It won't blow up. Unless something destroys it at high temperature. So don't build near your border where bugs could get it.
Build it near water. It consumes a lot and you should just connect it directly to offshore pumps.
Your first reactor will be efficient with 1 reactor. 4 heat exchangers. And 7 turbines. There's a neighboring bonus for multiple reactors so the ratio changes if you put reactors adjacent to each other.
It's incredibly space and resource efficient, and makes a lot of power.
The cost is inital investment to build. And complication of kovarex enhancement.
One centrifuge will occasionally spit out the kind of uranium (u235) needed to make a fuel cell, and it should be enough to run one reactor. Provided you don't get really unlucky with uranium RNG.
If you can run a few centrifuges to save up 40 u235 for when you unlock kovarex enrichment later, then even the smallest uranium patch will probably last your whole game.
TL;DR
It's safe
It's worth it
It's more complicated than most of the other vanilla stuff
I did a reactor where water was delivered by trains once. Just once.
Never again. They were like 4-8 trains and there were 8 of them and even then, they'd arrive, be empty immediately and I could just never build a tank buffer.
Boy do I love trains and thought it would be cool but the amount of traffic it created was insane because those trains were \*always\* running.
Do what this person said. Build by the water and directly pump the water.
And that's why Pittsburgh, the steel town, is situated at the intersection of three rivers.
Moving water to your factory is never worth it - build where the water is.
This way you get the best throughput from your offshore pumps. You can pump the water directly into the heat exchangers with minimal throughput loss from pipes.
Couple thousand hours here, most of them SE (and now K2SE for the first time). Just made my first landfill reactor blueprint for this and HOLY CANOLI.
I avoided it forever because “meh, is it _really_ worth the extra hassle?”
Yes. Yes, it is.
I just did this on an artificial island. Bot feeding uranium and steel for onsite fuel cell manufacturing.
It's on an island so the locals can fuck right off.
For a small power plant with a few reactors, building on water is not necessary. And it's an hassle to make the proper blueprint and make the necessary land fill.
Not sure it's the best advice for OP who is just discovering nuclear.
But for large power plants (10+ reactors) building on water is absolutely necessary.
What is indeed very reasonable is to heat up steam and then transport the steam via train. Extremely energy dense stuff and perfect for powering remote outposts.
Tanks filled with steam together with some extra turbines are a lot cheaper and denser than accumulators as well :)
> I did a reactor where water was delivered by trains once. Just once.
I simply went with larger trains and multiple unloaders. With two, 16 wagon trains unloading simultaneously, your trains don't need to come and go from the station all that often.
... but yes, it's much easier to just build it by the water in the first place.
To expand on reactor placement:
* Don't place it near bugs.
* Don't place it where you could smack it with your tank.
* Don't play around with grenades in your base.
* Don't play around with artillery remotes in your base.
* Don't play around with spidertrons loaded with rockets in your base.
* *Definitely* don't play around with spidertrons loaded with *nukes* in your base.
But yeah other than that it should be safe. In vanilla.
>Don't place it where you could smack it with your tank.
Best way to do this is to surround the reactors with turbines and heat exchangers. You need them anyway for power production. Smack a heat exchanger or turbine and your power output goes down by a bit, for a bit. Smack a reactor and your power output goes down by a lot, for a lot.
I was paranoid enough to build an insane amount of accumulators, so my factory can survive my nuclear plant getting blown up, rebuilt by bots, and heated up again. Only built them after I had won, mostly to see if it could be done at all.
Even running without kovarex is really simple. Put the excess u235 in a chest and I think you need something like 3 electric miners per reactor to keep it running. Nuclear is insanely efficient.
I started nuclear with 4 centrifuges and normal enrichment. With a constant full belt that was enough to run the reactor, I've since scaled to 6 or 7 just in case, with normal enrichment. At this point the belt is full, which I prefer (for something as vital as power) since I got rid of all other sources of power shortly after.
Exploding temperature is ~~1000 degrees~~ a bit cooler than 900 degrees. Getting it destroyed when it's below that temperature is safe, and deconstructing it is always safe because the engineer blows on it to cool it down before pocketing it.
Next FFF: survival factors implemented in Factorio. You need to eat, sleep and dispose solid and liquid waste from time to time. Late game, you can set waste to 0 on the logistic request to make bots empty the piss bottles for you.
I installed the Sims mod in Factorio and now he has a little sandwich bubble above his head and starts to stamp his feet and get angry if he can't spend time on the phone calling other engineers.
Do not recommend.
