YES! I was waiting for long for a new way of generating electricity, specificially nuclear.
Allright, here are the things i personally believe that should be included in order for this system to work.
FIRST OF ALL
It has to be hard to build, and require tons of concrete, steel, and other components for everything regarding reactors, centrifugues etc, to compensate for the ludicrous amount of energy produced. Secondly, it should'nt be as simple as mining uranium then trhowing it in a reactor and BOOM, energy. It must require a nice production line with different stages.
DETAILS
allright, we have Uranium mines, which means, it has to be refined. I have almost no idea whatsoever regarding how uranium is refined, but the refinement should be a process that either consumes more time or resources than the average production. After the refinement, we should have to build the reactors, which will consume a lot of water, along with huge cooling towers. It would be nice to have steam clouds coming out of the towers, as a sign they are working preperly.
CONSEQUENCES
Nuclear energy in the game should be unstable, which means that, without proper cooling, it should overheat nad explode. Let's suppose that the reactor is
Automatically built with a containment layer included, just like Chernobyl, so the explosion wouldn't destroy everything in a radius, only the reactor itself, and liberate massive amounts of radiation in the area. Also, even if the Power Plant works well, it hsould generate toxic waste, which is inveitably radioactive, and likely would require a train to transport it to another area, since it would slowly kill the player to carry the waste in his inventory. Nuclear waste should be contained in barrels, which when containing such materials, are automatically labeled with the radioactive symbol.
RADIATION
the adverse effects of radiation are up to you ( as everything else ). I don't have many suggestions as to how it would affect the player, but i do regarding the aliens. radiation would make them evolve even faster than pollution, and also, would lure aliens in a wider range to the source of radiation.
Also, it would be nice if players had access to some form of protection from radiation. either a Radiation protection suit, or a device that would repel radiation arround the user, when connected to the power armor. But still, toxic waste cant be carried even using one of those.
Another nice crafting option, a Geiger Counter., if a player doesn't have one of those, he won't realise the radiation arround him until all of his orifices are bleeding and his skin starts falling off.
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS
The fun thing about factorio and most crafting games, is that most basic resources have a lot of different applications. Iron can be mass produced and redirected into a lot assemblies to be turned into something else. It would be nice if Uranium or whatever radioactive material used in the game could be used for other purposes. I could only think of two. One is a
Pesonal Nuclear Reactor, that would be inserted into power armor, generating much more energy than portable solar panels. There would be slots inside the PNR to insert Uranium tablets. The generation of rdiation should be minimal, and not even considerated, maybe.
The second applicatoin i could think of is the most obvious ever:
FUCKING NUCLEAR BOMBS. YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH
It should cost a sizeable amount of refined uranium, and there should be a separate, costly research for the making of those. The explosion radius shouldnt be too great, but almost everything in it should be obliterated. Massive amounts of radiation are liberated, as a drawback, luring insane amounts of aliens. I don't see the reason to use one of those right now, only in pvp. But it should be nice at some point in the development.
I was going to suggest how it could be launched. Maybe it would take time to activate once placed, and it would lure aliens in the process, or it could be dropped by an airplane, which is another whole ball of wax to be worked on, soooo, lets leave that away for the moment.
Thanks for the consideration, if there was any