Thoughts on proposed Nuclear

[MadZuri]

A little learning is a dangerous thing ;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring :
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of Arts ;
While from the bounded level of our mind
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind,
But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endless science rise !
So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,
Mount o’er the vales, and seem to tread the sky ;
The eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last ;
But those attained, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthened way ;
The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,
Hill peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise !

I had a hard time deciding which board to place this in, but this should do. I guess I'll start off with an analysis of what the proposed nuclear fuel cycle means to an expert. The choice of mining Uranium, and having the isotope abundance identical to Earth, is a bit of a naive mistake. It shows that someone did enough research to know what those values are, but not enough to know WHY. Heavier elements are produced during Supernova Nucleosynthesis and in proportions highly dependent on star size. Then, between that event and the formation of the next star system, those abundances change as heavier elements decay. Earth's 0.7% abundance of U-235 among total Uranium is not only unique to our solar system, but also the age of our solar system and the length of time between the death of the previous star and the formation of our solar system. The chances of finding another planet that has EXACTLY the same abundance of Uranium is slim to null. Much younger, and you might get relatively high U-235, enough that the ore is reactor ready with only chemical treatment. Much older, and there wouldn't be enough U-235 left at all. If the planet formed from the previous star being too small, and there wouldn't be any elements heavy enough to support fission.

Suggestion: rename the ore to "Actinides". This is a vague enough term to be technically correct, no matter the age of the star system. Also, rename U-235 to "fissile material" and U-238 to "fertile material".

Next on the list is the enrichment process. I'd like to express my gratitude for making it as simple as possible, within reason. My only complaint is how the " "Kovarex enrichment process" is in the wrong machine. It should be in a small "breeder reactor". Also, if you used the naming convention from above, you wouldn't have to worry about magically turning U-238 into U-235, since it would technically be turning U-238 into Pu-239 (or Th-232 to U-233), without getting hung up the details. If you really want to, you could just have "nuclear material" the thing created in the small breeder reactor, put it into the centrifuges, and it would produce much better fissile/fertile material ratio than the ore.

Continuing with the end-enrichment result. The 5% U-235 screams a certain tech at me -- thermal light water reactor. Specifically, commercial ones. The same with abundance, this informs me that the tech was merely copied from industry standard without an understanding as to all the complex technological and political history behind it. I'll be blunt: there's no way in hell one would rationally choose to use that tech in the situation our Factorio Guy is in. I'll go more into detail in that if you really want, but I'd rather not.

Suggestion: (low priority) put only pure "fissile material" in the power reactors as a fuel source. This is pretty much what military reactors use, and the fuel cycle goes from 18 months to 10 years. This also means that you could just include the fissile and fertile material in the recipe of the reactor and not worry about ever fueling it. After a certain amount of energy produced, you could just have the reactor explode. This would be a ridiculously large number, and you should be able to check at any time how much life the reactor has (in Joules) but you wouldn't have to worry about cramming in the logistics of fuel. Just place and worry about piping, adjacent reactors, and such. Oh, and the inevitable explosion if you don't remember to dismantle it before its end-of-life.

I think it is hilarious that several proposed things were abandoned. The funniest is the reactor meltdown. I've written code for reactor simulations as a research assistant intern before, so I fully understand how much of a pain writing that code is. I feel like I don't need to give the suggestion I was planning before the FFF was released about how they should simplify the simulation instead of trying to figure out when it will explode from overheating. I do have one more suggestion: for the heat pipes. Instead of 1 big pipe, have 2 smaller pipes. In practice, heat delivery would be in the top pipe and cold return would be in the bottom pipe, to facilitate natural circulation in the event of power failure. It's a small graphical detail, but it would improve the looks and imply a circulation of some type of fluid. Molten salt or lead eutectic or something similar.

Just how much energy is in fissile material? I don't feel like doing the calculation again, so I'll just paste from the U-235 wikipedia entry:

The fission of one atom of U-235 generates 202.5 MeV = 3.24 × 10−11 J, which translates to 19.54 TJ/mol, or 83.14 TJ/kg.

This is equal to 23.1 million kilowatt hours per kilogram of fissile material.

Edit 1: I forgot an important suggestion regarding natural abundance of fissile and fertile material! It should be random, based on map seed, and global for that map. I'd like to see it anywhere between 0.2% and 5%, which is a pretty wide range. It would also lead to people seeking out and sharing good seeds again. If the decision is made to keep the 5% enrichment max for reactors, then if you're really lucky, you can just go straight from ore to fuel rods without enrichment. I still recommend using higher enriched fuel for the reactors, any number higher than 5% will do. Thorium is about 2.5 to 3.5 times as abundant as uranium, as it is the U-235 that decays very quickly (half-life of 703 million years) compared to U-238 (half-life of 4.47 billion years) and Th-232 (half-life of 14.05 billion years).

