Factorio Forums

TL;DR

Liquified Uranium

What?

A way to liquify raw Uranium, for easier and more "bulkier" transport, to potentially reduce FPS/UPS drop.

Why?

Why would I want this? personal reason is, I always use large 2*10 trans to transport everything. I even convert my iron/copper into the molten version, since it is much easier to setup, but it is also much easier on the UPS, when your savegame reaches 100MB in size. I would normally do 480 iron smelting electric furnaces along with at least 6k belts, just to make a single station, that provides either 1 of the plates (iron/copper but double furnaces on steel). And because i can have the foundries almost next to the tracks, I do not need 6k or more belts.

I would suggest the use of the electromagnetic plant for this, even though the cryogenic plant would be better suited for it, and not just the simple centrifuge. But everything comes down to what kind of modules that would be allowed in the machine, during the conversion process.

First of all, it should require something like 10 ore and 20 sulfuric acid to produce the liquified Uranium. When converting it back, it should return the uranium ore and half the fluid. The fluid return is because you need some sort of, well, punishment, for using this method. And you cant "just" get rid of sulfuric acid, which means players also needs to consider a way to get rid of the excess fluid.

The use of a foundry to create the liquid, is out of the question, because it technically is a beefed up and oversized version of a furnace, which relies on heat and a smelting process. That is why I suggest the use of a cryo or electromagnetic plant. Could also use a regular centrifuge, but it has no fluid in/output available, and I have to idea if it is "easy" to adjust it. Though, on the regular centrifuge, it could be used in the same way as the "normal" way of processing it. 10 liquid uranium gives you 0.7% for U-235 and 99.3% for U-238 and the almost obligatory 10 sulfuric acid. Adjustable with corresponding modules, though I feel production modules would be nice, it would also mean a way to overpower the production quite a bit.


I am, ofcourse, open to suggestions and alterations.

Instead of liquifying it at the mine for some % better packing fraction why not just centrifuge it at the mine for 20x better packing?

computeraddict wrote: Tue Apr 28, 2026 2:36 am Instead of liquifying it at the mine for some % better packing fraction why not just centrifuge it at the mine for 20x better packing?

This is actually what I used to do, but I also had to tear down and rebuild several plants, because I ran out of ore. Back then, I would do it as if it was iron/copper/steel production. Dig it up, then "smelt" it and load it directly into a train station. Which requires an absurd amount of belts.

I made the suggestion, because recently, I started filling with foundries, where I dug up my metals, turned it into molten iron/copper, then straight into storage tanks, so a train can pick it up, and deliver it to a new processing plant. I would then unload at a station, and on the same station, I would have 10 foundries (legendary with modules) make roughly 56 iron/copper plates /s, and use 190 turbo loaders, 60 chests and a couple of turbo splitters. This turned my usage of belts (6k is being conservative on the number) and UPS down to a bare minimum.

And considering it is an actual material we use in science stuff, I thought "why not suggest it". Worst thing that can happen, is everyone saying "no thanks"

MichaelJCaboose wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2026 7:19 am And considering it is an actual material we use in science stuff

I don't think any sciences use uranium. In fact uranium is optional (though I wouldn't recommend skipping it).

To be honest I kind of like the idea, if only to better match actual centrifuge use (which according to Wikipedia, the normal process uses Uranium hexafluoride in centrifuges). Maybe having another intermediate step before/after running it through the centrifuge would be an interesting logistical problem, but most likely would just push players to ignore uranium for the most part as it isn't required for science and is only needed in small quantities for all the other stuff that's not power.