Factorio Forums

Dear fellow factorio lovers,

A while back I wanted to start a discussion on how nuclear power should be implemented in the game. My first idea was to discuss everything step by step. But like a factorio factory, everything is connect to everything. I had a clear idea in my head, but wanted to structure any discussion that would follow after I showed you guys my ideas. (viewtopic.php?f=6&t=37563) I found it hard to not talk about the greater picture and the topic died pretty quickly. I still assume there are a lot of you with specific idea on how you would like to see nuclear power being implemented in the game. To help discussing all the ideas, I still wanted to share all my thoughs so I started working out the idea on paper (well actually on screen). It's extensive, but I felt that it needed an more specific discription on multiple subjects to clearify my idea.

So hold tied and try to read this entire OP and do let me know that your thoughts are!

As I mentioned in my first topic, I work as a process/project engineer in the nuclear waste industry. So the implementation of nuclear power in factorio really makes my enthusiastic. If you have any question regarding nuclear waste processing/storage/reposatory, please let me know!

Fundumental assumptions

• -Nuclear power is a part to win the game (get to rocket launch)
  -Nuclear power reactor generate a lot more power, compared to steam engines and solar panels.
  -I'm also adopting the idea that more complex builds should be more efficient that copy-paste a small basic design.
  -Nuclear power shouldn't be the only nuclear aspect of the game. Like IRL nuclear research is used for a lof different topics (medicine, tech, military, physics, etc)
  -Building nuclear reactor/production lines should be the most complex in the game, within the existing learning curve of the current game.
  -I haven't included smeltdowns in my concept. In FF#164 kovarex mentioned some ideas, so I assume the devs have already worked out some idea's. Implementing the real deal is going to very almost impossible and not fun.
  -Nuclear waste should be a part of the game, this is big ascept to nuclear power IRL. And come on guys, it's my field of work.
  -Everything is based of the really fuel cycle, but ofcourse simplified to make work within the existing fundumental parts of the game!
  -Last but not least, IT HAS TO BE FUN AND CHALLENGING TO BUILD AND PLAY!

Nuclear reactor levels

You might remember FF#164 where kovarex mentions that reactors would connect and share efficienty. I think that makes sence, but I've gone a different route that the dev's where explaining. I made different levels of nuclear power, each getting bigger like shown in the printscreen of FF#164. Each higher level will give you options to improve your fuel cycle and increase the capacity of your reactor.
By doing this, complexity is added by requiring more complex production chains to improve energy per fuel rod and uranium ore. Isn't that what we all dream of; a smooth fully automated complex factory that will never fail because YOU made it.

Please have a look at the following overviews below. If you like to watch them on imgur: http://imgur.com/a/Qpeqc

Nuclear reactor level 1, typical layout


Nuclear reactor level 2, typical layout


Nuclear reactor level 3, typical layout


Nuclear reactor level 4, typical layout



I have also included a basic concept of how the corrosponding research tree should look like. Green is the required path the get to the missle silo.



While I was at it, I also translated my ideas of how the control panel of the nuclear reactor should look like. The extra options (spend fuel pool and research production) would not be shown if not reseached yet, ofcourse.

Final thoughts

Nuclear buildings should be a high priority for bitters. If waste is not stored in the correct buildings, the game should punish you. Also you should not be able to "cheat" your way out, by loading waste in regular storage of trainwagons. If left on a belt for to long, a cloud of nuclear polution should kill players and shut down assembling machines, inserters, belts, etc. But I most but manageble and able to solve if you are quick enough. Slowly increasing the nuclear polution cloud and warnings should help you with that.

Storage buildings (HABOG, LOG) are based on building that are actually use for the same purpose at COVRA where I work. COVRA processes en stores all nuclear waste produced in the Netherlands; hospitals, nuclear power plant, research plants, fuel rod producers, etc. (If anyone is every close to COVRA and would like to visit, please let me know so I can give your a tour at our facilities! We are very open to the public to inform people what we do to keep the dutch inhabitants safe from any nuclear waste. Where are governmental authority, so I would be trying to sell anything )
Waste storage buildings, together with the additional nuclear buildings; plasma smelting waste, geological repository, should be seperate building aside assemblers and chemical plants, like the rocket silo. Building them and the power required should be the same like the rocket silo.

I took me quite a few hours to compile all my thoughts and ideas in to these drawings and writings. I don't expect anyone to like my entire concept, but I hope helps to discuss the bigger picture of the implementation of nuclear power in to the game. So please take some time to read everything and let me know what your comments are!

Great write up!