Best regards, from someone who has entirely too much education and experience in this whole nuclear mess.

[ssilk]

Great article.

[hansinator]

Best thoughts on proposed niclear I have read so far.
It makes me wonder why the Factorio guy might bother with nuclear and complex fuels while he's got portable fusion reactors in his pocket.

[golfmiketango]

Thanks for sharing Zuri, I learned stuff! If nothing else you've said here were to be implemented I really like the fissile/fertile language as it seems more friendly to suspension-of-disbelief in light of what you've told us here.

[summercold]

Thank you for adding some insights to the nuclear stuff, Zuri. I learned stuff today.

[MadZuri]

Thank you everyone for the kind words. The vast majority of the feedback concerning this has been off-site. Elsewhere, I have been accused of wanting this to be too realistic. I've always desired for nuclear power in the game to be magic rocks that just work. I knew that by attempting to make it realistic, the "real life" numbers would be copied without any understanding as to WHY those number are the values they are. I've already covered why the natural abundance is too specific. By trying to make it realistic, it becomes less so. What I wish to mention here is that the 5% enrichment for the power reactor is because of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and you're going to have a really hard time convincing me that is applicable in the game. It is absolutely silly that we would perfectly separate isotopes then downgrade the fuel to match political restraints unique to current-day Earth.

It also doesn't really fit the rest of the game to use details that specific. Miners produce ore which gets smelted. We don't bother with which specific smelting process it is, and there are many. The vague term is better. The same with oil, it is far better to use vague terms, like heavy, light, and gas. It would be a bad idea to call petroleum gas "benzene" or something specific like that, since not only is it too specific, but also wrong.

That's where I'm coming from here. I think that the nuclear power system, as proposed, is too specific and includes too many details. There's no reason to set abundance to exactly 0.7%, no reason to enrich to exactly 5%, no reason to even call it Uranium. Those are details needlessly thrown in to make it seem more realistic. I also think calling the things that refine the ore "centrifuges" is too specific. "Nuclear Refiner" would prolly fit the rest of the game better.

[inteljoe]

This kind of generalization fits pretty well.

I agree that it should be a simple process, or rather something not overtly complex.

Although one thing that has stuck to the back of my mind in the FFF's is that the need for more and more boilers. Having 12 or so steam boilers feed the engines is quite maddening. I think from a gameplay perspective there should be several layers of technology regarding to nuclear generation. Perhaps a lvl 1 would be focused on just basic power generation, not highly efficient but working. Lvl 2 would improve on efficiency by allowing you couple reactors together. Lvl 3 would improve the boiler/steam generation process so you wouldn't need x number of boilers to steam engines. And so on. That way by the time you get to level 10 you are producing xMW but only require 4 boilers or something along those lines. And then level 10+ can be an infinite tech that slowly increases the power generation of the steam engines so as to simulate the reactor becoming more efficient over time. Perhaps couple that with a higher demand for fuel so that the player would be required to have a working/sophisticated supply network in place before being able to support a high efficiency reactor. And/Or perhaps making the amount of pollution (radiation) released after an explosion over a larger area or larger amount.

Also I don't think it was stated how much energy 1 fully upgraded reactor will generate. I think one of the big things about adding nuclear power to the game is to limit how many solar panels are laid down. Would a nuclear reactor replace 1k, 10k, 100k solar panels? Or is it going to be slightly better than using coal? Basically the more power the reactor produces by itself should be equivalent to how complex and resource straining it is to set up. But it should generate more power, by a reasonable amount, than what we currently have available. Solar is basically free energy, but it's slow to generate. Coal, assuming you have enough of it is easy to mine and set up logistics. Nuclear should be complex but with that complexity offer great rewords.

I'm getting over the flu, so if this doesn't seem to make sense. Please forgive me.

[Optera]

Excellent read Zuri.
Just copying earth values and processes to an alien world without knowing why things are like this on earth makes no sense.
If renaming nuclear materials into something more ambiguous is all it takes to make more sense, please do that. It would fit better with the currently also very ambiguous item names for most advanced products like electronic circuits.

Speaking of free energy. Using spent oil wells to produce solid fuel for boilers also is unlimited free energy.

