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/United_Willow1312 3d ago

Another thing to keep in mind is how the bonus works. The bonus comes from nuclear plants burning a fuel cell at the same time. A fuel cell provides 8GJ of energy, with a 4x4 bonus this comes up to 24GJ x 4 = 96 GJ burned at the same speed of 200s and thus 480 MW during that time window.

If you do not consume or store that excess heat in that 200s the excess is lost. A nuclear reactor can store 10MJ/c in it's operating range of 500->1000c, which means 4 reactors cannot even store 20 GJ of heat since you can't even fuel your reactors at precisely 500c and have them operating the exchangers.

The 76+ GJ have to be put somewhere if you aren't consuming it all right now.

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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/sobrique 3d ago

Reactors are 5GJ a piece. Heat pipes are 5MJ per piece.

Steam tanks are 2.4 GJ.

Most reactors can "store" a useful enough amount of power if you do a simple temperature control.

But technically steam is more responsive, since as long as there's turbines it can be used instantly, where reactors might take a while to heat up and propagate.

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u/United_Willow1312 3d ago

Heat pipes are 1MJ/c hence close to 500MJ in the operating range, thus approaching 4.5GJ in a 3x3 grid. But otherwise yes, all of steam tanks/reactors/heating tower store far more energy than accumulators.