Nuclear power in Factorio - clean or dirty?

[MalcolmCooks]

Simple question I wanted to ask: If nuclear power was added to factorio, should it be polluting or non-polluting? Of course in real life nuclear power is actually one of the cleanest energy sources available. Having another clean energry source in factorio would be great, and more interesting to build and operate than massive solar farms. But on the other hand, pollution is a way of life in Factorio, and maybe you want to build cheap reactors with substandard shielding that emit radiation into the environment, and don't bother to store your nuclear waste properly. Cheap and dirty nuclear power would fit into the rest of the game a lot better

[Smarty]

polluting ofcourse!
tho not as much as steam power

[bobucles]

Nuclear power doesn't have much benefit on the ground level. Solar and steam are already very effective at providing energy. The only people who have trouble with energy are using quadruple mk. 3 production modules with half a dozen beacons on their factories. Having your factory chew down 50x the energy of an efficiency module base will do that.

If there's a space layer then nuclear power becomes VERY useful. Space doesn't have infinite water and solar power takes up huge chunks of real estate (unless an outdoor version exists).

Oh. And nuclear should totally be dirty. There's no point having nuclear in a game and not having nuclear consequences. If you want clean power, play with fusion.

[MalcolmCooks]

Yes, cheaper and more compact power plants would of course have no benefit to the game

[Xterminator]

It's really a toss up honestly. When working properly, as you said nuclear power is pretty clean energy. However if anything goes wrong it can be the most dangerous and polluting type of all. I mean we have seen seem in real life what happens when a nuclear power plant becomes unstable...
As for in-game though... It really could go either way. I would say having it be a big polluter but generate a ton of power would probably be the way to go. That way you have to make a trade off and decide if you want that extra power on exchange for massive pollution.

[ssilk]

Off topic

Of course in real life nuclear power is actually one of the cleanest energy sources available.

Nice try. It will get a bit off topic now.

Inform yourself about how clean nuclear energy is. I did:

https://www.google.com/search?ie=utf-8& ... ear+energy how+dirty+is+nuclear+energy
https://www.google.com/search?ie=utf-8& ... ear+energy how+clean+is+nuclear+energy

You see, there are two completely different standpoints. Just with one word difference. Both sides are driven by more or less big lobby. Search for example
https://www.google.com/search?ie=utf-8& ... t%20source nuclear energy cleanest source
Alone from that search you can point out, that there is a big lobby for nuclear energy in the USA, why not everywhere else?

More or less much money is behind both sides, but you don't need to think much, that the pro-side has more money.

All my experience with such different standpoints, and such kind of lobby-ism is, that the truth is somewhere between that two extremes. And that means, nuclear energy is far away from being "cleanest". Maybe it is "clean", but compared to what? That depends strongly from your standpoint.


Well, to show you, what I mean, I heard a week ago in TV an interesting argument: With all the wind-mills which are currently built here in Germany (which are ten-thousands, and that are not looking very nice in the landscape) it is no problem to break all (!) them down withing 5 years or so, if someone invents a better method to get "clean energy". Most of the remaining parts can be reused and that would be a great business, cause why should an old generator not work anymore? The copper, nearly every material can be recycled.

Now try to do that with a nuclear power plant: It takes 10-30 years to break down one (!) nuclear power plant, which costs unbelievable amounts of money (which most owners don't have, so that must be payed by the state or so) and you have tons of high radioactive waste left, which you don't know what to do with; there is just no safe place for it. And that is only for one power plant, but there are hundreds/thousands all over the world.

I think this example shows very nicely, why nuclear energy is just not "cleanest", and why an objective comparison is really difficult.

[lancar]

I'm thinking uranium could be used for more than just powering your base, such as an ingredient for ammo used in energy weapons or AP bullets (usually uses depleted uranium, but hey! might be more damaging as fresh & active?)

I'm sure others can think of many more uses. All dirty and devastating to the planets ecosystem

[nobodx]

Nuclear power is clean, because it doesn't blow carbon dioxide into the air (eg like coal)
The problem is the nuclear waste, that remains (for ages, literally)

[MalcolmCooks]

Well in terms of pollution released into the environment, it certainly is one of the cleanest, since all the waste is isolated and stored safely. But I understand your argument. If the waste was just dumped into rivers and oceans like in other industries it would be very polluting indeed

Also wouldn't that be great in factorio, being able to dump your nuclear waste into the water and produce lots and lots of lovely pollution

[nobodx]

... Producing giant green biters / spitters, who trample your defenses and shoot lasers from their mouths. (And an older Japanese screaming "Gojira !!")

[XartaX]

Nuclear energy is extremely clean.

In the case of older technology (specifically solid fuel) it produces nuclear waste, but no pollution.

In the case of newer technology (liquid fuel) it produces next to 0 waste (about 160 times more fuel efficiency than traditional solid fuel reactors iirc), and you can also use up waste from older reactors since you can remove the impurities from the liquid.

Factorio is a high tech setting, so I'd say use the best available nuclear technology (or gradually tech up to it with shittier reactors in the beginning). If you make nuclear energy dirty or extremely harmfui I'd just chalk it up to either ignorance or having an agenda (i.e. propaganda). Nuclear reactors have traditionally had 3 problems. 1) Volatile due to high-pressurized tanks of water 2) production of nuclear waste piling up 3) fail-safes requiring power, so if you lose power it would run out of control. Newer tech solves all of these (look up LFTR).

