[Nuclear power] Mining and processing Uranium

[Hovel]

Dear fellow Factorio players,

I would like to create a topic to discuss the idea's how to implement nuclear power. FF#164 has giving a clear base of how the dev's are planning to implement nuclear power plants and the specific mechanics and principles. Therefor I'm adopt the comments writen in the FF#164 but helping the discussion how to realize the entire nuclear part of the game. Working as a process engineer in the nuclear waste industry, I have a lot of ideas I would like to discuss.

To prevent a hurricane of (mostly exelent) idea's, I'm splitting the Nuclear power process in different segments, starting with "Mining and processing Uranium".

Ok, let my show you my idea of how I would like to implement the mining and processing of Uranium. Let me know what you think!

[Ghoulish]

Pretty cool insight into what may be coming in 0.15.

However, is the process as you have (nicely) Laid out here too complicated? I wonder how much depth the devs will be willing to put into things, considering how comparatively light other production chains are in the vanilla game. My two cents would want a deep worthwhile system, with multiple steps and configuration options along the way, much as you propose.. People are getting good at playing this game now, and I feel as we are approaching the end-game content wise for v1.0, it's time to tax us devs..

[Hovel]

Pretty cool insight into what may be coming in 0.15.

However, is the process as you have (nicely) Laid out here too complicated? I wonder how much depth the devs will be willing to put into things, considering how comparatively light other production chains are in the vanilla game. My two cents would want a deep worthwhile system, with multiple steps and configuration options along the way, much as you propose.. People are getting good at playing this game now, and I feel as we are approaching the end-game content wise for v1.0, it's time to tax us devs..

Thanks for your support.

These are all my ideas in one overview. The cask production and fuel rod production could be removed and replace by directly insert iron and/or steel. If I would have to simplify the main process, I would skip the Uranium haxafluoride production. But if you look at the current production line of batteries, this isn't that much more complicated in my opinion. And making Uranium fuel rods shouldn't be easier if you'd ask me.

The devs mention in FF#164 they would like to promote more complex setups instead of copy-paste 1 setup to multiply. Building multiple power plants next to eachother that are more efficient that seperate plants of the same amount, doesn't make sense to me (yet). The enrichment process could be a way of promoting complex setups, since there a different ways IRL of doing this; gas diffussion, gas centrifuge, laser (experimental). So the better/more efficient you can enrich Uranium, the more complex this process would become and therefor the more efficient your nuclear reactor becomes.

[Grossen]

I love it, gives us some content to mingle with later in the game

[vipm23]

Batteries in factorio are a fairly short and linear process, and the components used can also be used elsewhere (sulfuric acid, the least versatile component, is still used in Processing Units, and raw sulfur can be used in explosives...)

In general, all items in factorio have at least two possible uses, and usually a lot more. The few exceptions (iron ore, copper ore, crude) have a one step refining process to a usable item (iron plates, copper plates, heavy/light/petrol gas).

I'm not against the proposed production line per say, just that the components should have multiple purposes or else be abstracted out.

A couple proposals from easiest to hardest:

Do we need a specialized cask? We have perfectly good steel barrels.

Are fuel rods recyclable, i.e. we can extract rods from the reactor, clean them out, and reinsert fresh fuel?

Does Uranium Hexaflouride have alternate uses? I can imagine UH being an intermediate step for reprocessing fuel-which would also justify the Flourine step-but other than that I can't think of any.

Ditto Flourine. Are there other industrial uses?

[Hovel]

Batteries in factorio are a fairly short and linear process, and the components used can also be used elsewhere (sulfuric acid, the least versatile component, is still used in Processing Units, and raw sulfur can be used in explosives...)

In general, all items in factorio have at least two possible uses, and usually a lot more. The few exceptions (iron ore, copper ore, crude) have a one step refining process to a usable item (iron plates, copper plates, heavy/light/petrol gas).

I'm not against the proposed production line per say, just that the components should have multiple purposes or else be abstracted out.

A couple proposals from easiest to hardest:

Do we need a specialized cask? We have perfectly good steel barrels.

Are fuel rods recyclable, i.e. we can extract rods from the reactor, clean them out, and reinsert fresh fuel?

