What is your approach to nuclear power?

[Arch]

When you build nuclear power plants, do you create everything from raw materials, or do you siphon off materials from other factories? For example, do take stators for the electromagnetic control rods from a stator factory or build them from scratch with copper ore, iron ore, coal, and [possibly] caterium ore?

Also, for those doing mega factories, how much nuclear power do you actually use? Do you get close to the 630GW of power from uranium fuel rods?

[lpnlizard27]

My first nuclear plant was a mess bringing in goods with drones from factories that were not dedicated to nuclear. And it was a nightmare to get through when it was in operation.

My second nuclear facility I made all the supporting factories first and dedicated to that facility. I also learned from the radiation last time and built walkways and cat walks for navigating areas when it's in operation.

[ArtemusGintry]

The Radiation is unreal. I thought I had enough room for the factory group and all but it still is killing me 15 squares out. I had to move my Hazmaz so that I can get it before I died. shame that walls and structures don't block it.

[The Big Brzezinski]

I ran a whole bunch of raw materials out to the west coast on rails and processed everything on site. Not my usual method, but I wanted to keep the radiation hazard contained.

[Alyssa Princess]

I built my nuke plants over water for easy access to it and droned in fuel rods and droned out the waste.

[JaaxXii]

Originally posted by ArtemusGintry:

The Radiation is unreal.....shame that walls and structures don't block it.

Yeah, just like in real life

[kLuns]

Do everything related to uranium on the node including reclycing and sinking, bring in the other stuff processed.

[Serious]

I always make an nuclear area where everything is produced from raw materials all the way to the fuel rods.
2 U and 1 Pu reactor for the first hours so i know everything is working, then i build a second Pu.
As you need lots of water for them you should build them close to the ocean.

[MJS WARLORD]

on my second base above the water falls i made a very long line of foundation blocks and kept going until the games parameters said huge radiation , their way of saying you cant go any further.

I then worked backwards building the particle accelerators first and carried on working backwards making all the other machines needed to make nuclear power , by the time i had finished the nuke area as i call it was well away from all my other machines , i also made a long conveyor from the particle accelerators so that i can send the plutonium pellets to another set of machines so that they can be made into something that you can eventually dispose of in the awesome sinks

at the point where uranium ore is needed i made a tall glass tower and put vertical conveyors in it , i then made a horizontal glass walkway that goes above the whole base and this means i can walk around the main part of the base without the need to wear hazmat as the radiation is way above me.

[ssutcliffe]

When I made my nuclear plants, I built all the things using resources nearby, except for nitric acid (nitrogen was so far away that it would have been exactly the same piping it there as piping the built nitric acid). Whatever works though!

To deal with radiation, I used super fast mark 5 belts for all things radioactive, and load balanced everything radioactive, so there were never any stockpiles. For cleanup, I made sure there were enough units to never get anything backed up.

That worked well enough so that I could stand next to fuel cell manufacturers and on top of the mixers without getting irradiated. Even the Particle Accelerator didn't get radiation unless you were right on top of it. If any backup happens though, you will get irradiated. I also build it with a switch that goes to the uranium miner, so when testing it, if something doesn't work, flicking the switch burns off the radioactive items, because the uranium just runs out. That also lets you easily fix any problems with cleanup, because given time everything goes away when you turn it off. Then if say, you need to build an extra manufacturer because you have more waste then expected or something got disconnected, you can do that stuff without getting irradiated just by turning off the uranium and letting the fuel run out.

The waste was sent using conveyors that were only at level 2, so they weren't super high, but it was enough to make radiation from the waste moving to cleanup a non-issue. Mark 5 belts are very fast.

I also found it better to just completely avoid using mark 2 pipes, and instead used a dedicated mark 1 pipe for each reactor. It seems the mark 2s are still bugged (at least on update 5). With Mark 1's, the pumps and pipes seemed to actually work as they are supposed to - and if head lift was good, water didn't magically disappear and make the reactors starve I found using 3 water extractors under clocked to 100 connected to a mark 1 pipe worked flawlessly. I think that anything that added up to 300 would work - also tried a single extractor clocked to 300, and that worked as well on a mark 1 pipe.

Trying Mark 2 pipes at 600 split to two reactors just never seemed to work reliably, no matter how you put pumps or set up the extractors. Maybe that's fixed in Update 6, but using the stable branch Update 5 it definitely didn't work.

[Mojo]

I avoid it :)

[H. Guderian]

I could have built a nuclear powerplant far away from my main factory. But no, I built it adjacent to my main facility. I bring in Uranium Ore and Sulfur ore by train and process it in my main facility. If you walk through the facility I've been adding ominous lighting.

And I bring in water By Train. Because I Can.

This feed about 12 un-clocked reactors very comfortably high atop the facility.Waste is then shipped down below and travels to a waste processing area down in the power plant's basement, and further is moved to a Plutonium processing separate building in a crater.

Any complicated materials like control rods, oscilators, etc are borrowed from the main factory. Uranium, Sulfur and Water are trained in.

I guess I could build my nuclear powerplant by water...but that would make my main factory less of a glorious urban-industrial nightmare

[Shahadem]

Originally posted by JååxXii:

Originally posted by ArtemusGintry:

The Radiation is unreal.....shame that walls and structures don't block it.

Yeah, just like in real life :neuro:

Concrete and lead are pretty good at that...