Theoretical reconnection energy for RR6 simulations at various twists. The dashed line shows the predicted tunnel energy, as calculated from eq. (22), and the dash–double‐dotted line shows the slingshot energy, as calculated from eq. (23). The asterisks denote simulation values for slingshot interactions, while the plus sign denotes the simulation value for the tunnel interaction of Fig. 7. All the simulation data shown here are from the nonuniform resistivity calculations, with a background, maximum Lundquist number of ﹩L_{\eta }=288,000﹩.