Does Uranium Hexaflouride have alternate uses? I can imagine UH being an intermediate step for reprocessing fuel-which would also justify the Flourine step-but other than that I can't think of any.

Ditto Flourine. Are there other industrial uses?

Good questions vipm23. I'll try to explain my views:

Your remark on the fact that almost all items have a multiple purpose is justified. Balancing production between multiple "consumers", both with a different ratios, is part of the fun in factorio (at least for me). That's why I used sulfuric acid to tie in to the oil processing part of the game. When adding MOX (recycled fuel) it will tie into this process. I will add this to a topic I'm planning to post later this week on nuclear power plants. This would continue on from this topic. Maybe that would satisfy the wish to have multiple use of all these new items.

Specialized casks are used to handle nuclear fuel/waste safely. Radiation would kill you after only a few minutes of exposure of enriched uranium. Again, this is up for discussion if you'd asked me. If we are looking for ways to make this part of the process more challanging, we can consired this as an option.

Uranium Hexafluoride is mostly used for Uranium enrichment. There are different ways of enriching uranium, diffision and centrifuge are most common used. Centrifuge is more efficient. Laser processes are being developed and might be an idea to use in the game as a higher tier of enriching uranium (less power, faster and/or more efficient).

Fluorite is actually used during melting process of steel and iron. But I wouldn't think it's suitable to add to game, since it would make it overly complex (asspecially early game).

Wiki overview of uses of Fluorine:


As I mentioned before; the Uranium Hexafluoride step can be skipped and considered as a part of the enrichment process. I will work out some more drawings to help the discussion on all these subjects, since they are very valid for discussion IMO.

[ssilk]

Added to viewtopic.php?f=80&t=31440 Ideas Around Energy Production: Solar, Wind, Water, Nuclear, Fusion ...

[vipm23]

Specialized casks are used to handle nuclear fuel/waste safely. Radiation would kill you after only a few minutes of exposure of enriched uranium. Again, this is up for discussion if you'd asked me. If we are looking for ways to make this part of the process more challanging, we can consired this as an option.

Looked up dry cask storage for nuclear waste on Wikipedia. It's basically steel drums in concrete shielding, and the two don't have to be integrated-there's designs where the drum containing the material can be removed from shield cladding and transported.

I say run with this.
*All radioactive materials can be barrelled for transport.
*Have drums of radioactive material(fuel, waste) hurt living entities if they're in proximity, even if the drums are in an inventory.
*New concrete chests (and logistic variants of same) that shield radiation, allowing safe storage of radioactive material.

This would add a new dimension to transporting radioactive materials-the player can't ferry the stuff unless in dire emergency, and drones are disadvantaged because they can end up randomly damaging the player if they fly overhead with radioactive material. Spills from destroyed concrete chests stop being nuisances and start being catastrophes.
On the other hand, unshielded chests of nuclear waste can be used as area denial weapons. You want to settle there biters? Too bad, now all your sperm have twin heads.



CFCs...they used to be used in aerosol cans, and airborne hydrogen flouride is nasty shit. Maybe make flourine a poison capsule ingredient?
And maybe also adapt the flamethrower turret to toss HF around when fed it. Sorta a really short-range, really nasty chemical weapon.

Sulfur hexaflouride's an inert gas used for protecting electrical equipment. Maybe used it as the inert gas in radioactive storage...but we can just as easily abstract that out by saying we produce the stuff alongside the UF6. Maybe if we get really high-voltage equipment, (or something like laser turrets gets an overhaul) SF6 can be a consumable for it that prevents self damage.

And Teflon's Teflon. Component for high end armor plates? (Cushioning, not interception)

[Alien_Squasher]

Pretty cool insight into what may be coming in 0.15.

However, is the process as you have (nicely) Laid out here too complicated? I wonder how much depth the devs will be willing to put into things, considering how comparatively light other production chains are in the vanilla game. My two cents would want a deep worthwhile system, with multiple steps and configuration options along the way, much as you propose.. People are getting good at playing this game now, and I feel as we are approaching the end-game content wise for v1.0, it's time to tax us devs..

Welp. I certainly wouldn't mind seeing as I've launched so many rockets and placed sooo many conveyors that I'm pretty sure I could cover about 2% of a procedurally generated map that's infinite with them....