Guide to the Nuclear Reactor

Not to be confused with the Stormdrive, an engine that runs on magic. THIS engine runs on pure science! This guide details how to operate the AGCNR Nuclear Reactor, (but we're just going to call it the Nuclear Reactor for simplicity's sake) and if you follow it to the letter, you should have a working reactor generating enough power for your vessel within less than 10 minutes. So let's get started!

Terminology

What your average reactor will look like

Before we begin, it's important you understand a few key words that are going to be repeated throughout this guide:

Neutrons per generation (K): Rate of heat gain in the reactor.
Moderator: Gasses that cause special effects inside the reactor.
Power: How hot your reactor is versus a meltdown (%).

Generating Power

The Nuclear Reactor has two inputs: Moderator and Coolant. The first thing we're going to worry about is the coolant loop. Power is generated through a simple process: Uranium fuel rods are placed into the reactor which immediately starts the reaction, creating constant heat. Our coolant gas is pumped into the reactor, heats up to the heat of the reactor, and then carries said heat to a set of Turbines to generator additional power. After this is done, the gas finally enters a heat exchanger in space to cool down the gas for further use in the loop. The colder the gas you put into the loop, the faster the reactor cools down. Innately, it’s set up so that the temperature loss from coolant intake is balanced out against the heat generated by the fuel rods, represented by the controllable figure called K (Neutrons per generation). NOTE that the coolant gas can potentially retain heat and actually heat up the reactor, so, be certain to check the thermometers on the coolant loop often!

Setting up the reactor

Like other gas-based engines, the AGCNR has a lot of room for experimentation. But if you feel unsure, or are inexperienced, you can follow this step-by-step guide to set up the reactor safely and easily.

Preparing

Tycoon reactor core room.

Always take a shower with your clothes on when exiting the reactor core room. This will clear you off of radiation, and prevent you from radiating your colleagues.

Turn on your tablet, download and run the nuclear reactor monitoring and keep the tablet on in your pocket.
Put on radiation protection gear. Altough the reactor does not emit radiation until it has started working, it is better to stay safe.

The coolant

Insert coolant into the coolant loop (Plasma, O2 or CO₂) by wrenching down a canister on the connector marked with Red on the first picture
Turn on the coolant in and output pumps - marked with Light Blue on the first picture - and set them to about 700 kPa

You have quite a few options for which coolant you want to use, but for this guide, we will use one of the basic three: Plasma, O2, CO2.
Plasma is an exceptional coolant, and can absorb a lot of heat. This is the coolant we tend to use, though it is highly vulnerable to sabotage.
Oxygen is a somewhat safer alternative than plasma, however it can still be sabotaged if you add plasma to the loop to cause a pipe fire.
CO₂ is an extremely safe coolant, but it’s not hugely effective. It cannot catch fire which is a definite bonus.

The moderator

Next step is going down to atmospherics (or asking an Atmos Tech) and setting up the moderator mix. For now, we will use an 80 Oxy/20 Plasma setup

Tycoon atmos setup

If on the Tycoon: Before turning on any pumps turn off the mixer - and preferrably the pump as well - marked with Green on the second picture, as they will send gas through even when only one part of the mix is ready
Turn on the pump marked with Red on the second picture and set it to max.
Turn on the pump marked with Blue on the second picture and set it to max.
Set the mixer to mix 80% Oxygen and 20% Plasma
1. These values are set by default on the Tycoon
Turn on the mixer - and the pump - marked with green on the second picture

The last steps

If you got this far without messing up, congratulations, the complicated part is over - well, sort of. Before you do any of these steps, get an analyzer out, and make sure that the right type of gas is flowing in, and that all of the pumps are active in the coolant loop.

Return to the core room. (And return to the core room picture of this page.)
Turn on the moderator pump - marked with Green on the first picture - at about 1500 to 2000 kPa
1. If you put it higher the reactor consumes a lot of gas very fast
Put in three reactor FUEL rods from the fuel rod pool (They are marked with Light green on the first pic)
1. Unlike the stormdrive the AGCNR uses Uranium fuel rods which means the reaction rate goes up the more there are
Set the control rod computer - the one marked with white - to 3K and put it back down to 1K when the power output is at 60%. And done!

Now that you’ve set up the engine, there’s very little you need to do. The reactor is designed to run for extended periods with little to no intervention. However, if you want to maximise your power output, you’ll need to put in a little more attention.

Grab a CO₂ tank from atmos. CO2 is a good shutdown gas that is avaible roundstart. If your reactor starts going haywire, just insert this into the moderator line.
Set up the SMES (duh). Set input to max, set output to 190 and done.
1. This way the SMES will eat 200 MW * the number of SMES. It is good to keep in mind that the APNW eats 1 million Watts, so the perfect amount of power outputted by the reactor is around 1.6 - 1.8 million Watts.
Turn on the turbines - if there are any. These turbines have their own air pocket, which will then be heated by the coolant coming out of the reactor. If all goes well - and you don't experiment - this won't mean much heat, but still, a bit more never hurts.
Put on some S.T.A.L.K.E.R. music, and enjoy the nuclear wasteland that you didn't create.

*note: currently the reactor rods degrade very fast, because of this it is recommended to set a timer of about 45 minutes after starting up the reactor, at which points the rods will be about ready to be swapped out.

