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In the power generation domain, things are approached very differently. ThermalPower (which represents 1 MW of useful heat) is produced by nearly all reactors. (This is usually handwaved by mods that provide nuclear reactors.) ElectricCharge production becomes the optional second step and requires separate parts called generators. Why is this so? It is so because this mod cares about the simplicity and the unique advantages of thermal energy storage and it cares about engines which consume heat energy but are not automatically nuclear devices.
- Thermal nozzles are a type of engine which consists of a heat exchanger which receives the heat energy of either a nuclear reactor; beamed power receiver; or solar thermal device, and passes that energy into the propellant.
- A thermal energy storage can be charged by solar thermal during the day and generators can sip on it and steadily produce electricity during the day and through the night. A well-built Sterling thermal power system can power a base on the Mun or Duna with 100% uptime and 0% nuclear supply.
- Solar thermal or beamed thermal easily becomes an option for main power for a landed base or orbiting ship or station.
The generator devices are high power but not high efficiency. The current steam turbine set, the "Delta Electro" family has 50% efficiency. Half of their input energy is wasted and must be catered for by radiators.
When building a craft with Sterling Systems, remember this order:
- The main reactor (currently just Molten Salt or Pebble Bed) produces ThermalPower. These are MW and GW class.
- A Delta Electro part comes after it, which converts the ThermalPower to ElectricCharge.
- A radiator (or several) comes after that, because all great applications of energy end with waste heat.
- An inline heatsink is required if this thermal system needs battery capacity.
- An inline heatsink is required in order to slow the overheating of any ISRU devices on the craft.
Because thermal energy is quite easy to produce in huge amounts and is quickly wasted by the devices that use it, Sterling Systems makes a point of providing many, many radiators, especially exotic ones, for handling all that waste heat and preventing the overheat of huge devices such as anything "fusion" and "antimatter".
This mod makes a point of avoiding (as much as possible) the resources EnrichedUranium, DepletedFuel because they are used to represent nuclear fuel rods which are non-transferrable (requiring a mod to cheese a way around it, or) which causes the reactor to be disposable when its fuel is finished, and which are used extremely inefficiently by contemporary water cooled reactors. This mod prefers nuclear fuels which can indeed be pumped around while the reactor is still running, and the chosen fission reactor types are expected to be immune to meltdown events.