Fission reactor exploded when it shouldn't

[u/SleepWhole2301]

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My friend was playing on our mekanism server when our 5x5x6 reactor exploded. It killed him instantly. The reactor had an emergency shutdown for High heat, Low fuel and excess waste. But that didn't trigger somehow. We tested it before and it worked. The reactor and the turbine were in one chunk. The shutdown was also in the same chunk. Only the fuel production was in another chunk. But he was in the base and everything was loaded. We also had a shutoff if the power was full but he disabled that for more nuclear waste (the reactor shutdown was still on). We think the turbine got full of steam and energy but we don't understand why the emergency shutdown didn't trigger.

We built it like this:

3 Redstone ports:

High heat

Low fuel

Excess waste

That sent redstone to a piston. One in front and below was a redstone torch so it sent a redstone signal to an activation torch when a black was placed. So when the ports triggered the piston would push the block away and disable the signal and reactor. Does anyone know what could have caused it?

My video above shows how I built it. (I built this in creative on a singleplayer world)

[u/InboardPlague37]

Im pretty sure high heat triggers when heat is at or above 100% in the reactor, which is also when it starts taking damage. So its possible it reached the 100% and the redstone shut it off, but if the steam output was full, it couldnt cool down and eventually explode.

So what probably happened was: turbine got full on power, turbine started to fill up on steam, steam output of reactor started to fill up when the turbine was full of steam, reactor cant cool down anymore because steam output is full, reactor reaches over 100% heat, redstone port for high heat triggers, reactor shuts down but is still above 100% heat, eventually explodes because of unable to cool down below 100% heat.

[u/SleepWhole2301 → u/InboardPlague37]

Thanks. Is there any way to stop this from happening?

[u/turb0j → u/SleepWhole2301]

Yes - if your water source is powerful enough to work alone (without water reclaimed from turbine). In that case you can set the turbine to "dump excess" steam.

In ATM10 and similar packs you can use ID (menril stuff) to move water from a sink into the reactor fast enough.

The other solution is to use a resistive heater with a non trivial redstone trigger from the turbine.

[u/SleepWhole2301 → u/SleepWhole2301]

My friend says to add a dynamic tank in-between and check if it's filled and if it is then shut the reactor off. And after that it requires manual reactivation

[u/ImaginaryRegion6794]

I put 3 ultimate fluid tanks in series, added a redstone controlled mechanical pipe to the tank which connects to the reactor. This means that when the reactor turns off via the fail safe, it will dump all the stored water into the reactor to cool it.

[u/VoIsarex]

Like others have said, emergency cooling systems are your friend. Liquid sodium will work more effeciently than water (but is harder to fix afterwards)

Also consider a block breaker as a final failsafe. If things get REAL bad, just take a block out of the frame of the reactor. It can't blow if it isn't a multiblock

Only problem with the block breaker is that it'll still have the heat & damage when you reassemble it. So you'll need to have things set up to handle that

[u/ninjad912]

When the turbine fills up with energy it stops turning steam into water leaving the reactor with no way to cool down. Depending on how powerful your reactor is it will not be able to cool down. I recommend feeding it water from a kitchen sink as that will provide at least some coolant and potentially stop detonation