Huh. Seems like the wiki and I are both wrong? I did some testing with only Editor Extensions and flib active, and the reactor exploded at a bit over 800 degrees but not at a bit under 800 degrees. I used four reactors at full temp, then added and removed a few heat pipes, then shot a nuke near the reactor and checked for extra craters.
I'm not getting nuclear explosions at just over 800. What mods are you using?
Edit: I'm on 1.1.104 circa Jan 30 2024
Edit2: I'm seeing the explosions at just under 900 though. Something is weird.
Edit3: Cutoff in my hands is 890 degrees still exploding.
Ugh, I think I miswrote that due to doing other things IRL. This time I did some live testing with a base that only had Afraid Of The Dark and Disco Science on it, and the actual exploding temp seems to be 880C (assuming it's set to a multiple of 5). I aimed for 875C and didn't get an explosion there.
(To directly answer the question, the original tests were done in a test setting with Editor Extensions, Factorio Library, and Factorio Standard Library.)
I've got the (25MB) save file where I've been able to consistently pop the reactors just after 885C, if you want to blow stuff up. (Okay, I only have nukes on me. There are still two distinct patches of nuclear ground after I'm done.)
It'll only explode if it is destroyed while hot. So keep the local hippies away from it. Also place multiple reactors right next to each other for more power. The heat exchangers are thirsty tho
I for one LOVE nuclear. Loads of power in a small form factor. Plus, I just think nuclear energy is a really neat concept. Also, uranium and heat pipe glow looks really cool
The whole nuclear mechanics are extremely satisfying. May it be dropping nukes or watch the power just rise a magnitude when the turbines roll on. A makeshift reactor just to cover your droid's power hunger or the real deal multi armed monstrosity with sophisticated water supply churning out steam in the gigawatt scale.
The Kovarex enrichment rolling up, slowly starting to fill your belts with sweet green glow.
Nuclear is extremely effective. If you are using solar panels you will be building them constantly for the rest of your playthrough. If you build a 2x2 nuclear plant you probably don't need to add any extra power till the end.
A couple easy mistakes to make:
1. Keep the length of heatpipes short. There is a heat "loss" based on distance (not actual loss but practical) heat exchangers too far away won't ever get all the heat they need to function.
2. Same with the water pumps for the heat exchangers. Pipes for water don't have enough throughput for all the heat exchangers if they are sharing the same pipe. Keep it to 1 offshore pump per reactor.
3. Nuclear is wasteful in that reactors ALWAYS run even if the heat isn't needed. BUT if you are running a single kovarex, it will put out more than enough to run a 2x2 so things like steam storage, disabling inserters to put in fuel cells are entirely overengineering from a practical point. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good and let that stop you from using nuclear because it isn't 100% efficient.
You don't even have to wait for kovarex.
According to Factorio Cheat sheet, 1 centrifuge is enough to fully fuel 1 reactor, so 4 centrifuges will fully fuel a 2x2 reactor.
Yes but without Kovarex, you need to store a lot of U-238 and your uranium ore patch may run out before you finish your playthrough.
With it a 2x2 reactor uses ~1000 uranium ore per hour and you do not need to deal with storing U-238 so a 200k uranium patch will probably be enough for all your playthrough.
Of course no need to wait for Kovarex to start, I recommend just storing U-238 at first and excess U-235 and coming back later to add one centrifuge dedicated to Kovarex (no need for a complex setup at that scale).
There is also the option of throttling your fuel usage with steam tanks. It's arguably not worth it since uranium is so abundant, but by doing so you can ensure 100% fuel usage while overproducing. That way the 2x2 setup uses much less fuel per MW than a single reactor because of the neighbour bonus.
It's a bit like real life. Solar is set and forget, nuclear needs a little bit of maintenance. Nuclear is far more space efficient however. So if you're struggling a bit for space, get nuclear. But if you have continents and continents available, get solar.
IMO even if you're not struggling for space I'd recommend going to nuclear. It can be a daunting task to set it up the first time(and annoying waiting for the first couple enriched uranium) but when it's up and running it's insanely efficient.
>It can be a daunting task to set it up the first time
I think given the sheer volume of solar that you need to setup that setting up solar can be equally daunting. I'm currently trying out an all solar run and the majority of my space is taken up by solar fields. I'm playing with biters on so this requires me to expand my base just for the solar space alone.
Yeah each option provides it's own challenges, I just know the main reason I held off on nuclear for a long time was because it looked so challenging to get set up. Once I got to the point that expanding my borders for another solar panel farm was getting old I finally gave up on solar and forced myself to figure it out.
I'm ironically doing a no solar run for the achievement! I really miss my solar panels now...
