FWIW, another strategy is to process a fixed (and, annoyingly, normally user configurable) number of radar each tick. That lets users tune it to something that won't hurt their own computer, and means that you get consistent game performance by slowing down combinator updates when you add more items.
You might also want to look at using next
to walk over the table -- it is relatively simple -- which you can see an example of here: https://github.com/justarandomgeek/nixie-tubes/blob/master/control.lua#L302