My background is in biochemistry. I'll soon have a PhD in it. I had to read a lot of materials on fuel reprocessing and distilled it. I chose a reduction of the PUREX process and only highlight the main steps that could be easily done with the chemical plant prototype, which has maximum of 2 inputs and 2 outputs. It looked complicated, really it is, but it's blue-printable so you only have to figure it out once.
DantHimself wrote:Oh god, the nerf hammer was heavy
I don't think I nerfed anything. In fact I increased the power output of the 3x3 and 5x5 reactor. Ore -> fuel ratio remains the same, for now... If anything the nerf hammer will hit when I add breeding. Ore -> fuel will be decreased...drastically. You will need to breed your own fuel from the initial ore inventory to make it last. People who used depleted uranium for ammo will find that they suddenly have a huge problem. Also the plutonium -> MOX conversion will also be tweaked to be below unity, currently it is 1.14x. which means once you use MOX fuel, you will make even more MOX fuel. This will not stay that way.
So now that 0.6.6 has been out for nearly a week, it's time that I think about the next update and what it should have. Clearly, 0.6.7 needs a steam generator befitting the 5x5 reactor. I looked at all of the options and the easiest is to render a larger version of the steam-generator and the re-circulation pump. So I think I will do that and release a 0.6.7. The step after this is to add a breeder, so that will be 0.6.8. I've been doing more reading on liquid-fuel reactor for ideas. I think though I will settle on a MSFR, molten-salt fast reactor. This will be a chloride salt reactor with driver and blanket areas. You can use U-235, U-233, or Pu-239/240 in the driver area and U-238 or Th-232 in the blanket area. This type of reactor will need a bunch of chemical plants to support the on-line fuel-salt reprocessing in addition to the fuel-reprocessing for the conventional fuel. An added benefit is extra Pu from this reactor can be used in conventional fuel. The wastes from conventional fuel-reprocessing can be further reduced by some additional steps to remove minor actinides (MAs) and burn in the MSFR...So don't shoot your wastes...
I plan to make this reactor responsive to circuit control, read *simple* circuit control. I will not require you to build a large and complex array of combinators to operate the reactor...I mean you can but it will be unnecessary.
This version will also have the beginning of
reactor upkeep. This will be retro-active, so all reactors from the previous versions will need upkeep. It won't be onerous but it will be something that you need to take care of otherwise you might find your base out of power. Lastly, I will introduce another chemical cycle to use the heat from the MSFR. This will allow you to centrally generate heat to make fuel that you can ship out to remote bases to power them. Clearly, this is superior to running power poles everywhere and far cheaper in resources and upkeeps.
I do not know of the balance in 0.6.8 but likely you will need 2-4 of the MSFR to run one of the large one that I've outlined in
this other post. The smaller scale reactors, 3x3 or 5x5, will probably just need one of the MSFR. Power-wise, 2-4 of these MSFR might equal to one of the
big PWR. The big PWR will need circuit to run and will have complicated fuel decay simulation. That is the reason why I went at lengths to do all of the previous
simulations and calculations. So 0.7.0 will be for the big PWR. This will give you the power you need for most things in factorio. I think 0.7.1 will be the
transmuter or ADS where you can use excess power to drive accelerators to transmute your vitrified-glass-waste or some form of "wastes" after the version 0.6.8 to accelerate the decay and transform the waste into some useful metals. Or, you can bury it in underground vault, which is a different surface than "nauvis." That will be new territory for me. Planning ahead, I'd say 0.7.2 will be some type of tier-4 military for uranium power. I always wanted to do some nuclear bomb or metal rods, perhaps made from tungsten from the ADS, that you can fire from the satellite that you launched from the silo. Just another way to terrorize the biters or perhaps your fellow players if you play on a PVP server.
Don't know what sort of counter to have for the former...the latter, not so much...maybe a ground->space laser defense?
Anyways, I'm most excited to work on 0.6.8, I don't know how it will pan out. The coding for the blanket area will be difficult since I want to allow you to make whatever 2D-array that you want...Obviously some designs will be better than others. Raw-resource wise, I think I will allow conversion of stone->thorium at some TBD ratio. This will negate the need to introduce yet another auto-gen. I think this is logical since I just allowed coal->uranium, which I think is a good decision. When 0.7.1 comes around, the underground vault will generate generous amounts of stone that you can turn into fuel.