Moderator Types

Pumped into the reactor through the moderator line, Moderator Gasses can cause a variety of additional effects useful for managing heat and generating additional heat, but often come with their own set of risks. Here is a list of all available moderator gasses and their respective properties:

Fuel gasses

Oxygen: Power production multiplier. Allows you to run a low plasma, high oxy mix, and still get a lot of power.

Plasma: Power production gas. More plasma -> more power, but it enriches your fuel and makes the reactor much, much harder to control.

Tritium: Extremely efficient power production gas. Will cause chernobyl if used improperly.

Moderating gasses

N2: Helps you regain control of the reaction by increasing control rod effectiveness, will massively boost the radiation production of the reactor.

CO₂: Super effective shutdown gas for runaway reactions but produces a massive amount of radiation!

Pluoxium: Same as N2, but without an increased radiation production.

Permeability Type (Coolant loop speed)

BZ: Increases your reactor's ability to transfer its heat to the coolant, thus letting you cool it down faster (but the coolant exiting will be much hotter)

Water Vapour: More efficient permeability modifier

Hyper Noblium: Extremely efficient permeability increase. (10x as efficient as bz)

Depletion type

Nitryl: When you need weapons grade plutonium yesterday. Causes your fuel to deplete much, much faster. Not a huge amount of use outside of sabotage.

What can go wrong

The AGCNR, like real nuclear reactors, is not perfect. Sometimes, the reaction can get out of control and feedback loops can form which can lead to nuclear disaster. Your first indication of something going wrong is that the station’s lights will start to flicker, if you see this happen, you’re going to need to start preparing. Once the reactor spools up to over 100% power, the meltdown will begin. The reactor will start flashing red and the entire ship will be alerted to the danger.

A meltdown is caused when the reactor gets too hot and overheats, this is the less lethal possibility, as blowouts are far more deadly. To counteract a meltdown, attempt to lower K down to 0. If K will not stabilise, flood the reactor with n2/co2(whatever’s on hand) to help you gain control over the reaction. Check the reactor for damage after bringing it back down to stable levels, as you may need to repair it.

Blowouts occur when the pressure inside of the coolant loop becomes too great, causing the gas to rupture the reactor itself and spew ash and radioactive material. To counteract a blowout, you need to act quickly. First check for simple sabotages, such as the exit line not being activated or the presence of fire in the coolant line. If the pressure is too great because of a fire or an otherwise excessive amount of gas inside the loop, it's time to either activate the release valve or close the coolant valve into the reactor. The release valve will dump all of the fuel inside the line out to space. Ensure you've dumped all of the fuel before refueling the reactor.

Maintenance

So you’ve started the reactor up, but your job isn’t done yet. ever. You’ve still got to prepare to shut the reactor down, change the rods, and make sure it doesn’t blow up halfway! The higher the K the more power and heat you produce, at 1k it should be stable, but if it’s not, adjust the decimal points.

Preparing to shutdown the reactor

First, you have to prepare your shutoff mix, to do this, run over to atmos and fill yourself two cans of co2, do this by turning on the co2 output to mixline, and mix line to the connector. Then, remember to setup atmos if they haven’t already and make sure the moderator is being made (follow the purple line). Now, you should run your cans back over to engineering and place them in the reactor chamber for when you need them.

Shutting down the reactor

Once your timer to change the rods is up, go ahead and turn the reactor rod control to 0 K, this will cause the reactions in the reactor to stop, and slowly settle down, while this is happening, you want to insert the co2 cans you prepared into the direct moderator input, and set the moderator to 1000-1500 kpa, this will ration out your 9000kpa odd co2 for shutdown. Once the reactor power is under 20 percent, you are then able to remove the fuel rods. This will shut the reactor down for good, now you want to unwrench your co2 cans, refill them and bring them back again. You are now good to insert new rods into the reactor and start it up again. NOTE: Please keep spent rods away from normal rods, remember to reset the moderator input amount.

Repairing the reactor

If your reactor gets damaged, either from the pressure or heat, you can repair it with a welding tool and flex tape(damage control kit), this will repair the seals and make sure you don’t blow up next time you start it up.

Tips

Be careful to not exhaust your plasma supply. It is recommended you don't max out the moderator input when youre running plasma + O2, or you're at a tangible risk of running out of those gasses from atmos.
The reactor consumes moderator gasses very quickly, so keep this in mind before you use permeability gasses for riskier setups.
You don’t need to shut down the reactor to do maintenance, you only need to bring it down to 20% power.
Unlike the stormdrive, the temperature of the coolant matters! Don’t forget to set up your coolant loop.
This engine synergises well with other atmos based engines, try hooking it up to a TEG for free power.
You can cook food such as steak on the reactor's surface.
If the reactor makes banging noises, it’s not being actively cooled with coolant, and is taking damage.

Sabotage

Sabotaging the Nuclear Reactor is incredibly easy to do, but can also be incredibly easy to fix depending on how much effort you put into your handiwork. Make sure there are no ~~competent~~ engineers nearby, roll up your sleeves, and let's get to work. You have a choice of starting either a meltdown or a blowout, with the latter being the deadliest but easiest to fix.

Meltdown:

Flood reactor moderator line with plasma, they won't be able to mitigate the reaction with control rods.
Shut off coolant entirely. Raise control rods.
Swap all fuel out with spent fuel, as it's way stronger.

Blowout:

Shut off exit valve for quick overpressure.
Cause a pipefire in the coolant line (LETHAL).
Tack heater onto coolant line (can also cause straight meltdown)