There are several mods that currently do add in Nuclear capability. All have different approaches. I think combining ideas either into one large mod or perhaps integrate into the live game is a great idea.

Some additions I thought of while reading.

- Radiation resistant items:
------If regular buildings/machines are used they would break down over time due to radiation.
---Inserters
---Belts
---Pipes
---Chests
---Walls to protect surrounding area(but Concreate already does to a degree so maybe thicker walls)
------This brings up the potential need for adding Lead as an Ore/Metal.
---Chemical Plants
---Assemblers
---Specialized Miners
---Waste Holding containers
---Waste Processing Factory
---non belt Transport
---Single or Multi Reactor Control building
---Specialized Smelters


-Nuclear Science (bottle that is black/yellow)
---Used to research Nuclear technologies

-Nuclear Weaponry

-Nuclear powered Trains

-Nuclear Power Robots

Oh the Complexity!

I think this is a cool work, you must have set hours for this post.
The problem is: I think most of the nuclear power has already been implemented.

I would like to reiterate points from previous thread re:
1.Barrelling, separated storage and rad shielding(concrete chests) of radioactive material, radioactive effects on nearby players and other organic entities,
2.More uses for flourine: flouropolymer/Teflon, the aforementioned poison capsules, etc. Possibly artifical flourite lenses for good telescopes/better laser turrets.

Also, the proposed reactor seems to be too multipurpose. There aren't any other buildings in the game that do more than one thing at a time(inserters move items from just point A to point B, assemblers craft just one item, labs work on the current research project, steam engines take boiling water and make electricity.) The proposed nuclear power plant would be the only machine in the game that produced electricity, assembled stuff(high tech science packs), and provided useful amounts of storage for it's products all in one building. In addition, it would be the only machine to significantly change how it works depending solely on tech level (upgrades tend to be replacing existing machines or slotting in modules.)

I'd suggest breaking the proposed reactor down to different buildings-a nuclear reactor core where the reaction happens(can make mk1 or other power production only reactors with just this), a Radioactivity Exposure research Manager (REM) that assembles high tech science packs when hooked up to a source of radiation, and concrete chest storage for waste(Merging High level and Low level storage into the same thing here-the only thing that would change is the consequences.)

Raxnar wrote:Great write up!

There are several mods that currently do add in Nuclear capability. All have different approaches. I think combining ideas either into one large mod or perhaps integrate into the live game is a great idea.

Some additions I thought of while reading.

- Radiation resistant items:
------If regular buildings/machines are used they would break down over time due to radiation.
---Inserters
---Belts
---Pipes
---Chests
---Walls to protect surrounding area(but Concreate already does to a degree so maybe thicker walls)
------This brings up the potential need for adding Lead as an Ore/Metal.
---Chemical Plants
---Assemblers
---Specialized Miners
---Waste Holding containers
---Waste Processing Factory
---non belt Transport
---Single or Multi Reactor Control building
---Specialized Smelters


-Nuclear Science (bottle that is black/yellow)
---Used to research Nuclear technologies

-Nuclear Weaponry

-Nuclear powered Trains

-Nuclear Power Robots

Oh the Complexity!

First off, thank you for reading

Radiation protection is a big topic when it comes to nuclear applications. But from mining till new fuel rod, the radiation protection isn't the biggest concern. As long as you're not in a critical situation, you don't need very specific tools or much shielding. When you mine the uranium over 99% is Uranium 238, which is not very active. Most building materials contain small amounts of natual uranium (99,3% U238, 0,7 U235). When you "enrich" natural uranium, you increase the concentration of U235, because the U235 is fissile. This makes a chain reaction possible and that's why it's used to generate power. When you start the fision reaction in the reactor, that's when radiation protection becomes inescapable.

I do like your idea that the radioactive part of the process would require shielding and dedicated tools (inserter, belt, etc). Concrete is the most used shielding material for high level radiation. Here at COVRA we store high level waste in a the HABOG building that has 2 meter thick solid concrete walls. Maybe a double wall that's already in the game could serve as a protection around the reactor and the waste part of the process. This would require you too use robots, which would be a nice tie in to the main research-line.

About the other nuclear tech you mention;
weapons, YES. Typical you would enrich to must futher for weapons, so you could add a extra recipe for higher enrichment.
Nuclear powered trains, It's not used IRL. Trains are to small to accomodate a nuclear reactor and have enough shielding. It would make more sense to use the electricity from nuclear reactors to power electric trains.
Nuclear powered robots, same argument as the train.


ps. I wish I had the skils to make mods. If so, I would have already by working on one that's based on this concept.

ssilk wrote:I think this is a cool work, you must have set hours for this post.
The problem is: I think most of the nuclear power has already been implemented.

