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Uranium deposits

Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 1:44 pm
by burner
At ores looks that deposit sizes and richness rise when you go more far away from base. With Uranium that looks to be opposed. Is there minimum amount uranium what get generated even you go far far away from base or is it so that when my base get big enough it goes to zero and I run out of uranium in my map by time?

Re: Uranium deposits

Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 3:06 pm
by Kelderek
You can't run out of any ore on an infinite map. You're just having bad luck with the specific map generation settings. Venture out further and you'll find more eventually.

As to whether or not uranium is a special case and has smaller patch sizes compared to other resources, I would imagine that to be true since it should be a rare resource by default, but it would never become a finite resource on an infinite map.

Re: Uranium deposits

Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 4:15 pm
by Serenity
Map generation can screw you over with certain resources. It's just random.

I had a small patch of uranium in my current base that was gone quickly. And there are two other small patches not worth getting. But I'm currently mining a 500k deposit that's not far away by train and some distance away from that is 600k.

Re: Uranium deposits

Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 4:43 pm
by ftbreizhbugs
burner wrote:At ores looks that deposit sizes and richness rise when you go more far away from base.
From what i know, only the richness increases when going further, size doesn't grow bigger.
If i remember correctly, the first raild world preset has defaut uranium patch size set to medium?, so you will not find very big (-> area) patch of uranium, however they will normally have an increasing amount of ore (at comparable size)!

Re: Uranium deposits

Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 4:56 pm
by Shokubai
Remember also, that as the game progresses you will lessen your need for raw ore due to Kovarex Enrichment and recovered spent fuel cells.

Re: Uranium deposits

Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 7:41 pm
by brunzenstein
Shokubai wrote:Remember also, that as the game progresses you will lessen your need for raw ore due to Kovarex Enrichment and recovered spent fuel cells.
After getting hold auf a sizeable quantity of U 238 is it possible to cycle them in a loop to get out the needed U235?
In other words: Is the 0.07% chance getting U 235 time depending or quantity dependent?
If yes this would mean that after a certain time one can stop mining raw uranium completely or for a very long time but relying on simply re-processing the same U 238 over and over in a loop

Re: Uranium deposits

Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 7:58 pm
by burner
brunzenstein wrote:
Shokubai wrote:Remember also, that as the game progresses you will lessen your need for raw ore due to Kovarex Enrichment and recovered spent fuel cells.
After getting hold auf a sizeable quantity of U 238 is it possible to cycle them in a loop to get out the needed U235?
In other words: Is the 0.07% chance getting U 235 time depending or quantity dependent?
If yes this would mean that after a certain time one can stop mining raw uranium completely or for a very long time but relying on simply re-processing the same U 238 over and over in a loop
Yes for electric production. But how about nukes? They will use quite lot of uranium. I have now try search big uranium deposits from far far away. I find huge (24milj) iron deposits etc but it really looks that uranium deposits gets smaller and more rare when other get bigger. I dont know is it just bad luck or what.

Re: Uranium deposits

Posted: Mon May 08, 2017 9:14 pm
by Kelderek
brunzenstein wrote:After getting hold auf a sizeable quantity of U 238 is it possible to cycle them in a loop to get out the needed U235?
You cannot process U-238 into U-235 apart from the kovarex enrichment process, but you can process raw ore for a 0.7% chance at some U-235. With the kovarex enrichment process it takes a handful of U-238 plus the "catalyst" of 40 U-235 to make 1 extra U-235 and a few less U-238. Each cycle takes about 50 seconds I think and you will lose 2-3 U-238 each time. So as long as you can sustain 2-3 U-238 every 50 seconds for each enrichment centrifuge you run, then you won't need to find much more ore. Just trying to get the initial 40 units of U-235 will net you several thousand U-238 which will last many hours of continuous enrichment.

Re: Uranium deposits

Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 4:34 am
by brunzenstein
burner wrote:
brunzenstein wrote:
Shokubai wrote:Remember also, that as the game progresses you will lessen your need for raw ore due to Kovarex Enrichment and recovered spent fuel cells.
After getting hold auf a sizeable quantity of U 238 is it possible to cycle them in a loop to get out the needed U235?
In other words: Is the 0.07% chance getting U 235 time depending or quantity dependent?
If yes this would mean that after a certain time one can stop mining raw uranium completely or for a very long time but relying on simply re-processing the same U 238 over and over in a loop
Yes for electric production. But how about nukes? They will use quite lot of uranium. I have now try search big uranium deposits from far far away. I find huge (24milj) iron deposits etc but it really looks that uranium deposits gets smaller and more rare when other get bigger. I dont know is it just bad luck or what.
The new setup in 0.15.x works like this: the further away a mine is found, the richer it is

Re: Uranium deposits

Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 5:03 am
by Aeternus
The small patches "not worth getting" might be worth plopping a mine or two on, and ferrying the uranium over with logistics bots (and use barrels for the low amount of acid you need over there). If you're low on the stuff, every bit helps.
Kovarex and fuel reprocessing however will not make your power plant loop all resources around indefinately. The Kovarex process allows you to turn U238 into U235 on basically a 1:1 ratio. Spent fuelcell reprocessing recovers 3 U238 from 5 used up cells, which is... not a whole lot. Using production modules for the fuel cell producers and refining centrifuges helps to generate more fuel from the same amount of ore, but you'll still need some ore. Not a lot, but some.

Personally, I'd not even bother to start fuelcell production until you have a few Kovarex centrifuges producing U-235.

