thus, one kovarex process process produces enough U-235 to power 40 reactors for a single cycle of the process. (This is without modules of any kind.)
Completely forgot that each of them make 10 fuel cells :) That makes your setup even more crazy LOL
A 1x2 reactor setup is a good one to start with. Extending that to a 2x2 reactor setup may be desirable in the future. You can attempt arbitrary 2xN setups if you don't mind running all the math behind the power output to steam turbine to boiler ratios yourself. In my opinion; that's the fun part of setting up one of these things. The one hard and fast rule you need to make sure that you follow in vanilla factorio is that you need to make sure that your water throughput for each cluster of boilers is at a consistent 1200 units of water per second; which means that you absolutely need to use pumps for water you're moving from a water source; if you do this, your reactors can continue to output expected consistent power even under 90% load.
I'm confused I used your exact blueprint to make the 2 reactors and I'm getting half the effeciency you were my turbines are at like 10% performance in getting less power from two than I was from one
Have the reactors had a chance to heat up? Do you have all water connections made?
the reactors are at 1000 and the heat all around looks good the only difference i can think of is that my water pumps are about twice as far away as yours are in the video but the water pressure is at 98-100 everywhere so i dunno
I found the issue I had one heat exchanger at the front one tile to far not sure how I did that but it was putting it out of range of the water pipe and was at 0 effeciency
Well I take that back thought that would fix it but for some reason my steam turbines are still showing 17/60 fluid consumption but it doesn't seem to be a water issue since all the exchangers are getting water and the steam pipes are at 500C and 99 steam all the way across bah whatever I can live with it I guess
Your demand isn't high enough to get full power from them. That's a good thing, as it's better to have more than you need, than not enough. As your electricity consumption increases, your fluid consumption increases, so basically, you're using less than 30% of what your turbines are capable of.
Wow! Your base is red hot holy shit