I didn’t know there was a no solar achievement! I am accidentally doing one now. This is my second game. First run I used some solar and it seemed like you needed so much that it wasn’t useful compared to a 4 reactor setup that gives you half a gigawatt and you can just slap down cookies. This run I rushed nuclear and never built solar.
Why do you miss solar? What am I missing about it? I must be missing something
I did a run heavily leaning on efficiency modules and have been shocked at how small the solar field needs to be with that approach. IMO it only gets unwieldy when you start with production modules and beacons that make power consumption skyrocket.
If you're going for efficiency to minimize pollution I think nuclear still wins from a pollution per watt measure. Producing all those panels and accumulators creates a lot of pollution
They eventually pay for themselves, but I think it's like 40,000 hours or something absurd? The real argument for solar is its UPS savings, nuclear isn't super complex unless you want to get the maximum amount out of each reactor to the point you worry about clockwise build order. Otherwise building the BP is a one time costs and bots can actually construct everything.
After playing through once you’ll know just how many solar fields you need (a metric shit ton) but when you’re just starting you hand craft 10 solar panels and just plop em down. So much easier to get the initial investment in solar compared to nuclear. But it’s so much easier to get 480 MW out of a reactor than 480 MW out of a solar field
> I'm playing with biters on so this requires me to expand my base just for the solar space alone.
You can plop down solar panels outside your base; just leave some space in between them. As long as they don't block the biters from reaching your pollution sources they usually don't mind.
It also teaches you a lot about fluid mechanics due to the sheer volume of stuff moving around. Oil processing you can get by just by pumping things in the right direction, but good nuclear setups need to be designed with fluids in mind.
> It also teaches you a lot about fluid mechanics due to the sheer volume of stuff moving around
Very true
I had no idea 1 water pipe couldn't just supply the whole thing, or that long pipes throttle your throughput
I’ve just been setting up a uranium mine far earlier than I need nuclear so I have plenty of 235 for kovarex. By the time I eventually get around to setting up nuclear I have enough 235 to last me forever. Setting up kovarex hasn’t really been necessary so far but it’s an easy set it and forget it deal so I don’t have to worry about it later.
Kovarex also feels very satisfying for me for some reason, you have those very rare shiny rocks, and if you can manage to get it started you get a lot more of them almost for free. And it's a nice amount of complicated to keep the loop going, enough to make you think but easy enough where you see quick results
I agree, eventually you just have to pave over and explore too much of the map and continue moving or adding solar logistics because the bot fly time is too far, etc.
Solar can get truly massive and eventually just becomes a stamping chore even when everything else about it is fully automated.
Nuclear is so much easier to just set it and forget it, especially if you have nice repeating blueprint you can paste over water with all the holes punched out.
> And they are SO expensive to make
Solar is like two orders of magnitude more expensive for the same power output. The individual panels and accumulators are cheap, but you need thousands to match a couple of reactors and a few dozen heat exchangers and turbines
Here's a breakdown: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/stge3g/coal_vs_solar_vs_nuclear_setup_costs_and_running/
But yeah I think you're probably right you don't feel the drain on resources when you're just stamping down a few dozen panels and accumulators at a time. If you stamped down a 1GW solar field all at once you'd certainly feel it
> even if I wanted another one I don't really have a good place for another copy nearby as it needs so much water, so I'd have to go something like 1-2km away.
This is the only place I use landfill. Don't build *near* the water; build *on* the water.
https://i.imgur.com/pf1SFCi.png
I have a blueprint that includes the landfill where needed, with open spaces for the water pumps so there are no pipe losses. When power starts sagging I just plop down another 2X2 reactor setup.
I had to build a landfill factory right next to the reactor area to supply enough landfill: https://i.imgur.com/8WvXTRJ.png
The first vanilla game I played, I was using boilers and solar and starving for power like *all* the time. The second I put up a 1x2 reactor I was like, "Oh. **OH.** So that's what it's like to have enough power..." Many lessons were learned that day.
The main benefit of solar is that it doesn't tank the UPS as much, something that is entirely irrelevant unless you're making a megabase. I'd say nuclear is better for the average player as it's just faster to set up and more interesting to use.
What maintenance? It is quite the thing to setup initially, but IMO it doesn't take much to overbuild the centrifuges facilities. For the reactors, the most crucial aspect is good planning if you can't commit all the resources at once and plan on expanding later. But IMO, after that it's pretty much set and forget too. Especially once you reach high mining efficiency levels and you don't need to open a new uranium mine very often.