[Astrinaar]

I love that you spent your time writing this, it was a really interesting read.

I gotta be honest though, I would prefer if it was still called Uranium. It has a reputation, which fissile material does not, at least for me.
I have been looking forward to this nuclear stuff for a while, and the thing that makes it super interesting to me, is mostly the fantasy of creating a nuclear power plant like those we have on earth.
If it ends up not having the signature cooling towers and uses some material that is basically just a name, then it's gonna lose a lot of attractiveness to me.

Maybe I'm just stupid for not knowing what fissile/fertile material is, but this is how I see it =p

[Escadin]

Fascinating post. Way to get people interested into technology. Seriously, I'd love to attend you giving a lecture about this.

Regarding the power generated by nuclear plants, I have some ideas on that from a gamedesign perspective but they are likely not gonna be popular (or possible) because I practically ask to expand the scope a little.

However, let me just day dream for a second about how unlocking nuclear power should just elevate the game to a whole new level and balance it there. Admittedly, all of this is weird because we have portable fusion reactors already (wtf) but this is a chance to blow our minds gameplay wise. So, if you think about it wouldn't it be kinda weird to try and balance nuclear power with coal heaters and solar panels? If these 3 sources of electricity want to co-exists there need to be all the proper trade-offs in setup cost, research requirements, puzzle complexity (which are all good) but also a reletive balance in power output (which is not because bye bye mind blowy-ness).
I mean, if nuclear plants just wipe the floor with solar panels who's ever gonna use them again?

Instead of artificially gimping the power output they could introduce a whole new set of technologies with (previously) astronomical energy consumption. All of them very high tech and super expensive and most importantly, completely optional. Coal heaters and solar panels deserve a better place than as early to mid game crutches. So how are we gonna achieve that? What about that new techology? I've attempted to think of some answers:

1) I think nuclear power should require a large sized factory to be even affordable. I mean the kind of factory which handles rockets, destroyer drones, stack inserters and level 3 modules at a decent pace. Basically what is now an endgame base already.

2) They should up the complexity and cost of long distance electric power transmission. Add high voltage transformers, actual substations made out of mutliple parts the player has to puzzle together, etc. Whatever is necessary to make local power generation on your outposts seem like a good option. And since you can't put one of those bigass expensive nuclear plants everywhere solarpanels and the like will always have a niche.

3) Add super powerhungry machines to the game. Flying miningdrill bots, arms factories for tank parts, automated MG walkers, spidertron, whatever. All the cool stuff which is necessary to give you that "Well, let me just conquer this god damn planet. Entirely." feeling. And maybe some new rocketsilo-sized alien worms towards the "edges" of the world that you'd never see under normal circumstances (just to cover the negative space). Make a single walker use houndreds of MW in combat. Whatever. The cost of an entire factory like the one you've just spend 50 hours designing. Nuclear power will fix it for you.
However, since all of this coincides you'll have to make a decision whether you want to have AWESOMENESS or imbalancedly OP power generation.

4) Add a form of super pollution to nuclear power plants that makes aliens go for the final blow (literally end game). I mean perhaps they hate radiation even more than air pollution or they need the uranium (actinites) for breeding or food or feng shui. The important part is it puts a research and production effort pressure on YOU - the player. That way, people will want to be prepared before setting up such a plant instead of rushing it asap past any solar panel tech or eleborate steam engine setups.

I wish anyway ;P

[nr2117]

Right now, I'm scratching my head, thinking about what the utility of nuclear over coal or solar which is quite simple.

In real life, the first generation reactors were little more than bomb making facilities which boiled water to drive steam turbines. There's talk about liquid salt reactors using thorium which is more efficient, leaving less waste, and thorium is a byproduct of granite quarrying (thus why Radon gas is a danger in Cornwall and Scotland)

I'd want to see the reactors making weapons material so I can have a drone, or an orbital satellite drop great big polluting bombs. If the reactor can boil some water to drive steam turbines? Bonus.

[CLion]

I'm hoping the devs are discussing this?
I think it's making things easier, so maybe consider his suggestions better now than later?

I just want to to read "we've seen this thread and are thinking about it" please.^^

[waterlubber]

Very well researched.

I hope the devs either take this into thorough consideration or leave the nuclear reactors configurable/open enough that it becomes a moddable thing.
They shouldn't be something that you can just slap down like solar panels; nor should they be something that's only barrier is just a ridiculous cost (a la rocket silo, etc.)
Ideally, they should require careful automation and balance, just like a circuit network or blue science.