Factorio Forums

I wondered if the nuclear neighbor bonus of Factorio were inspired by some real world-phenomena, or is it more like an "effect transmission" unique to the Factorio universe.

It's completely made up. At least I'm not aware of anything that would resemble it in reality.
Also Kovarex enrichment process is made up for gameplay reasons.

I believe that neighbor bonus for nuclear reactors is really intended to reflect the real-world nature of the economies of size in a nuclear reactor; while at the same time attempting to keep the unique-entity number down.

The Kovarex process is actually a breeder reactor real-world process, but instead of using a reactor (which can be classified as "furnace" or something like "steam-engine" or "heat-engine" instead of "Assembler"); it utilizes an assembler that you already use for Uranium items, the centrifuge.

Kind of? In regular nuclear reactors the rate of reaction will depend on how much fissionable uranium compared to the amount of neutron absorbers is in place. More absorbers will slow things down, while having more uranium will speed it up. But that's really stretching it.

JDoolin wrote:I wondered if the nuclear neighbor bonus of Factorio were inspired by some real world-phenomena, or is it more like an "effect transmission" unique to the Factorio universe.

Yes and no. To make a real nuclear reactor, you need a condition called "criticality", which includes, given a set of other factors, a "critical mass". Bigger reactors are easier to make critical and and can burn more of their fuel load before the waste chokes the neutron traffic and they can't stay critical. The neighbour bonus reminds me of this, ...but real reactors don't work like this. In real life, you can improve your criticality situation by making each reactor bigger, but not by adding more reactors to a facility. Real reactors have a practical limit around 3GWt, at which point it becomes difficult to get heat out of them to the turbines in a practical manner, refuel them on a timely basis, and they start to blow up too big in accident scenarios.

Krazykrl wrote:The Kovarex process is actually a breeder reactor real-world process, but instead of using a reactor (which can be classified as "furnace" or something like "steam-engine" or "heat-engine" instead of "Assembler"); it utilizes an assembler that you already use for Uranium items, the centrifuge.

The real life breeder reactor solves the same problem (convert U-238 into usable fuel), but they are completely different processes.

Kovarex encrichment:
U-238 → U-235 → Energy + nuclear bombs

Breeder reactor (2 simultaneous reactions):
U-238 → Plutonium → Energy + nuclear bombs
U-235 → Energy + nuclear bombs

The breeder reactor is much more complicated, while adding little new gameplay.

If you wanted to go for more realism while using only 2 resources, I would do this:
- Rename Uranium-238 to "Depleted uranium."
- Rename Uranium-235 to "Nuclear fuel".
- Rename Uranium fuel cell to "Nuclear fuel cell".
- Remove Kovarex enrichment.
- Add a new recipe, "Advanced nuclear fuel reprocessing." It takes 5 Used up nuclear fuel cell and gives 6 Depleted uranium + 1 Nuclear fuel.

https://mods.factorio.com/mods/GotLag/Nuclear%20Fuel implements a reasonable approximation of breeder cycles and MOX fuel as a replacement for Kovarex enrichment, if you want to try it