Nuclear disasters

[hooiberg]

I like this idea.

It is possible now to replace literally many thousands and thousands of solar panels and accumulators with a relatively small area of nuclear power generation.
While the nuclear parts are fairly expensive to make, another drawback would be nice.

On the other hand, the risk could be fairly easily circumvented by building two nuclear power plants, and rebuilding one when it goes full oopsie.

[Nefrums]

I like the idea of having a risk associated with nuclear power, just like IRL.
"With great power comes great responsibility", and that would be a literal implementation of this principal.

One way to model it would be to lower the HP of the reactor with random small hits while it generates power.
To mitigate it the player would have to periodically reaper the reactor, possibly with building bots.

In the case of an active reactor's HP depleting an explosion should happen akin to a nuclear bomb.
That would encourage building nuclear power plants in remote locations with heavy defenses against biters.

It is a common misconception that a reactor can explode. Setting of a nuclear bomb is hard. It requires precise timing and lots of neutron reflectors etc.
If a reactor looses cooling and is not shut down it will continue to heat up and eventually the core will melt and radioactive molten metal will destroy the reactor, but it will not explode.
This is what happened on Three mile island outside Philadelphia, the core melted and destroyed the reactor, the buildings are still standing.

A more realistic game mechanic would be that the reactor would start to take damage when it was not adequately cooled. It could even result is large amounts of pollution being released if the reactor was destroyed.

Irl most reactors have several meters thick concrete walls to prevent anything leaking out in case of the core melting. (the reactor in Chernobyl didn't have that, the one in Philadelphia had)

[voddan]

It is a common misconception that a reactor can explode.

Well, technically you are correct - a modern reactor will shut down itself before any damage is done even if everything goes wrong (including electronics).
But wouldn't it be cool if the power of the atomic bomb could be turned against the played if handled without proper care?
Suppose the model of the in-game reactor is an old one which can explode if malfunctions. What then?

[Nefrums]

It is a common misconception that a reactor can explode.

Well, technically you are correct - a modern reactor will shut down itself before any damage is done even if everything goes wrong (including electronics).
But wouldn't it be cool if the power of the atomic bomb could be turned against the played if handled without proper care?
Suppose the model of the in-game reactor is an old one which can explode if malfunctions. What then?

It does not mater if it is a new design or a old one, it still cannot explode, it is not a bomb. if everything geos wrong and it is not shut down then the core will melt. And even if molten metal is dangerous and can cause fires, it does not spontaneously explode.

[mrvn]

Try out the Reaslistc Reactors mod: https://mods.factorio.com/mod/RealisticReactors

With that the reactor explodes when it exceeds 1000°C. You have to either transport the heat away into heat exchangers or into coolant (and then cooling tower). Alternatively you can scram the reactor but that involves a long downtime before it can be started again.

No big explosion destroying surrounding buildings though. A meltdown isn't really destructive, not like an atomic explosion, so that part makes sense. There is a big cloud from the destruction but that seems to be only for show. Doesn't do damage or cause pollution. That part needs to be fixed. Also I think a meltdown should cause evolution. To be extra mean it could also agravate the aliens. So not only do you loose power for your lasers (as soon as your steam reserve runs out) but also you get swamped by aliens at the same time.

[eradicator]

It does not mater if it is a new design or a old one, it still cannot explode, it is not a bomb. if everything geos wrong and it is not shut down then the core will melt. And even if molten metal is dangerous and can cause fires, it does not spontaneously explode.

Technically technically a reactor meltdown can cause explosions, but not the kind caused by a bomb. Here's a quote from a description of what happend at Chernobyl NPP:

There were initially several hypotheses about the nature of the second explosion. One view was, “the second explosion was caused by the hydrogen which had been produced either by the overheated steam-zirconium reaction or by the reaction of red-hot graphite with steam that produced hydrogen and carbon monoxide.” Another hypothesis was that the second explosion was a thermal explosion of the reactor as a result of the uncontrollable escape of fast neutrons caused by the complete water loss in the reactor core. A third hypothesis was that the explosion was caused by steam. According to this version, the flow of steam and the steam pressure caused all the destruction that followed the ejection from the shaft of a substantial part of the graphite and fuel.

