Factorio Forums

As some of you might have noticed, I recently added thorium ore to the list in ores mod. it was mostly just to test out the new functions I added to the library, but now it's in my mod.

So, the question is... what should I do with it? I'm talking recipe ideas, how to process it, and any possible suggestions beyond nuclear fuel.

IRL you use thorium for:
- Gas light mantles
- For welding rods
- Coating tungsten filaments of magnetrons/electron guns
Looks like it is basically used when stuff gets hot.

- Isotopes of it decay into Uranium-233 which can be used for fission.
- Some old camera lenses contain up to 30% thorium-oxide

Also its radioactive so, by the game logic, it should also glow green. -.-

So, Uses in optics, Maybe some kinda exotic assembly, Or fancy ass laser/energy weapons.

Speaking of laser weapons, What about other types of energy weapons? like plasma? I sure wouldn't mind a plasma turret or two. Could have a different range/damage/fire rate tradeoff from laser.

BlackMoon wrote:So, Uses in optics, Maybe some kinda exotic assembly, Or fancy ass laser/energy weapons.

Speaking of laser weapons, What about other types of energy weapons? like plasma? I sure wouldn't mind a plasma turret or two. Could have a different range/damage/fire rate tradeoff from laser.

Plasma would rise up into the athmosphere. No use.

A directional electric-arc weapon would be possible. Even in real life.
Have a tower (Like the tesla-towers in command and conquer) and a seperate entity that you have to place where biters come from. Basically like a fence of pillars. The seperate pillars/poles would be computer controlled earthed or pulled out to attract that arc. The tower would sense where an enemy is and ground the pole behind him. The arc would search for the path of least resistance and probably go through the enemy.

Anyway... This could use thorium-oxide for the electrodes since they would get VERY hot. It could also use Thorium elementally: Thorium has superconductive properties under 1.7K
Just have to cool it down.

Distelzombie wrote:

BlackMoon wrote:So, Uses in optics, Maybe some kinda exotic assembly, Or fancy ass laser/energy weapons.

Speaking of laser weapons, What about other types of energy weapons? like plasma? I sure wouldn't mind a plasma turret or two. Could have a different range/damage/fire rate tradeoff from laser.

Plasma would rise up into the athmosphere. No use.

A directional electric-arc weapon would be possible. Even in real life.
Have a tower (Like the tesla-towers in command and conquer) and a seperate entity that you have to place where biters come from. Basically like a fence of pillars. The seperate pillars/poles would be computer controlled earthed or pulled out to attract that arc. The tower would sense where an enemy is and ground the pole behind him. The arc would search for the path of least resistance and probably go through the enemy.

Anyway... This could use thorium-oxide for the electrodes since they would get VERY hot. It could also use Thorium elementally: Thorium has superconductive properties under 1.7K
Just have to cool it down.

I like that, we could also harness and repurpose the heat with heat pipes

There is a fuel cycle for it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle
Money-Qoute:
"[...] as a higher melting point, higher thermal conductivity, and lower coefficient of thermal expansion."
Sooo my Idea would be a Thorium Reaktor with even more Heat-Output but needs a thorium fuel cells. And to spice things up in the nukleare department the depleted ones can be recycled to "normal" nukleare fuel cells.
Maybe there is a way to in cooperate molten salt into all of this? So the Thorium-Reaktors needs salt and will produce molten salt with is used in an Heat-Exchange? (maybe a bit too fancy)

some hours of googleing later ....

For the "creation" of nukleare fuel cells i would introduce (in thorium and nukleare fuel cells) fluorine since it is used by thorium tetrafluoride (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_tetrafluoride). Or maybe just as an "yield increase component"? It could be used in many other processes as well like aluminium (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorine). Only thing is where it should originate from? In the common industrial process either potassium_fluoride (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_fluoride) or hydrogen fluoride (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_fluoride) is used. Sadly both would need a new ore in the game. Since in real life fluorite, wich mixed with sulfuric acid produce hydrogen fluoride, occures with galena and quarz it could be either a "sorting" oder "mining" by product of galena and quartz.

for a full overview that would mean (or TL:DR):

sorting or mining of fliorite from galena and quartz.

fliorite + sulfuric acid -> hydrogen fluoride + calcium sulfat? (recycle to sulfat and stone?)
hydrogen fluoride + electrolyse = hydrogen + fluorine

fluorine + thorium = thorium fuel cell
fluorine + alumina + carbon = even more aluminium plate

yet again i might implement that whole thing as a choice to yield more, just to prevent the whole brain explosion thing.

