Is the reactor "worth it"?

[Coolthulhu]

The research reaction seems to be a lot of work to set up and really risky if you might fail to cool it.

From what I've seen, it only produces heat, radiation and nuclear waste. Heat isn't worth that much - volcanoes also provide high-grade heat. Radiation is hard to use with the travel cost, even with tricks like corner shooting and reflector ladders. Nuclear waste explodes when stored, making it hard to use for cooling and it doesn't seem to produce any radiation.

Am I missing something? Does it help with the new plants?

[Gurgel]

I have sort-of wondered the same thing. Also, fuel seems to be limited and non-renewable?

[SharraShimada]

You need uranium.You have to upgrade it to enriched uranium. Then you have to feed this stuff into your reacotr, keep it cooled, get rid of insane amounts of heat..... 

Personal opinion? No. I do not need it. I dont use the radbolt engine, and for any other reason there are plenty options to get enough radiation without that monster. Its just a ridiculous effort to gain next to nothing in return. For me, its just a waste of time, resources and everything else. 

[Gurgel]

Sounds like the reactor seriously needs a redesign....

[ghkbrew]

I view the research reactor like a lot of the end game content in ONI. It's basically a vanity project. By the time you can reasonably do it, you don't need to.  Like a regolith melter in the base game.

 

The fuel being finite, bugs me too, but I don't think its a problem realistically. A reactor burns 16.67g/s of enriched uranium. That's 10kg/cycle. 1 ton of uranium will last for 100cycles of constant use. I tested once and I got 30 or 40 tons (IIRC) of uranium ore by digging up the whole radioactive asteroid. I think you can even double that by using beetas to harvest and refine.

[Tiru]

I tried it twice and didn't find it to be worth it. As a power source it is far too much work using a finite resource. By the time you can build it you have all the power you need from solar for most things or better options (volcano based geothermal, petroleum boiler, etc). I do love the radbolt rockets and, since you can turn the reactor on and off, would definitely want to use it but Klei would need to introduce better ways to move around radiation. At a minimum they would need to make a tile so you could put the generators in the same room as the reactor and get the bolts out. In practice though I think it would also need a better way to transfer radbolts long distances since shooting 50 bolts and losing 1 bolt/tile simply doesn't work. It isn't practical, in my opinion, to put this big research reactor setup right next to your rocketry. Some kind of radbolt battery that dupes can carry and load into the rockets would be my choice. By the time you would have this setup it's easier to just use a dozen generators w/ solar radiation or use the crashed wreck for high levels of rads.

You should make it at least once and let it blow up just for fun. After that, skip it.

 

[Zakery]

For reactor i think we need too things:

1) advanced ST that use more steam with higher temp and produce mach more energy - now with standart ST setup is too big

2) more hungry late game buildings - for now we not need power more that can be easy produced by trivial methods.

[sakura_sk]

4 hours ago, ghkbrew said:

I view the research reactor like a lot of the end game content in ONI. It's basically a vanity project. By the time you can reasonably do it, you don't need to.  Like a regolith melter in the base game.

I'm having "early steam turbine" vibes (steam turbine before the rework). Like the "stick edge of turbine to a neutronium tile touching magma if you want it to work continuously", the reactor still seems to need too much work for what it gives. A finite resource, too much heat and difficult radiation handling, I don't think they are a good combination. Unless you have to melt it every time ... Could that be an easier approach? 

[crbd115]

6 minutes ago, sakura_sk said:

I'm having "early steam turbine" vibes (steam turbine before the rework). Like the "stick edge of turbine to a neutronium tile touching magma if you want it to work continuously", the reactor still seems to need too much work for what it gives. A finite resource, too much heat and difficult radiation handling, I don't think they are a good combination. Unless you have to melt it every time ... Could that be an easier approach? 

Tbh I could see them simplifying it a bit, rather then having one big one that we build a giant contraption around to cool we can have multiple throughout our intercolonial bases and scale it up or down based on our uranium supply. Personally I think a big part of the reason I never build it, is because there's enough ambient radiation that I haven't felt like it's worth it. It's called a research reactor, which I assume in part was designed to be how we get a good portion of our radiation research done but that doesn't seem to be reality.

[Gurgel]

2 hours ago, sakura_sk said:

I'm having "early steam turbine" vibes (steam turbine before the rework). Like the "stick edge of turbine to a neutronium tile touching magma if you want it to work continuously", the reactor still seems to need too much work for what it gives. A finite resource, too much heat and difficult radiation handling, I don't think they are a good combination. Unless you have to melt it every time ... Could that be an easier approach? 

