Is the nuclear reactor worth building?

[the.momaw]

It's going to eat Uranium right? Uranium doesn't grow on trees...Or anywhere else. There's a finite supply of it. Meanwhile my thermal generator seems to provide more than enough power to keep things going. Even if you don't want to site your base near a volcano, power relays are cheap and effective.

Not really seeing the point :-/

[Psicraft]

Every power source creates more and more lag for a base, so that's about the only good reason to use one of these.

Bugs!

[profitX10]

No, their power output assuming around 100 watts square meter for solar ( noon day sun, Sahara desert) would be around 600 watts. That would place nuclear power at less than 1 millionth the power of a commercial reactor. I am also pretty sure the uranium usage is 1 to 3 billion times per watt of a commercial pressurized water reactor with the uranium lasting abour 1/60th of the time between 18 month refuelings.


Assuming .7% uranium 235 concentration the reactors at my best guess should produce somewhere around 400000 energy a minute and last about 180 game days. If they did it as a breeder molten salt add 180× 99 to that number of days

[Psicraft]

There really isn't a way to make a nuclear reactor believable. If it had sufficient output and duration, nobody would use anything else. If it requried a long and arduous fuel processing cycle, few would play long enough to get one built.

[hmkagm]

Originally posted by the.momaw:

It's going to eat Uranium right? Uranium doesn't grow on trees...Or anywhere else. There's a finite supply of it. Meanwhile my thermal generator seems to provide more than enough power to keep things going. Even if you don't want to site your base near a volcano, power relays are cheap and effective.

Not really seeing the point :-/

Yes they are but not on there own. I run my base with one nuclear powerstation and 4 bio reactors with a backup thermal generator. The trick to get the best from any power source is to use a mix.

[Phaota]

I prefer the nuke reactor for my base.

[Dala]

Build everything, the more reactor type you have the more option you have.

[Man]

Originally posted by profit:

No, their power output assuming around 100 watts square meter for solar ( noon day sun, Sahara desert) would be around 600 watts. That would place nuclear power at less than 1 millionth the power of a commercial reactor. I am also pretty sure the uranium usage is 1 to 3 billion times per watt of a commercial pressurized water reactor with the uranium lasting abour 1/60th of the time between 18 month refuelings.


Assuming .7% uranium 235 concentration the reactors at my best guess should produce somewhere around 400000 energy a minute and last about 180 game days. If they did it as a breeder molten salt add 180× 99 to that number of days

Considering it requires uranium to build we can reasonably assume that it is a fission reactor not a breeder that would require the much more common element Thorium as a fuel source. Also in terms of real estate a fission reactor needs many times more than a breeder would. Of course the down side of breeder reactors is the radioactive byproduct that could be potentially weponised.
This is the major hurdle as to the reason why up till recently no one has made a real attempt to make a cost effective working prototype. I say up until recently as china has started working on the technology but its decades away.

[Claybot]

Nuclear for deep base that are not close to a Thermal source unless you want to use Power Transmitters.
Thermal or Solar for everything else.

My set up at the moment
Main Base - 2 x Thermal 3x Solar
Resource Base - 3 x Solar
Deep Base 1 - Nuclear
Deep Base 2 - Nuclear

[profitX10]

Originally posted by Dave:

Originally posted by profit:

No, their power output assuming around 100 watts square meter for solar ( noon day sun, Sahara desert) would be around 600 watts. That would place nuclear power at less than 1 millionth the power of a commercial reactor. I am also pretty sure the uranium usage is 1 to 3 billion times per watt of a commercial pressurized water reactor with the uranium lasting abour 1/60th of the time between 18 month refuelings.


Assuming .7% uranium 235 concentration the reactors at my best guess should produce somewhere around 400000 energy a minute and last about 180 game days. If they did it as a breeder molten salt add 180× 99 to that number of days

Considering it requires uranium to build we can reasonably assume that it is a fission reactor not a breeder that would require the much more common element Thorium as a fuel source. Also in terms of real estate a fission reactor needs many times more than a breeder would. Of course the down side of breeder reactors is the radioactive byproduct that could be potentially weponised.
This is the major hurdle as to the reason why up till recently no one has made a real attempt to make a cost effective working prototype. I say up until recently as china has started working on the technology but its decades away.

Uranium breeder reactors are old hat actually, they breed uranium 238 into plutonium 239. They ran one here in michigan for a while. The thorium lftr is honestly a better design but given the gameplay and atomic rearrangement tech a molten sodiun breeder would be like building a wagon after completing Apollo 11.

[Man]

Originally posted by profit:

Originally posted by Dave:

Considering it requires uranium to build we can reasonably assume that it is a fission reactor not a breeder that would require the much more common element Thorium as a fuel source. Also in terms of real estate a fission reactor needs many times more than a breeder would. Of course the down side of breeder reactors is the radioactive byproduct that could be potentially weponised.
This is the major hurdle as to the reason why up till recently no one has made a real attempt to make a cost effective working prototype. I say up until recently as china has started working on the technology but its decades away.

Uranium breeder reactors are old hat actually, they breed uranium 238 into plutonium 239. They ran one here in michigan for a while. The thorium lftr is honestly a better design but given the gameplay and atomic rearrangement tech a molten sodiun breeder would be like building a wagon after completing Apollo 11.

I haven't played the game yet so I wouldn’t know about the in game "atomic re-arrangement tech" but in that case you are probably correct and know a lot more about the game than I do. I was thinking in real terms by today’s standards of technology not futuristic spacefaring race of made up tech. Once the game is closer to completion or fully complete I will probably buy, based on the reviews at the time of course. So far so good though looking at what’s been said about the game, hope it stays that way to the end, whenever that maybe.

[Lord Of Dorkness]

Uranium is very easy to get, once you can reliably get deep enough. And fuel rods is one of the few things that currently use the otherwise useless lead.

Given how you get a thousend energy a pop from those, I'd say that the nuclar reactor is worth it. As a strong back-up to the other types, if nothing else.

[0°H2O]

at my 4 story fishtank, moonpool/scanner base i have a nuc reactor running 4 rods. have had to replace one for the first time a few in game weeks ago. not bad. i did have 2 thermal reactors running my base with 2 solar panels. i repurposed the solar panels to a second smaller out post. i then repurposed the 2 thermal reactors with a 3rd built by the lava tube, for a industrial research site with a battery recharge facility and dual medkit boxes. [stop by and load up to go on extended away missions]
i want to see if i can bridge the creepvine ravine from my thermal base to my nuc base to have a secondary source for my 4 story fishtank and moonpool/scanner base.
i have entered another phase of play as i am not dodging everything any more. i am actualy trying to coopt the agressive creatures in the shallows and playing with engineering so to speak.

[SgtLone]

I have a base going with a few solar panels, 2 thermal reactors, and a nuclear reactor.
There are 3 rods in the nuclear reactor and it hasn't gone through one of them yet since I built the reactor and put the rods in a few in-game days ago, so no they don't eat through rods that fast.

[Fre]

I live down in the Lost River, and I can confirm that a mix of Thermal and Nuke is the way to go. Resources do respawn, and uranium spawns in abundance in the Lost river, so that's easy. My only issue is Lead, but I just need to make a trip to the surface to get that

[JohnnyMagnet]

They're good for bases with no light source