I was kinda counting the hours, but it's at least 20 hours. When I was making the drawings, I figured some ratio or flow won't work. That's why I when in to detail so I could show how it could work.

I'm not sure how far the dev's are with the nuclear part of 0.15. Judging from the FF's, the boiler/generator overhaul should be pretty much done (my guess). This would also apply to the nuclear reactor in my concept. It's not in the drawing, but water would be supplied to the reactor so it generates steam that drives the generator. My idea is that a nuclear reactor would basicly replace (a lot of) boilers.

But I hope that someone from the dev-team will respond to my post

vipm23 wrote:I would like to reiterate points from previous thread re:
1.Barrelling, separated storage and rad shielding(concrete chests) of radioactive material, radioactive effects on nearby players and other organic entities,
2.More uses for flourine: flouropolymer/Teflon, the aforementioned poison capsules, etc. Possibly artifical flourite lenses for good telescopes/better laser turrets.

Also, the proposed reactor seems to be too multipurpose. There aren't any other buildings in the game that do more than one thing at a time(inserters move items from just point A to point B, assemblers craft just one item, labs work on the current research project, steam engines take boiling water and make electricity.) The proposed nuclear power plant would be the only machine in the game that produced electricity, assembled stuff(high tech science packs), and provided useful amounts of storage for it's products all in one building. In addition, it would be the only machine to significantly change how it works depending solely on tech level (upgrades tend to be replacing existing machines or slotting in modules.)

I'd suggest breaking the proposed reactor down to different buildings-a nuclear reactor core where the reaction happens(can make mk1 or other power production only reactors with just this), a Radioactivity Exposure research Manager (REM) that assembles high tech science packs when hooked up to a source of radiation, and concrete chest storage for waste(Merging High level and Low level storage into the same thing here-the only thing that would change is the consequences.)

Thanks for reply again.

I've taken much from the comments from my previous topic. But also excluded some details, to keep the overview a bit more clear. I know that doesn't match with my wish to share all details of my concept. Further discussion should clearify details and additional parts/ideas that would complement my concept.

But I still agree with you on barreling and multiple use of fluorine. Teflon could be a higher tier of plastic used for blue circuits and stack inserters. It would then have to be link to the petro research part of the game.
Barreling could be required for two main reasons I think; shielding or because the physical can not be transported on belts or through pipes. Yellowcake is mostly in the form of poweder and/of cake. That would make sense to put in barrels. Waste material on the other hands would require specific flasks/casks for shielding and safely handling the materials.

I have been thinking of the reactor as a building that can have extenstional buildings; research reactor, waste storage pool, second reactor core. You would then only be able to construct it against the reactor (level1) building. Compared to my idea, the only differents would be that you would have seperate control panels when you select the buidings. Now it's in one screen and depending on which level your reactor is it would show more options. The rocket silo in a way has two purposes: constructing and launching.

I do believe the concrete chest is a much easier way of implementing waste handling. But if nuclear reactors are far more superior (smaller footprint, higher power, no polution) to steamboilers and/or solar panels, nuclear power needs an additional challenges/complexity to justify. Like in the real world, waste is the only concern when it comes to nuclear power. Meltdown is a different discussion because that's always related to human error, but that's prabably off topic. The waste process is based of the real deal and the additional processes (super compacting, reprocessing fuel rods) are being used for years all over the world. Not taking care of waste results in shutdown, which will probably shut down your entire factory/laser defense.

ps. For those who are interested, this is a video that shows the basics of the reprocessing uranium fuel rods: https://youtu.be/xeCmPKYceAM France is the king of nuclear power, they produce about 80% of the electricity with nuclear power. That by far the highest rate in the world. For that reason, the best engineering firm and facilities for nuclear tech is in France.

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

Hovel wrote:I have been thinking of the reactor as a building that can have extenstional buildings; research reactor, waste storage pool, second reactor core. You would then only be able to construct it against the reactor (level1) building. Compared to my idea, the only differents would be that you would have seperate control panels when you select the buidings. Now it's in one screen and depending on which level your reactor is it would show more options. The rocket silo in a way has two purposes: constructing and launching.

Had in fact forgot about the rocket silo.