The first explosion was supposedly a coolant-steam explosion. Also Fukushima had hydrogen explosions too. Additionally fires transport radiactive particles up- and outwards of the site and into adjacent regions.

For a mod implementation i'd say that a massive (1M?) one-time pollution burst would be a good simulation as it would aggro the biters but with a time delay as the pollution slowly spreads outside (like it happend with the chernobyl cloud). Bombs on the other hand actually cause significantly less permanent contamination.

From a "realism" standpoint it would also be possible to make the player wait until the reactor debries has cooled down completely after a meltdown. I.e. when a reactor melts down replace it by a reactor type "debris" entity, insert some fuel into the debris to simulate heat up (debries needs to have temperature uncapped), then make the player wait. Maybe simulate a continuous fire in the area for added realism. Though honestly that's a lot of work that imho most players would never see becaues they just load the latest savegame after a meltdown.

[sathill]

Solar is op not nuclear. Build big factory without mods. First thing you see it that you need prod modules in everything or you cant build enough outposts in time. Then you see base gets big and its nice thing to get speed modules in beacon because robots work medicore in big factory. Suddenty 4 reactors full time its low number. Real story.
So for nuclear player need to produce acid for uranium minning (rafinery setup). Make outpost fio uranium. Next step is uranium
enrich pricessing where knowegle about circuit network is needed. Then make fuel cells and deliver. Make circuit for not wasting cells when not needed. Make empty cell recycling process. Electruc failure may cause spiral of death because no acid for minning, no enrich, no elec for cells and transport.

Compare it to solar. Make solar+battery factories. Place bigass blueprint (or few). No pollution. No electric spiral of death. No minning outpost for fuel.

[bobucles]

Nuclear reactors don't nuke. They CAN'T nuke. The difference between an atomic bomb and a reactor overload is just too different. A reactor power dial gains or loses power output based on a scale of seconds and hours. A bomb power dial affects output on a scale of milliseconds and smaller. Unless you're literally building your reactor walls out of C4, the worst case scenario is a filthy slag mess that no one wants to touch. Granted, that is a pretty nasty scenario to deal with all on its own.

Water on the other hand DOES explode. Every single reactor explosion in history happened when a reactor overheated its water supply and made the water go POP. (Even that one time where they never cleaned their water so they ended up cooling their reactor with enriched water. Oops!) Anyway when the water explodes it tends to send all the nuclear bits flying around. That's why reactors have huge heavy covers to keep it in.

There are ways to build very safe reactors today. A lot of it depends on smart machines programmed with decades of hard earned experience. The most surefire solution against a big disaster is to make the reactor small. Small things make small problems, after all.

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I'm not sure nuclear disasters have a place in game. While there are enough player tools to make smart reactors that don't overheat, the game's main focus doesn't really care about nuclear power.

If I were to go along with it, I do think that a solitary reactor should be 100% safe no matter what a player does. That is, a reactor doing absolutely nothing and cooking fuel should be able to vent 40MW of overheat all day. It might be fun to make reactors more fragile as the player builds up the adjacency bonus. Basically you get a bit of risk vs. reward for the bonus. So a 1x2 reactor might safely vent 80MW of power, but it produces 160MW. If that excess energy isn't used the reactor can take up to 80MW of damage. A 2x2 can vent 160MW but produces 640MW, leaving 480MW of potential that has to be carefully managed. Bigger reactors can give a huge bonus but at the same time can break down very quickly if they don't have a fuel control. Might be cool I guess.

[Atlas]

I don't think reactors should be unstable at all. No machines in Factorio can break down, if they did, then at some point all progress would stop because you would spend all the time fixing them. This applies to reactors too. If you built a power hungry megabase, you wouldn't be doing anything other than keeping your eye on the reactors and constantly repairing them.
If the reactors had a chance to break down only with the adjacency bonus active, then the players just wouldn't use this bonus at all, which is a pity, because setting up, properly feeding and efficiently using a 2x2 or 2x3 reactor block is a challenge itself.
And I don't think nuclear power is OP. It requires many technologies, expensive-to-build reactors and centrifuges, mining with acid, kovarex enrichment and fuel cell factories. That's a lot of effort for which you get 40 MW of relatively clean power. That's not OP, that's satisfyingly rewarding.