[ratchetfreak]

If you make nuclear energy dirty or extremely harmfui I'd just chalk it up to either ignorance or having an agenda (i.e. propaganda).

but if they made it extremely clean then other people would also assume ignorance or agenda

it's a lose-lose scenario in that sense

[XartaX]

If you make nuclear energy dirty or extremely harmfui I'd just chalk it up to either ignorance or having an agenda (i.e. propaganda). Nuclear reactors have traditionally had 3 problems. 1) Volatile due to high-pressurized tanks of water 2) production of nuclear waste piling up 3) fail-safes requiring power, so if you lose power it would run out of control. Newer tech solves all of these.

but if they made it extremely clean then other people would also assume ignorance or agenda

it's a lose-lose scenario in that sense

But it wouldn't be ignorant. If ignorant person A calls person B ignorant, that doesn't mean B is ignorant because, well, A is. Like I said if you want historical context start out with shitty reactors running on solid fuel and such, but tech up to better reactors over time. The technology to bypass all those problems exist today, it's not hard to implement.

Basically if people say "there are a ton of problems with traditional outdated nuclear power" then yeah I'm right on board with you. But this is not true for nuclear power in general.

[cpy]

Let's make nuclear energy realistic.
Mining = LOT of pollution (because of huge amount of waste in mining this stuff - yellow cake)
Refining = probably meh
Making Power = probably next to nothing
Problem is we don't have mechanics for storing used fuel rods and you could just shoot wooden chest and items will be gone.

[ssilk]

Let's make nuclear energy realistic.

Hm.

Please don't mix reality with game.

I mean: no matter how nuclear power behaves in reality, in the game it should behave in a way, that makes the most fun.

For me it means, that we don't need to care much about the waste. It disappears like smoke.

Of course it pollutes! The mining, the refining and the "burning"; It would be really boring if not. What happens, if I put a stick of Uranium into a burner or boiler? Or into my car? Why not? A whole new world of experimentation to find out what happens, if I put in that stuff.

And maybe there is also a danger: The natives like the radioactivity. They mutate faster. They like to eat the pumps and eating them will lead to overheat-reactions. The whole thing can explode. Big pollution, big mutation-rate.

Nice. I would like it.

[Boogieman14]

Let's make nuclear energy realistic.
Mining = LOT of pollution (because of huge amount of waste in mining this stuff - yellow cake)
Refining = probably meh
Making Power = probably next to nothing
Problem is we don't have mechanics for storing used fuel rods and you could just shoot wooden chest and items will be gone.

A nuclear reactor setup could include a (non-destructible/non-minable) 'spent fuel storage' as a separate building. The reactor would slowly process the fuel rods into spent fuel rods - think basically an assembler, but with a crafting time of several minutes (10? 30? this would have to depend on the required effort for creating the rods, obviously). These rods will need to be moved to the spent fuel storage (probaby automagically, so the player can't pick them up and put them in the wooden chest to blow up) where they will sit until the game completes - Spent fuel storage would need power and water to keep the rods cooled while they decay, if not: big boom (or maybe not a big boom, but temporary big pollution when cooling fails). Spent storage can hold a limit amount of rods, so you'd have to build multiple over time (provided the game lasts long enough)

[chapium]

All these posts saying nuclear energy is clean. Its only clean because we bottle up the waste and send it elsewhere. For a game where your car runs on coal I imagine containing the waste would either not work well or just be dumped somewhere.

[Boogieman14]

All these posts saying nuclear energy is clean. Its only clean because we bottle up the waste and send it elsewhere.

Let's please keep that discussion out of these forums. It has no place here. Let's discuss mechanisms for adding new power generation to the game in a way that would make it fun, with some advantages and some drawbacks over the alternatives.

[XartaX]

Let's make nuclear energy realistic.
Mining = LOT of pollution (because of huge amount of waste in mining this stuff - yellow cake)
Refining = probably meh
Making Power = probably next to nothing
Problem is we don't have mechanics for storing used fuel rods and you could just shoot wooden chest and items will be gone.

Well, the thing about mining for modern nuclear reactors is that a mine the size of a football field could supply enough thorium to cover all of the worlds energy needs (currently). So no, not that much pollution :p

[XartaX]

All these posts saying nuclear energy is clean. Its only clean because we bottle up the waste and send it elsewhere. For a game where your car runs on coal I imagine containing the waste would either not work well or just be dumped somewhere.

Not true. I mean, yeah you get some waste, but newer tech produces almost nothing at all. This is because older tech uses solid fuel, which means the fuel becomes useless with only a small amount of impurity in it (i.e. "spent" fuel rods). However, with liquid fuel you can remove the impurities from the fuel and keep using it until almost all of it is spent, thus producing next to no waste. You can even produce liquid fuel from old "spent" fuel and thus use up our current waste. In game terms this would mean you'd have to store spent fuel somewhere while you're still using solid fuel, but as you tech up and get access to liquid fuel technology you could use up what was previously just waste.

Of course it pollutes! The mining, the refining and the "burning"; It would be really boring if not. What happens, if I put a stick of Uranium into a burner or boiler? Or into my car? Why not? A whole new world of experimentation to find out what happens, if I put in that stuff.

Nuclear power doesn't work like that