A 2x2 reactor setup gets 3x neighbor bonuses on each reactor, giving you 12 reactors worth of output. Observation 2: there's no reason not to go big. A lot of this actually rolls in after the fuel stops burning-the heat exchangers keep making steam and drawing heat until everything is back to 500 degrees. Some simple testing showed I could get a bit more than 80,000 steam (4 tanks worth) from the burn of a single fuel cell in a warmed up lone reactor. Nuclear reactors, heat pipes, heat exchangers, and steam don't cool down below 500 degrees, so no energy gets lost and the setup starts producing energy immediately once you restock the fuel. At 25k steam per tank, and 5.8 MJ per 60 steam in a turbine, a single tank holds more than 2.4 GJ, the equivalent of 480 accumulators. This has a pretty simple solution: store steam in tanks. You can get the efficiency of a large installation with the demands of a small one, and only burn new fuel when your energy bank is low. Observation 1: if you can bank the energy from a fuel burn, you can build a large plant and only consume the fuel you need. With a couple of key observations, I made it work. Since nuclear reactors burn fuel at a constant rate regardless of consumption, this took a bit of planning. Since I still want to save the precious U-235 for Kovarex as soon as I get enough, though, I wanted a setup that would get a good exchange rate for the U-235. Once I was running out of coal patches within easy belting distance, I decided I'd rather jump to nuclear than build a dedicated coal train for power. However, I found that once I was burning 40-60 MW reliably, keeping boilers stocked with coal started getting tiresome. Some folks suggest that you shouldn't start burning U-235 until you have Kovarex enrichment and enough U-235 to get it rolling. Finally got it working, and I thought I'd share. Spent a couple days testing, planning, and crafting this power plant.
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