Re: Uranium deposits

Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 10:41 am
by t-lor
Aeternus wrote:The small patches "not worth getting" might be worth plopping a mine or two on, and ferrying the uranium over with logistics bots (and use barrels for the low amount of acid you need over there). If you're low on the stuff, every bit helps.
Kovarex and fuel reprocessing however will not make your power plant loop all resources around indefinately. The Kovarex process allows you to turn U238 into U235 on basically a 1:1 ratio. Spent fuelcell reprocessing recovers 3 U238 from 5 used up cells, which is... not a whole lot. Using production modules for the fuel cell producers and refining centrifuges helps to generate more fuel from the same amount of ore, but you'll still need some ore. Not a lot, but some.

Personally, I'd not even bother to start fuelcell production until you have a few Kovarex centrifuges producing U-235.
i just have a very small Uranium outpost blueprint i plop over those. its got lasers and solar to defend itself. al the bits areready in a requester chest near my PAX station. When i find out, drive /train out, Add a few barrels of acid, a handufll of logistic bots. and when its done later, unload the chests, deconstruct and load the whole thing in my car/train again :)

Re: Uranium deposits

Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 11:14 am
by ratchetfreak
Aeternus wrote:The small patches "not worth getting" might be worth plopping a mine or two on, and ferrying the uranium over with logistics bots (and use barrels for the low amount of acid you need over there). If you're low on the stuff, every bit helps.
Kovarex and fuel reprocessing however will not make your power plant loop all resources around indefinately. The Kovarex process allows you to turn U238 into U235 on basically a 1:1 ratio. Spent fuelcell reprocessing recovers 3 U238 from 5 used up cells, which is... not a whole lot. Using production modules for the fuel cell producers and refining centrifuges helps to generate more fuel from the same amount of ore, but you'll still need some ore. Not a lot, but some.

Personally, I'd not even bother to start fuelcell production until you have a few Kovarex centrifuges producing U-235.
From my math it takes net input of 16 U238 and 10 iron per 10 fuel cells:

the U235 takes netto 3 U238 to make, you get back 6 U238 from 10 spent fuel cells. 19+3 - 6 = 16

1.6 U238 per fuel cell is far from free

Re: Uranium deposits

Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 1:01 pm
by Nich
Also it appears the conversion rate from ore -> U-235 is .0007%. Out of 80k ore I should have gotten 540 U-235 but it looks more like I will get 54. Subtracting the 8 I had turned into fuel rods it looks like I will survive by the skin of my teath

Re: Uranium deposits

Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 1:12 pm
by Aeternus
Have you taken into account the ability to drop Production modules at the fuel producing plants, and at the refining centrifuges?

Kovarex converts 1 to 1 on U238 to U235, so it doesn't really matter what you get if you throttle the Kovarex processing once you have the desired 1 to 19 ratio. I'll just call it "Uranium" for the calculations below. This process can't be improved with production mods.
10x Uranium Ore -> U238 or U235 / +20% (production) = 1.2 Uranium per 10 ore.
20x Uranium + 10x Iron Plate = 10x Fuel Cell. +40% (production) means 14 Fuel Cells from 20 Uranium. I'll ignore iron plates for now, we're calculating how much uranium ore we need.
Fuel Reprocessing recovers 3 Uranium from 5 Used Fuel Cells. Can't be improved with production mods, but the result gets shoved back through the fuel cell assemblers, so you get an additional 40% yield from the recovered uranium.

Each fuel cell therefor needs: (20/14) - ((3/5)*1.4) -> 0.5886 Uranium
Calculate how much ore: (0.5886/0.12) -> 4.9 Uranium ore needed per fuel cell.

Production modules are critical for this however. The values go up significantly if you don't load Assembler 3's with full Production module 3's, as well as your refiners. Production will be slower, but should easily keep up with the reactors. The few MW needed to keep this going are but a drop on even a single reactor's glowy heat exchanger... And if needed you can just put up a few beacons with efficiency modules to drop the power use down.
If you're really low on U mines, consider loading production modules on those as well to reduce mining speed, but make the field last longer.

[Edit] And if you throttle your reactors by denying them fuel if your plant is not carrying load, you can still save nuclear fuel with solar collectors too. The nuclear plant can then take what was once the role of the chemical plant at night.

Re: Uranium deposits

Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 3:03 pm
by AcolyteOfRocket
On my map there are Uranium deposits that are much bigger than the ones nearer my base (one is 9M, vs 700K).

Its Iron and Copper that are playing silly :lol:

Re: Uranium deposits

Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 6:08 pm
by Vykromod
Sweet heavens, how the heck are you guys getting numbers like this?!

On my world, Uranium deposits NEVER reach anything above 45k. That's literally the largest deposit I've ever had.

Re: Uranium deposits

Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 7:34 pm
by AcolyteOfRocket
Vykromod wrote:Sweet heavens, how the heck are you guys getting numbers like this?!

On my world, Uranium deposits NEVER reach anything above 45k. That's literally the largest deposit I've ever had.
Resources all reduced to lowest frequency (-2), size and richness all upped by +1 to balance out.

The 700K was a bit out of my base initially but once I had placed an oil outpost near it I could clear out the biters in that area.

The 2.2M is in an area away from my base that I recently cleared out and captured.

The 9M is well outside my base, even after expansion, but I can see it, and I want it :D

Re: Uranium deposits

Posted: Tue May 09, 2017 9:59 pm
by Serenity
Aeternus wrote:Have you taken into account the ability to drop Production modules at the fuel producing plants, and at the refining centrifuges?
Yeah, currently doing that in the fuel processing plant. 4 production 3 and a beacon with speed 3 to compensate. Works very well :)

Speed modules in the enrichment plants also works well to get through a backlog of U-238 of if you have too much of it