There's another difference between having separate buildings and having the buildings merge -how to get items into or out of the buildings. Having the REM as an upgrade would imply that inserting the required materials anywhere in the reactor would let it assemble science packs. If the REM is a separate building that just happens to need to be next to a reactor to work, on the other hand, you would have to insert the materials into that building in particular.
Similiarly, waste storage pools would have to have inserters outside to remove waste-in fact, it might be worth it to have waste storage pools be entirely separate from the reactor, and have to move spent fuel rods quickly from the reactor to the pool.(say, 10 seconds before leaks.)
I think the additional logistic challenges would be worth the UI inconvenience-especially as since the intended outcome for nuclear plants by the developers is to encourage larger and more capable designs over cheap mass manufactured ones, so each reactor is likely to be a unique case and flexibility of components will probably be prized over convenience.

You are right in that safe waste storage needs to be an ongoing problem-mostly my beef is with dedicated low/high level waste storage, and the inability to ferry the stuff with drones, players or trains. (Trains in particular-without them, the only way to safely transport waste over long distances would be chains of concrete chests/HABORs and inserters.) Concrete chests could be nerfed by having barrels of radioactive material(including processed waste) have a stack size of just one, or by concrete chests only having as many slots as wooden chests, or both. Similarly, trains could be nerfed by requiring shielded wagons with reduced capacity to safely carry the stuff. More space-efficient storage by iron or steel chests or transport by unshielded rolling stock would come at the expense of radioactive contamination of the surrounding environment(aka pollution out the wazoo, as soon as the leak timer ticks down.)

Nerfing the ability to use drones and players would be as simple as making radioactive materials damage players(and other organic things) within a radius if they're not in a shielded container, independent of leaks. So players can't ferry radioactive material without killing themselves, and drones that randomly grab radioactive material out of chests become unsafe to be around while ferrying the stuff.

You know, this could be one of two possible paths for fission power which could both exist in the game.

The other could require the use of a chemical plant to isolate heavy water for the moderator in the reactor, but letting you skip the enrichment steps for new fuel.

Either way, nuclear weapons could be an option. Extra enrichment stages and possibly skipping power generation entirely with the path proposed in the original post, and extra processing of spent fuel for plutonium with the proposal from this post.

Not to mention the heavy water extraction from this one could be a stage towards fusion power, so even more options. Yay!

vipm23 wrote: You are right in that safe waste storage needs to be an ongoing problem-mostly my beef is with dedicated low/high level waste storage, and the inability to ferry the stuff with drones, players or trains. (Trains in particular-without them, the only way to safely transport waste over long distances would be chains of concrete chests/HABORs and inserters.) Concrete chests could be nerfed by having barrels of radioactive material(including processed waste) have a stack size of just one, or by concrete chests only having as many slots as wooden chests, or both. Similarly, trains could be nerfed by requiring shielded wagons with reduced capacity to safely carry the stuff. More space-efficient storage by iron or steel chests or transport by unshielded rolling stock would come at the expense of radioactive contamination of the surrounding environment(aka pollution out the wazoo, as soon as the leak timer ticks down.)

Nerfing the ability to use drones and players would be as simple as making radioactive materials damage players(and other organic things) within a radius if they're not in a shielded container, independent of leaks. So players can't ferry radioactive material without killing themselves, and drones that randomly grab radioactive material out of chests become unsafe to be around while ferrying the stuff.

My idea was to only be able to transport nuclear waste with belts/inserters. The leaking within x minutes/seconds would then require you to quickly store it in a specific building/chest. Splitting the waste was done so reprocessing of HLW would make sense. A part (LLW) would still be a "problem" to address even if you recycle the fuel rods.

I have to admit that I do like the special casks/wagons for transport. Some examples:

Roxor128 wrote:You know, this could be one of two possible paths for fission power which could both exist in the game.

The other could require the use of a chemical plant to isolate heavy water for the moderator in the reactor, but letting you skip the enrichment steps for new fuel.

Either way, nuclear weapons could be an option. Extra enrichment stages and possibly skipping power generation entirely with the path proposed in the original post, and extra processing of spent fuel for plutonium with the proposal from this post.

Not to mention the heavy water extraction from this one could be a stage towards fusion power, so even more options. Yay!

I'm not following how isolating heavy water from the reactor allows you to skip enrichment steps of fuel rods. Please explain

Enrichment happens in a chemical plant so it would require recipes. Weapon grade enrichment and fuel rod enrichment should be 2 different recipes.

Thanks for your input!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water_reactor

He's referring Heavy water reactors.

Heavy water doesn't absorb neutrons like light water does(Don't ask me, I only barely get what Wikipedia's talking about), while still slowing down neutrons. This enhances the neutron economy so much that unenriched uranium becomes usable despite all the uranium-238 gumming up the works.

Or something like that.

Anyway, a quick research seems to show that low level radioactive waste is basically maintenance waste that we don't observe elsewhere in the game (We don't go around replacing parts in assemblers). Is LLW something else in this context?