This would become a second Angels-Ore mod then .,.

Distelzombie wrote:This would become a second Angels-Ore mod then .,.

well i can't exactly disagree there, but saying you get even more power and it's not more work then nukleare, defeats the point. Say turning thorium into thorium fuel cells in a nuklearisch manner yields even less then nuklear would be a way to balance this out. Since that would on the other hand turn into a "endless outpost marathon" my suggestion with fluorine as a way to increase yield and spicyness in the endgame.

Well Its a good idea to include molten salt reactors. But then the normal reactors should be able melt down. So you really have a reason for a safe reactor design that doesnt produce "more" energy irl.
You could make it equally good too. Then you can make both reactors at the same time and have a certain failsafe if one ore suddenly runs out

So, when i remember right. The first plan was to build a us bomber with a thorium reactor as energy source. Why not use this idea for a thorium fuel powered train?

Or maybe a thorium reactor using something like molted salt instant of coil or nuclear fuel. So, you can process some moltes salt in your base and bring this with the fluid waggons to your outpost.

Such a reactor would have a closed loop of molten salt. Actually two closed loops.
Also this would suggest the reactor uses molten salt as fuel.

To be honest, someone pointed out (I can't remember where, possibly Reddit?) that thorium doesn't really work as an upgrade to uranium. Radiation is emphatically not a concern in-game (thank goodness) and since we're not dealing with a complex socio-political climate - to whit, the only good bug is a dead bug - the concerns about nuclear proliferation aren't, well, concerns. So we can Davey Crockett the xenos to our hearts' content. Uranium already produces huge amounts of energy as it is, so a thorium fuel cycle probably isn't going to offer anything new on that front.

I'd avoid trying to find a niche to put it into, myself.

Distelzombie wrote:Well Its a good idea to include molten salt reactors. But then the normal reactors should be able melt down. So you really have a reason for a safe reactor design that doesnt produce "more" energy irl.
You could make it equally good too. Then you can make both reactors at the same time and have a certain failsafe if one ore suddenly runs out

No, because A) Boilers don't explode, which is quite a lot more common than a meltdown. It's outside the context of the game for there to be accidents that don't involve trains (unless you want a mod dedicated to industrial accidents, in which case I suggest starting with the chemical plants) and B) Molten Salt reactors are not actually safer, they're quite a lot more dangerous than standard reactors (I mean, so are solar panels, watt for watt, 'safer than nuclear' is a nearly impossible bar to clear). They "can't melt down" because they're already melted, this doesn't prevent overheat situations (there are other ways to ensure cooling if everything goes to shit, but they have to actually use them same as any other reactor), because they can still boil around 1500C. And the constant flow of fuel through the pipes means that leaks that are normally minor issues became potentially deadly to anybody inside the plant.

I have lots of ideas, but none of them involve thorium

British_Petroleum wrote:I have lots of ideas, but none of them involve thorium

Post them in the general discussion. Though keep in mind I'm not looking for ideas that involve scripting, so I'm mostly looking for new items, recipes and possibly factory ideas that work as an assembling machine (Electrolyser, chemical plant, water/air bottling pumps, and even oil refineries are all just modded assembling machines. The gas venting pump is a modded furnace, even my valve is just a modded storage tank with 2 pipe connections, one set to input, and the other to output)

On the thorium note, RSO isn't generating it. Is there a way I can fix it with modifying the CFG files? Or do I have to wait for RSO to update?

The Plasma weaponry idea would still work. Sure it rises based off earth-like air pressure but given enough velocity, I could see it as a top teir flamethrower weapon type.
It could also have a tiered system as well; more powerful magnets for higher velocities would increase range of the 'flame'.

if you use RSO, then it needs to be configured in RSO. Though I don't know how RSO handles my ores exactly, you might need to turn it on in the options menu.

you could edit RSO to add thorium as a new option.

RSO has thorium added - since it's disabbled by default you won't get it for now.
You would need to enable it by hand or wait for it to be used and enabled by default.

orzelek wrote:RSO has thorium added - since it's disabbled by default you won't get it for now.
You would need to enable it by hand or wait for it to be used and enabled by default.

do you currently look for my mods enabling the ores?