Project Upgraded Olympus Base

MaverickSawyer

Acolyte of the Probe
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OK, some of you may have seen this from the Random Comments thread:

This is a Nuclear powerplant that will power my expanded Olympus Base.
I realize that the Cooling Towers are poorly designed for the Martian environment. I am using these as a place holder until I have a better mesh completed. It will be a dry tower, using only the thin atmosphere of Mars to shed heat. Urwumpe called it the big brother of your heating radiator. It's essentially a water to air intercooler. I will also be including a nearby water tower to provide cooling water in an emergency, fulfilling some of the safety requirements needed in modern nuclear reactors. And that's just the first stage. More to come soon!
 
Sorry, it's kinda behind the left tower. I will be grabbing another screencap soon, I promise.
EDIT: As promised, new view of work:
picture.php

Reactor building is the domed structure to the left of the cooling towers, Control Room is at the far right. Turbomachinery and generators are in between the towers, and the water tower is behind the reactor building.
 
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Your Turbomachinery is a bit small for the two cooling towers... you would have two circuits then, with usually two turbines (or more than one per circuit) and all the needed additional gear. The turbine building (for one turbine) is usually a bit bigger than the reactor building for it. Alone the condenser below the turbine is one massive machine.

(Condensers cool the steam from the turbines and turn it into water again, with the resulting extreme reduction in volume of the steam producing a vital vacuum at the exit of the turbine, that increases efficiency.)
 
Will do. It's fairly easy to scale it up at this point.
Right now, it's 20 m wide, 10 m tall, and 40 m long...
:hmm: Maybe I should scale down my reactor building? :P
 
Wouldn't be that bad. Also the distance between reactor and turbine is usually as short as possible, for not wasting energy for global warming.

The cooling towers can be a bit away from the turbine since the water in its circuit is meant to lose heat. There the distance is only limited by pump power.
 
Reactor building is 40 m in diameter, and 40 m tall. :hmm: Thinking about the ones I have seen, that's about right. Then again, the only one I have seen was shut down by public vote in 1989 after less than 15 years service. Stupid NIMBY morons.
 
Reactor building is 40 m in diameter, and 40 m tall. :hmm: Thinking about the ones I have seen, that's about right. Then again, the only one I have seen was shut down by public vote in 1989 after less than 15 years service. Stupid NIMBY morons.

15 years in 1989? That is pretty old for a nuclear reactor. Rancho Seco, right?
 
Got it in one! Yeah, they just finished the decontamination work a few months back, IIRC. Anyways, the reactor building was huge. That, combined with the plant near Vandenburg (can't recall the name), are the inspiration for the reactor building and towers.
 
Got it in one! Yeah, they just finished the decontamination work a few months back, IIRC. Anyways, the reactor building was huge. That, combined with the plant near Vandenburg (can't recall the name), are the inspiration for the reactor building and towers.

Reactor vessels have to be huge, since they need the volume to contain a explosion, as it could happen during an accident. As you can see in Fukushima, which had much smaller containment structures, this requirement is not that wrong.

Also PWR containment buildings have to store a lot more systems inside them, since the radioactive primary circuit is completely inside them. But still, the large containment building is mostly empty space that should help absorbing explosions and slowly reduce the resulting overpressure inside them.
 
OK, I'll keep it at the current size. What would be a good size for the generator building?
 
A ballpark figure would be fine.

Since we are on Mars, I would suggest making a two part building, one to protect the high pressure parts from dust, but remain rather unpressurized (which means less heat loss), the low pressure gear and the control center would be better placed into a pressurized structure.

So, the height of the high pressure part building is defined by turbine system, condenser and deaerator, all three stacked on top of each other. Means in your scale of things, already about 15-18 meters, plus some space above the turbine for a maintenance crane. The biggest part is likely the condenser, with about 4 meters diameter, so you need about 6-8 meters above the machinery for a portal crane.

Since you have two cooling towers, this part of the building should contain 2 turbines, each giving you a 20 x 30 meter footprint on Earth, better add some space more for having people working in a pressure suit. So the unpressurized part of the building would be 50 meters wide, 50 meters long and 25 meters high and have the appearance of a fireworks factory (strong walls, weak roof). At the end away from the reactor, you would have a low bay hall, that can be reached by the portal crane and has large doors on both sides that permit bringing new machines into the building.

Next to this you would have a pressurized low pressure machinery part. This part of the building should be pressurized for easier working, also it would contain many smaller control systems and pumps, that are easier cooled by one central ECLSS (Mars!). A series of cylindrical tanks in a common concrete hull would be one good estimate of the building structure, parts of this building could also be hidden below Mars soil, it needs not much beauty. A window is not needed in a place, that humans rarely visit. I would not put it underground and below the turbine systems. Better have it be between the low bay part of the turbine building and the turbine hall, so you can have an airlock there.

I would say, giving the main turbine building two lower building wings in the middle, each 6 meters high, 20 meters long and 10 meters wide should do it, and have contact with the pipes that run to the cooling towers, since you would control the main pumps and valves from inside it and distance is expensive.

Finally, you should have a low section of unpressurized, dust protected space away from the reactor, with the electrical power distribution systems. make it 30 m wide, 15 meters long and 12 meters high, that should do it. Have about 10 meters distance between low bay of the turbine building and this hall, since such high energy electrics like to get out of control sometimes and cause nasty fires, even without oxygen.

So, all together two blocky buildings, with the bigger having two side wings.
 
Reminds me of the coal-burning power plant not far from here. Brings back some memories.

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockport_Power_Plant"]Rockport Generating Plant, Rockport, Indiana[/ame]
14308.jpg


The " brief public walk-through simulator" was across the street in a building called the Energy Information Center. My dad used to take me and my brother there once a year back in the 80's. Very informative. They had a few TI-99 computers set up with a Hangman game loaded that used energy terminology as the guess-words. They would have all kinds of events, different exhibits/workshops.

One room was a mock-up of the inside of the base of the cooling towers. Another room, you walked along a rail and saw a floor-to-ceiling mock-up of the burners used in the furnace. A couple times a year they also hosted RC plane competitions in the parking lot.

Can't wait to download the finished base!
 
Reminds me on one idea I had for Orbiter, making a set of meshes for the most prominent buildings in the world, like large communication towers, power plants or other landmarks and include them as bases. Especially such TV towers that could dwarf a Saturn V.
 
Ok, thanks to Urwumpe's advice, the poweplant has become more complex, but looks a lot better:
picture.php

:tiphat: to Urwumpe.
Next step: upgrading the cooling towers to have the radiators in their throats.
 
Wow! How tall is that water tower? Our cooling towers are 500 ft tall, put in the same perspective that water tower is enourmous.
 
They're about 300 feet tall. :hmm: I may need to lower that water tower. :lol:
 
OK, technical question: what would be an optimal design for the in-throat radiator for the cooling towers? I am ready to begin modelling it, so any hints or tips are appreciated, especially if they are not framerate killing polycount inducers!
 
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