Nuclear Reactor

Nuclear Reactor
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Power Consumption	N/A kW
Technical Identifier {{{identifier}}} Categories Misc

The nuclear reactor is the most crucial installation found in Subsurface. It acts as the submarine's sole power source for all installations.

Function

The nuclear reactor's only function is to generate power for every other electronic on the submarine. So long as the reactor is active, every other device on the ship will remain active as well. Power generated by the reactor is sent to other installations via wiring. This is often used in association with junction boxes to transfer power to the rest of the sub. Because of this, maintaining the reactor is arguably the game's primary objective, as without it the ship is incapable of functioning and traversing the ocean.

As power is generated, and subsequently consumed, by the reactor, the speed at which the nuclear reactions to create the energy take place increases, raising the fission rate. The amount of heat created by the reaction in turn raises the overall temperature of the reactor. Because of this, the cooling and fission rates must be adjusted to keep the temperature at a desired level - which is usually the same as the amount of power consumed by the electrical grid of the submarine.

A fuel rod is required for the nuclear reactor to function, since it, as its name suggests, supplies the reactor with fuel. Heat absorbers can also be attached to the reactor to increase its cooling rate. The reactor can hold a combine total of five of these items.

Usage

File:Reactor controls.png

The nuclear reactor's control panel.

When the reactor is selected, a control panel opens up. The control panel displays three line graphs: each measuring temperature, fission rate and cooling rate respectively. The temperature graph indicates how much heat is being generated by the reactor, the fission rate determines the percentage of nuclear reactions which are taking place and the cooling rate shows the percentage of how fast the reactor is cooling.

Pressing the "Autotemp" button will allow the reactor to automatically adjust its fission and cooling rates to maintain the power at the same level as the power consumption. This mode however will not take the temperature into account, so it is advised to only be used when the reactor is at safe levels of heating. The "max temperature" field allows the player to input a hard limit as to how high the temperature can raise to; if the temperature surpasses the given limit then the reactor automatically shuts itself down.

Generating more electricity than the grid is consuming causes the voltage of the grid to raise, which can lead to electrical devices breaking. When the temperature of the reactor raises near 10 000 degrees centigrade, it will melt down, causing an explosion that can break nearby walls, kill any personnel who are close by and effectively destroy the submarine.

I/O Interface

Connection Panel for Nuclear Reactor Hover over pins to see their descriptions.
power_out Any devices that are wired to this output will draw their power from the reactor.
Requires: Screwdriver