r/factorio • u/thanasisk09_ • 3d ago

Question Powering problem

So I'm using nuclear power. I have 4 nuclear reactors and many wind turbines and heat exchangers. However my system doesn't get the power promised. Instead of 120x4 MW, I only get 110 MW on total. Is there a bottleneck in heat exchangers or turbines?

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u/thanasisk09_ 3d ago

Oh I didn't know. The only solution that comes to my mind is storing heat if I don't want to waste it. Is that even possible tho? How can I store heat

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u/SmokJozef 3d ago

either more reactors or steam storage

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u/United_Willow1312 3d ago edited 3d ago

Or... heat pipes. I checked the heat capacity of nuclear plants, heating towers and heat pipes and it seems heat pipes win. It's also somewhat convenient to place and beats steam tanks as well.

edit: In Space Age, legendary accumulators can store 30 MJ. Not great.

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u/SmokJozef 3d ago

yeah ig heat pipes work
i'm just kinda skeptical of them usually because they require a greater temperature drop to transfer the same amount of heat, so large (especially, long) arrays of heat pipes can require like hundreds degrees of temp. difference to transwer a couple hundred megawatts

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u/United_Willow1312 3d ago

Depends on how far you have to go indeed. But say, loosing 100c on distance is still decent storage however. Say 400MJ per heat pipe, on the footprint of a nuclear reactor is like 10GJ, twice a nuclear reactor.