About nuclear reactors and meltdowns.

[Nigerian King of Scam]

This thread is mainly aimed at the devs.
I heard something about nuclear reactors not being able to melt down yet.
If you include this feature, please, for the love of all that's holy, no mushroom cloud and no random melting down every three minutes, because that would be extremely unrealistic. No nuclear reactor has ever exploded due to a runaway fusion making the reactor a nuclear bomb.
Reactor grade fuel cannot explode as it is not weapons grade, which has to be highly enriched.
To make them realistic, have them require a body of water as water reserve to cool the reactor.
This makes it so you don't just spam them right inside your city.
Then, make them produce small amounts of radioactive waste, which has to be transported to a storing facility.
Make it so that transporting the caskets by truck bears a risk of an accident, while doing it by trainline is more expensive, but safe. (IRL these caskets are bomb proof, but there needs to be a downside from the gameplay perspective).
An accident should make wherever it happened an exclusion zone for about a year or five ingame.
Also make it so that you can't just shut down and bulldoze a nuclear power plant. Shutting one down should require it to consume water for a prolonged period of time to cool it down, then disassembling it should take quite some time because of the materials involved. This material should also require the same facility which stores radioactive waste.
The waste should slowly decay in the facility, until it becomes safe to handle like regular trash and to be incinerated. (unrealistic but seems good gameplay-wise)
A final point about meltdowns:
They should mainly happen if water runs out. Other than that, the probability of one happening should depend on funding. Low funding means a high risk of accidents, and vice-versa.
Using nuclear power (at least the LWR this game probably has) should not be a get-out-of-jail card for your energy needs, neither should it be a declaration of certain death to your city.
There has to be some challenge at it.

[Tyrant]

Originally posted by Nigerian King of Scam:

This thread is mainly aimed at the devs.

Reactor grade fuel cannot explode as it is not weapons grade, which has to be highly enriched.

well yes and no to get a nuclear explosion you first need an Implosion in order to cause the reaction where the ''explosion'' is a result

ergo as you said a nuclear reactor cannot ''mushroom'' but it can still explode which is what tjernobyl did due to the steam pressure that built up while the reactor was low on water and they pumped in more rather then using the control rods to shut her down.

i agree on that the nuclear reactors ingame need more downsides
they should be powerfull yes but also very expensive to maintain as they are essentially a space saver when it comes to power production.

you could make it so once its build area around it is unusable for zoning due to ''safety standards'' or something

[Nigerian King of Scam]

Chernoyll was a disaster even before it exploded. You don't build a nuclear reactor without a dome around it.
Thing is, if nuclear power is too expensive ingame, everyone will just use advanced wind turbines. The disadvantages shouldn't be too huge. Nuclear power should require some infrastructure to work.

[Tyrant]

well they could upp the power output and make the reactor a land saver at the cost of higher upkeep as i said but not keep it at the level of the monument

you could also balance the advanced turbines some by having them interfere with wind/currents so you can place huge 5x5 of them lined up and generate lots of power that way cause that plot is already producing 500 MW and they are not on land so noice pollution is a non issue kinda makes them a bit unbalanced

[Kitchen Gun (TM)]

I think there should be newer reactors than something that looks like it was made in the 1960's for a game about the 21st century.

[Tyrant]

necro much?

[Slye_Fox]

Originally posted by Raxacoricofallapatorius:

I think there should be newer reactors than something that looks like it was made in the 1960's for a game about the 21st century.

You are bad for necroposting.

Some info: Nuclear fission technology has not progressed very far.
Even newly built fission reactors use near identical tech to those built 50-60 years ago.

[97cweb]

Some info: Nuclear fission technology has not progressed very far.
Even newly built fission reactors use near identical tech to those built 50-60 years ago.

Reactors have not change at all since then. Most are actually from that time. Maybe a "modern" reactor model could be the CANDU. See Pickering Nuclear Generating Station near Toronto. It looks like an oil refinery. https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Pickering+Nuclear+Generating+Station/@43.77845,-79.0676627,4828a,20y,40.71t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xc0d0e85f82b66695!8m2!3d43.8105036!4d-79.0616808

[tzar]

Originally posted by Nigerian King of Scam:

Chernoyll was a disaster even before it exploded. You don't build a nuclear reactor without a dome around it.
Thing is, if nuclear power is too expensive ingame, everyone will just use advanced wind turbines. The disadvantages shouldn't be too huge. Nuclear power should require some infrastructure to work.

How about having different tiers of nuclear power plants and other hideously-expensive-for-balance buildings? You could gamble with a cheap, disaster-prone and less powerful 70s-tier reactors, or you could take a loan and build a proper modern power plant. Disasters could be mostly averted by having excess highly trained workers in your city, and consequences softened by building it away/downstream/downwind from populated areas and having top-tier emergency services in place, like decontamination vehicles.

[MisterRobot2]

This has bothered me so much. Please add nuclear meltdowns! I don't think the nuclear power plants should be an easy solution to power. Then there is really no difference from nuclear power to the fusion power plant beside price and upkeep cost.

[tzar]

Originally posted by MisterRobot2:

This has bothered me so much. Please add nuclear meltdowns! I don't think the nuclear power plants should be an easy solution to power. Then there is really no difference from nuclear power to the fusion power plant beside price and upkeep cost. :nonplussed_creep:

A fusion reactor can overheat and contaminate the area too ;)
And a regular chemical plant can mess up the city greatly, like it did in Bhopal.

[K.N.]

+1 this way is realistic. I like your idea.

[Koopatejas]

eyyy i posted something like dis too

[JB]

I haven't yet found the need for one yet. Perhaps power production is a bit too easy? I am running a city of 57000 entirely on wind, hydro, and solar. I'd quite like to have nuclear but I don't need it and it's expensive!

[Karin Eegreid]

Actually NPP are useless, because dams may produce more electricity than NPP. For exapmle NPP make 640MW But a dam at a small river pruduces 1540MW. The larger is dam the better it is

[RED /(Weber)\]

You put a lot of good thought into it instead of "CO do this for me". Plus it adds a good challenge as you mentioned, I like it.