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[Kaiser Reinhard]

I'm about to build an array of water reactors to power my pump tower drawing magma from the depths, but I'll need a way to stop them as and when I like to spare my FPS. Will lever-operated hatches allow water through while open?

[weenog]

Yes they will.

[blue sam3]

Couldn't you just put a gearbox in the middle rather than an axle and disengage it?

[Urist Da Vinci]

If you use a lever-linked gear assembly to connect the water reactor to a room full of gear assemblies, you can make it stop because it can't provide enough power to turn everything.

[ThatAussieGuy]

If you use a lever-linked gear assembly to connect the water reactor to a room full of gear assemblies, you can make it stop because it can't provide enough power to turn everything.

That's not very effective though as you'd need to set aside a MASSIVE space to build enough gear assemblies to kill a reactor with a multi-KiloUrist output.  Putting hatches over the screwpump's intakes and closing them would kill the reactor outright quite quickly and easily with just two floodgates and four mechanisms (discounting the one needed for the killswitch lever, of course)

[Sutremaine]

If you use a lever-linked gear assembly to connect the water reactor to a room full of gear assemblies, you can make it stop because it can't provide enough power to turn everything.

Or you could use that lever-linked gear assembly to connect the water reactor to whatever it is you're powering.

I've used bridges as off switches in cases where there are no gears between the reactor and the pump stack, but hatches would be so much neater when going through the list to connect levers to 'proper' bridges.

[CaptainArchmage]

The best way to control a water reactor is to use a hatch to block the intake. You can disengage the gears connecting the reactor to the things that need power, but unless the pump is stopped it will continue to power the water wheels, which will power the pump. To do that you'll need to block the intake, or drain the reactor. Blocking the intake is the best option.

[imperium3]

I normally just make sure there's a gear assembly between the water wheels that generate power and the pumps that move the water, so you can shut off the flow when necessary. The disadvantage of this design is that the reactor takes a short while to power down as the remaining water dissipates, and it needs to be restarted manually by dwarves working the pumps. Though I suppose you could build a separate "starter motor" with just enough power to run the pumps. Anyways, that design worked well enough for me.

[Kaiser Reinhard]

Right, thanks. New system is working pretty well except for one part of my magma pipe bursting for some reason and killing a dwarf, then 5 more trying to retrieve his belongings.

[Sutremaine]

Hmm, I think I might have misread the OP a little. For some reason my brain jumped straight to the pump stack when considering the position of the hatch.

Perhaps the OP could look into sending water off the map edge (thus making it flow) and then blocking off the map edge (which should stop it flowing, but the game doesn't notice) and making all the water under the waterwheels 7/7 and unmoving (but still registering as having flow).

Depending on how deep the depths are you could build a one-wheel reactor at intervals up the pump stack and fill each one to the point where there's no moving water*. It's rather wasteful compared to an array as you need one extra pump for every eight levels, but the number of extra pumps required may be small enough to not matter.

*One-wheel reactors can be filled like this. Two-wheel reactors aren't so consistent.

[Sabreur]

Right, thanks. New system is working pretty well except for one part of my magma pipe bursting for some reason and killing a dwarf, then 5 more trying to retrieve his belongings.

Dwarf Fortress - where "working pretty well" means "only six friendly casualties".