the nuclear waste "problem" solved! (also mutant plants are useful!)

[kingjames488]

so I figured I'd finally get the "mine the gap" achievement while also messing around with nuclear reactors a bit and built a big ol' rad silo with a waste cooler.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3664977565

it's been bothering me for a while that there's been no use for nuclear waste. I always figured it was some sort of "reality check" about nuclear power klei included in the game... but I've been determined to find a use for it. if only I could make it into a tile, I thought... it might have a use. so while waiting for space mining to happen I did some experimenting...

my early attempts were total failures, the stupid waste just kept forming debris when trying to cool a pool of it into tiles... then I thought to myself "how do you form tiles"... one way is to hook up a glass forge to hydroponics tiles and decontrstuct or empty them when the molten glass is below it's "freezing point"... so I tried that with nuclear waste and it worked but only produced 5kg tiles... great I thought, I can just do this several hundred times for each tile(lol). then I thought to try to put some nuclear waste on the farm tile first, and BAM! the 5kg from the farm tile merged with the debris forming supertile!

so I got to work creating a wild mustant farm! set up the hydroponics tiles, piped in liquid nuclear waste, setup bins to hold the volume of waste I wanted each tile to be(-5kg for the waste in the farm), setup the aquatuner and radiant pipes above the hydro farm tiles; then decontrstucted all the bins so I had 800kg of waste on each tile(could have used less)and 1500kg on the end tiles(couldn't have used less, the end tiles need more.) and emptied all farm tiles.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3664916305
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3664934039
then wild planted mutants(mostly)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3664976078
I went with a cold farm because that's what I had mutant seeds for to try it out, but it could go up to about 26C before the waste melts so could grow anything under that temp.
as an added bonus the wild plants auto-harvest themselves so the dupes never have to enter the room and get explosed to rads :D.

since you can theoretically make a tile of any mass using this method you could also:
-freeze all of your waste into a large tile and repeatedly dig it out to delete half the mass each time
-do the same thing to create a mega radblock for generating rad bolts or w.e. the rad generation scales with the mass of the tile

as far as I'm aware no one has done this before... everything I hear about nuclear waste says it has no real use other than to compress it for radbolts and there's no good rad source to grow mutants... though it could be a known thing?

[gimmethegepgun]

You could probably make a row above where you want the plants if you wanted to make farmed mutant plants, and still get enough radiation for them.

Originally posted by kingjames488:

everything I hear about nuclear waste says it has no real use other than to compress it for radbolts

Liquid Nuclear Waste has the second-highest SHC of all liquids, behind only Super Coolant, and the second-highest non-metal TC as well (also behind only Super Coolant), and a pretty good temperature range (26.85C-526.85C), so it's a pretty great coolant as long as you aren't trying to freeze things.

[kingjames488]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

You could probably make a row above where you want the plants if you wanted to make farmed mutant plants, and still get enough radiation for them.

Originally posted by kingjames488:

everything I hear about nuclear waste says it has no real use other than to compress it for radbolts

Liquid Nuclear Waste has the second-highest SHC of all liquids, behind only Super Coolant, and the second-highest non-metal TC as well (also behind only Super Coolant), and a pretty good temperature range (26.85C-526.85C), so it's a pretty great coolant as long as you aren't trying to freeze things.

the nuclear waste has an awful range of effect, it froms from 272 rads to just 100 rads 1 tile away and is totally gone 2 tiles away. ;/
also the wild farm requires no inputs so there's basically no cooling needed other than for the slight thermal leackage and to cool the sweepers/light.

you're right about the thermal properties though(which also makes the farm pretty stable and not overly prone to melting). it's got that pesky thing where it leaks out of everything though.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by kingjames488:

the nuclear waste has an awful range of effect, it froms from 272 rads to just 100 rads 1 tile away and is totally gone 2 tiles away. ;/

Do you know what tile of the plant needs to have sufficient radiation? If it's only the top one then you could have the nuclear waste directly above them, and make vertically-oriented autosweepers appropriately spaced out to harvest instead of the normal way of putting them above the plant.
The plants that are only 1-tile tall shouldn't have any problems at all this way, either. If you used enough waste you might be able to make it so that you could put the sweeper above them as well.

also the wild farm requires no inputs so there's basically no cooling needed other than for the slight thermal leackage and to cool the sweepers/light.

I wasn't suggesting it for cooling the plants, I was merely pointing out that it does have a use.

it's got that pesky thing where it leaks out of everything though.