Make "reactor meltdown experienced" a win condition?

[babba]

Are you guys saying there is no way to re-gain(enriched) uranium and that it is finite ?

[Yunru]

Worse still, it doesn't even turn into lead. 

[babba]

Should "renewable" Uranium come from another discovered asteroid or how should it be implemented in to the game ? What do you guys think ? What and how shall the renewable Uranium method be ? The more input Klei gets from us, the better

I have spent 200 hours or so on the big terra dlc classic map, I love my Steam Room No.2

Cant wait to create liquid Hydrogen/Oxygen for the first time ever in ONI, to build my first big fat reactor ever and to build my first rocket in classic map play. I have cleared a launch path from the map bottom to the top, the Titan launch silo rocket preparations are ongoing - Another 1000-2000 cycles or so...

Steam Room No.2 - Will make a really big one for reactors and nuke waste basins.

Texas style manual refineries, gas burners, electrical hub

[O.J.Vodka]

Wait for the update, now DLC's playability is very low

[NewWorldDan]

Nuclear waste has fantastic specific heat, nearly the equal of supercoolant.   I've used it as a thermal reservoir for taming volcanoes.  Had to find a use for it after my pitcher pump accidentally made a huge quantity of it.  As far as I know, that bug hasn't been patched yet.

[Gurgel]

7 hours ago, babba said:

Should "renewable" Uranium come from another discovered asteroid or how should it be implemented in to the game ? What do you guys think ? What and how shall the renewable Uranium method be ? The more input Klei gets from us, the better

What about another "hell" planetoid where it rains a radioactive mess?

[babba]

59 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

What about another "hell" planetoid where it rains a radioactive mess?

That would be great, green Plutonium rain on the green hell planetoid Also some haunted mutated dupe shall run around on that asteroid - d`Hellboy

In dupe world the hell-boy is called 1234-pU and we can heal him from his sins, with daemon tools. Ones we have copied his brain with dupe floppy drives, then we can figure out how to "manufacture" Plutonium by extracting his mind in the d`Eldar Brainlab, thus having the capability of making a radioactive renewable ( in combo with the fat reactor ).

 

[SamLogan]

Research reactor seems to be a bad electrical generator because it's not its primary use :

"Research reactors are nuclear reactors that serve primarily as a neutron source. They are also called non-power reactors, in contrast to power reactors that are used for electricity production, heat generation, or maritime propulsion."

So I think it will have a specific feature that will be come later.

 

It's like the Steam turbine, if you only consider it as a generator it's really weak. But if you consider it as a big cooler, it's really great.

 

[KonfigSys]

The reactor is not very good for power generation for a simple reason - it is finite (due to finite U resources). So it does not make much sense to build for an "infinite" game.

Klei upped it to go for much higher temperature - can be used for oil boiling. Still a temporary set-up though a long one. Metal/magma volcano is a better option.

Also it can be used for creating enough r/a for mutating seeds. That is the only use I can see plausible.

It is good to build in a sandbox and let it melt down.

Other than that not much unless you play a finite game - some people may like to have short cycle games.

[Sasza22]

The reactor feels like it should be a major component of the base. It just lacks a purpose to be one atm. Other than an insane power source it works as a radiation source for plant mutations and radbolts. Without the ability to transport radbolts at long range it is in a weird spot. Also more radbolt consumers are needed. Like an alchemy station for transmuting resources.

[babba]

If we are lucky, I'm praying, then Klei has held back the "final" fat reactor version + a way to gather renewable Uranium and they are still working on the finalization of the radioactivity complex. 

[village_idiot]

If they wanted to make unlimited radioactive material, letting you separate Thorium and Uranium from salt water would be a pretty neat trick.

[n_t_p]

No

But we'll probably need it in the future.

[goboking]

On 5/13/2021 at 7:26 PM, Gurgel said:

Sounds like the reactor seriously needs a redesign....

I hate to admit it, but I’m inclined to agree.  Using it for radiation is clunky and using it for power is like using geothermal energy with the added risk of meltdowns.

[babba]

On 5/20/2021 at 2:10 AM, goboking said:

I hate to admit it, but I’m inclined to agree.  Using it for radiation is clunky and using it for power is like using geothermal energy with the added risk of meltdowns.

What do you guys think...Is the current fat reactor the final Klei version ? Or is it a "Temp" version, which is still currently worked on by Klei and it is not yet the final implementation @minespatch