[mp0011]

I wish there were some risk of industrial incidents in Factorio (as an option). However, mashines degrtadation will end just in pacing roboport with repairpacke next to it...

[Caine]

Let us not contribute to this nonsense about nuclear explosions in reactors. It does not happen in real life and never has.

It is misinformation which causes unfounded fear in people for nuclear power. Nuclear power has risks and challenges, but an atomic bomb like explosion is not one of them.

[mp0011]

Nuclear power has risks and challenges, but an atomic bomb like explosion is not one of them.

Maybe not anymore, but in Chernobyl, few day after initial "mishap", there were real threat of Bomb scale explosion.
Not because failure or radiation itself, but because of molten core burning through concrete reactor floor into water reservoir.

Some miners dig under reactor, taking lethal radiation doses to prevent this. If they fail, explosion would endanger cities hunderts kilometers away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coYYBdcA1lo

[Selvek]

Options for nuclear meltdown:

1) Be random (low frequency)
People will still build them, and occasionally they will explode. People will be like "darn it, now I have to run back and rebuild it... again... sigh..."

2) Be random (high frequency)
No one will use them, because they require more active player time than solar.

3) Be predictable/preventable (no automated way to prevent them)
People will get pissed because now they have a thing which can't be automated and always requires personal attention.

4) Be predictable/preventable (there is an automated way to prevent them or repair the damage)
People will design in the automated prevention or repair mechanism. The initial setup of a nuke plant will be slightly more complicated. Then it will get blueprinted, and nothing will really have changed.

It's hard to imagine which of these options (or any other option that I've missed) increases fun.

[eradicator]

Options for nuclear meltdown:
4) Be predictable/preventable (there is an automated way to prevent them or repair the damage)
People will design in the automated prevention or repair mechanism. The initial setup of a nuke plant will be slightly more complicated. Then it will get blueprinted, and nothing will really have changed.

It's hard to imagine which of these options (or any other option that I've missed) increases fun.

You just declared all of factorio unfun because "it can be blueprinted". The fun is in designing stuff that works (or even stuff that doesn't work). Not in using blueprints of the completed designs.

[mrvn]

I don't think reactors should be unstable at all. No machines in Factorio can break down, if they did, then at some point all progress would stop because you would spend all the time fixing them. This applies to reactors too. If you built a power hungry megabase, you wouldn't be doing anything other than keeping your eye on the reactors and constantly repairing them.
If the reactors had a chance to break down only with the adjacency bonus active, then the players just wouldn't use this bonus at all, which is a pity, because setting up, properly feeding and efficiently using a 2x2 or 2x3 reactor block is a challenge itself.
And I don't think nuclear power is OP. It requires many technologies, expensive-to-build reactors and centrifuges, mining with acid, kovarex enrichment and fuel cell factories. That's a lot of effort for which you get 40 MW of relatively clean power. That's not OP, that's satisfyingly rewarding.

You are missing the point about it breaking down when you don't control it. Nobody wants the player to have to look after the reactor. But circuit logic could be required.

Yes it makes reactors different from assemblers or furnaces. But they already are because they don't stop burning fuel when idle. It makes no sense that fuel is burned with no result. Where does the extra heat go? Either reactors should stop burning fuel automatically or there should be some effect to force people to control the reactor refueling so it doesn't happen. The effect could be that the reactor just starts to glow red, venting steam, taking damage, causing pollution or blowing up. There is a large range to pick from.

[Atlas]

Circuit logic is never required. Yes, it makes things run more efficiently, but it is not necessary. For new players it is even scary, and if it was a necessity for some technology, some people would just stop using that technology. Circuit logic is programming and programming at first sight looks like math in German.
Let alone the fact, that compared to other means of getting energy, nuclear is already complicated enough. And it's constant burning of fuel is one of it's main challenges, there's no reason to add another layer of difficulty to that.
On the other hand I understand that some players want a challenge. And since we already have Deathworld and Expensive mode, it might be a good idea to make another Dark-Souls-ish difficulty option, which could even include faulty reactors. Just make it an OPTION.
By the way, reactors can already explode when destroyed.

[mrvn]

Current reactors don't need circuits but it is not obvious that they waste fuel when you don't use up all the generated heat.

There should be some effect to make this fact more obvious. Even if it just shows the reactor as glowing form all the excess heat.