So I am getting quite a bit of refined cobalt ore from using aqua regia on copper ore and I see that it can be centrifuged to get cobalt-60. Is holding that without a radiation suit going to kill me? Can anyone share some cobalt-60 reactor designs? I still have a hard time wrapping my head around these new reactor systems.
2 Likes
So I’m thinking of using water and putting a 1x1 block with a moderator rod in the middle, surrounded by 4 2x2 reactor blocks. If the inner ring of the 2x2 blocks are filled with 8 cobalt-60 rods, the moderator will see all 8 and so reflect 8x neutrons right? So each fuel rod emits 2 neutrons to the moderator and gets back 16, plus 2 from its neighbor, plus 2 of its own for a total of 20 neutrons on each rod, which exceeds its factor making this a supercritical setup? Is that correct? So the next second its emission will increase by 18/16 or a bit more than one neutron, so now it emits just over 3 neutrons and gets a bit more than 24 from the reflector plus a bit more than 3 from its neighbor for a total of nearly 28 neutrons, and this will keep increasing until it goes boom. Do I have this right?
Also the neutron counts are only updated once a second, but is the heat produced is 1 HU per tick per neutron or per second?
Maybe another example: a single 2x2 reactor with 4 rods using industrial coolant ( I assume that’s the IC2 stuff right? ). That gets 8 emission so 16 from its two neighbors, with a 1/32 factor so you get about another half a neutron of emission, taking it up to a bit more than 8.5 neutrons per rod, plus the 8 self neutrons for 25 neutrons per rod or 100 HU/t total output? Which would give slightly more than enough heat to keep a dense invar and a normal invar heat exchanter/boiler running and producing 192 steam/t?
2 Likes
Ah Cobalt-60, I remember when washing copper could kill you.
2 Likes
Hrm… OK, then I guess I’ll have to make a radiation suit before I try centrifuging the refined cobalt. Is there anything like reinforced blocks that can help contain the radiation and/or OOPS from a reactor?
Also…what is with the insane fuel lifetime? 50,000 minutes? Even if I play for 200 minutes a day it’s going to take 125 days to use up the fuel rod. I doubt I will still be playing this world that far into the future. And that’s if I never shut the thing off. It may as well just say forever.
3 Likes
OK, I think I have come up with a good cobalt-60 reactor design. It takes a 1x reactor in the middle loaded with a moderator rod, surrounded by 4 2x2 reactors, and 4 more 1x reactors with moderator rods to fill in the corners. You load 8 cobalt-60 fuel rods in the inner ring surrounding the central moderator. Each fuel rod touches the central moderator, giving it an 8x reflection, and also touches one of the corner moderators, which only have 2x. That gives each rod a total of 10x reflected neutrons, plus 1x from its neighbor. Throw a reflector rod in the outer ring and you get a total of 12x neutrons. In industrial coolant, you get 8 emission with a 1/32 factor. If I’m doing the math right, that ramps up to 12.8 actual emission, x12 for 153.6, plus the 8 self neutrons for a total of 161.6 neutrons per rod, or 1,292.8 total. That’s almost enough heat to run 7 MV dynamos driven by steel turbines and 3x strong invar boilers each producing 88 EU/t, or a total of 592 EU/t.
2 Likes