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I think it wasn't mentioned in the changelog but we now have nuclear fuel at least not as a big announcement https://wiki.factorio.com/Nuclear_fuel

It contains whooping 1.21GJ of energy (time travel possible in 0.17?) and is really op.

You craft it with 1 rocket fuel und 1 U-235 which gives you a massive energy gain out of thin air.
You turn 225MJ (Rocket Fuel) with the tiny addition of one U-235 into 1.21 GJ, thats almost 10 5.4 times the energy and it is useable in conventional burner devices e.g. steam boilers.

I ditched my plans to set up a nuclear plant and will just feed my old coal burners with nuclear fuel.

JimBarracus wrote:You turn 225MJ (Rocket Fuel) with the tiny addition of one U-235 into 1.21 GJ, thats almost 10 times the energy

It's not 10 times the energy, it's 5.4 times. It's also 1/10 the stack size, so in a vehicle a stack of nuclear fuel has 54% the range compared to a stack of rocket fuel.

Uranium fuel cell recipe produces 10 fuel cells worth 24 GJ each in a 2x2 reactor. That is 240 GJ from a single Uranium-235.

Nuclear fuel's only advantage is 40% better acceleration than rocket fuel, but you pay a lot for it.

according to viewtopic.php?f=5&t=47217

1 u-235 = 15GJ
1 rocket fuel = 0.225GJ
1 nuclear fuel = 1.21GJ

u lose near 14GJ (90.57%) energy by doing so.

I use most of my light oil to produce rocket fuel, overproduction goes to the steam boilers.
Kovarex is running for quite a while but I don't have any nuclear power plants yet. It's just for nuke production.

For the small cost of 2 U238 I get 1 U-235 which basically is Kovarex Enrichment and I can increase the energy use by 5 times compared to rocket fuel.

At this point I still feed coal to the steam boilers but I want to liquify it all and run it on nuclear fuel.
It may not be the most efficient method but I don't have to build a conventional nuclear power plant.