I forgot about that, but it doesn't leak out of pipes, and it won't leak out of things that are submerged in > 1000 kg of liquid or gas, so you could keep a steam chamber above 1000 kg and the AT would be fine.

[kingjames488]

the plant seems to count the base tile, in my setup it's 272 rads 1-tile above the 800kg waste tiles and only 100rads 2-stiles above it and the plants are registering having enough rads. but the auto sweepers can't harvest the plants, that mechanic relies on them being wild planted and set not to be auto-harvested. I'm not sure what goal you have in mind with the tiles being above but I think it's not the same as mine(though not to say it's not without merrit)

the leak mechanics do seem to be interesting though. I'd not heard that they don't leak over 1000kg of pressure(though that's a bit of a challenge with steam :P); the leaking possibly actually generates waste though? unless it's just a rounding thing where the pipe still says it has 10kg in it...

[PepeMilagro]

As far as I have noticed, LNW (= liquid nuclear waste) only oozes out of pumps. It's fine once in pipes or in a reservoir.
Moping it up however requires immediate pick up (= priority "Red !") by dupes or will quickly revert to puddles.

For pumping it up, I just submerge said LNW with a liquid of lower density, such as water.
Put a filter after the pump, move the LNW, reroute any water back to the pump area. Eventually all the LNW gets evacuated.

Anyways, nice post OP. It was really interesting following your adventure.
I guess some paths in OnI are just dead ends. At least for now. To be honest, I never had energy issue so bad nuclear power was the only solution left. So I guess it's a bit of a vanity project to ever build a reactor.

[Blahramewe]

Once you're ready for gas grass, try to get them to be Exuberant. They are the way and the (lack of) light.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by kingjames488:

but the auto sweepers can't harvest the plants, that mechanic relies on them being wild planted and set not to be auto-harvested.

When I said harvest with the auto-sweepers I meant that the sweepers pick up the stuff from them.

I'm not sure what goal you have in mind with the tiles being above but I think it's not the same as mine(though not to say it's not without merrit)

If you can put them above instead of below, then you can use Farm or Hydroponic Tiles to domestic-grow them instead of wild-grow.

I'd not heard that they don't leak over 1000kg of pressure(though that's a bit of a challenge with steam :P)

You'd probably need to boil it before running the LNW in since otherwise you might have less than 1000 kg of water submerging it during the boiling process, but the Tepidizer puts out stupefying amounts of heat without really all that much electricity, so that'd get you most of the way there on its own.

the leaking possibly actually generates waste though? unless it's just a rounding thing where the pipe still says it has 10kg in it...

According to the wiki, when it leaks out of a building it duplicates a small amount of waste. If the building is submerged such that it doesn't leak, then this shouldn't be a problem.

[sam]

Originally posted by kingjames488:

you're right about the thermal properties though(which also makes the farm pretty stable and not overly prone to melting). it's got that pesky thing where it leaks out of everything though.

I used it in a Aquatuner in my research reactor room, so it leaking didn't really matter. You do need to refill it every now and then, since it leaks a little from all machinery that uses it (I think?)

Dunno how much of a difference it made, but I figured I might as well use it somehow.

[kingjames488]

so I did a bit more research and found out a few things...
first off, you can't create an infinitely large tile with this method, the maximum mass seems to be about 10 tons. this tile was like 9994kg and it can generate about 1200 rads.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3665947648
so... that's not too bad I guess. could make a couple 10ton tiles around some rad generators and have infinite radiation anywhere.

second, I apparently did everything right the first time... trying to re-create this was a bit of a headache.

I wanted to build a warm example that could do things like bristles but I didn't want to build a cooling loop for it... turns out that's kinda the secret. if you don't pre-chill the farm tiles and surrounding area the tiles take damage and leak waste all over the place, but if the tiles are cool enough the waste will say "not emitting: too cold". then the waste in the farm tile needs to be under 24C to form the tile when emptied.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3665992543
I managed to build it with just wheezeworts, but without some sort of cooling to counter the heat from the light it would eventually heat up. these farms kinda need some form of heat crontrol to be stable, though not much since the wild plants have no inputs. I'm pretty sure bringing in oxylite at like 20C will be enough to counter the 500DTU from the light.

the fact that there's a mechanic where the waste isn't emitted when too cold seems to indicate this might be an intended mechanic that's gone undiscorcered(or at least largely unknown) for years? ;o