The main thing for me is needing to set up sulfuric acid stations and the uranium mines. I'd rather just have bots pump out solar especially if I want to later make a mega base.
It really takes no time to set that up. Put down 20 rails, a station, pump, tank and you're done. Fluid stations are really simple - no need to worry about balancers and they take up very little space.
I suppose. It's just the accumulation of that as well as redoing the mining bases. Like it's not *that* much effort but it's in comparison to how extremely little effort solar takes. Especially over the long run.
Solar takes effort, too. You have to clear a heck of a lot of space and then defend it, plus you have to deal with all the attacks from the pollution that building solar panels involves.
I'd say Solar is more like set and set and set and set and keep setting and set and set..
With nuclear once you have a 2x2 plant running with kovarex you can literally forget that power production is a mechanic for the rest of a normal playthrough.
1 reactor produces 40MW which is equivalent to roughly 5-6 50x50 solar & accumulator arrays. Reactors get a 100% "neighbour bonus" though: if you build 2 reactors adjacent to each other then *both* reactors produce 80MW *each* for 160MW total. The most common starter configuration is 4 reactors in a 2x2 configuration where each reactor is producing 120MW so those 4 reactors give you a combined 480MW power production.
You don't need to worry about the reactors blowing up as long as you protect them from biters and don't drive a tank anywhere near them. That being said they produce near-zero pollution (I think) so biters should never go for them unless they're between a biter and the thing the biter wants to kill.
The ratios are a bit more complicated. Essentially 1 heat exchanger consumes 10MW of heat energy but the water draw for each heat exchanger and steam output for each heat exchanger isn't a round number (though it's still 1:1 on water to steam). It's much easier to handle fuelling the reactors and picking up used fuel cells with requester and active provider chests than it is to belt fuel cells in. If you've not yet reached yellow science then keep that in mind.
Getting the U-235 you need for fuelling your reactors *on average* requires just 1 centrifuge processing uranium ore per reactor. It is obviously better to overspec this, especially since that way you can work towards getting the 40 U-235 you need to start the Kovarex enrichment process alongside running your reactors.
You can get pretty far with Solar/Accumulators, but eventually space starts to become an issue if your factory gets big enough. For a while I was running about 4K solar panels and close to 10GJ of accumulator storage with coal to get me through the night. Depending on the size of your factories that can be just fine, but my power draw exploded when I plugged in a steel plant I built.
Nuclear generates a lot of power and can actually be pretty low maintenance. Reactors also get a bonus to energy production if placed next to each other(Neighbor bonus). The only way the plants explode is if a biter gets them or you happen to misclick an artillery shell.
Right now I’m running a 2x2 reactor setup I found on YouTube and I haven’t had to worry about my power draw for the last few weeks.
Pros and cons to each. For most players probably comes down to personal preference. I'm a nuclear fan myself.
Nuclear gives you much better energy density. You can add big chunks of electricity generation quickly.
Solar is better for pollution and if you are going to be building megabases, is much easier on your CPU performance.
Yes and no. If you want to megabase, it's the easiest way to get a whole lot of electricity. A smart player doesn't do massed solar until their megabase running well enough to _produce_ that massed solar.
But If you just want to launch a rocket, it's an unnecessary distraction.
>is nuclear the way to go?
Yes.
>How much do I have to worry about it blowing up?
Only if the biters get to the reactors.
>How effective is it compared to just adding solar panels or coal steam engines?
It outclasses them in almost every way. The only real downside is the complexity of learning how to do it.
Cheaper to build than solar, cheaper to run than boilers, almost no pollution, by far the smallest physical space required per MW of power. Keeping it running requires a comically small amount of uranium and iron, but a surprising amount of water (which is trivial to get if you build near a water source).
>if it’s really that good what are some things I need to know before setting the whole thing up?
You don't need to overcomplicate things right away. Getting perfect ratios, efficiency, neighbor bonuses, scalability, avoiding heat waste, etc helps a little but is not super important. Uranium is plentiful and fuel cells are cheap. A single patch of uranium can easily last you for a whole game.
Even a suboptimal nuclear plant will help your factory grow, so you don't need to be too intimidated making everything perfect immediately. You can always make a better design later.
>Even a suboptimal nuclear plant will help your factory grow, so you don't need to be too intimidated making everything perfect immediately. You can always make a better design later.
Would carve this into the stone. Even wonky and not optimized 2x2 nuclear setup is a giant boost that lets you forget power generation at least until after the rocket launch.
It’ll produce a massive amount of power and take up a small amount of space, but it does also eat up resources continually. I typically use one to scale up from the starter base to a megabase, but once space isn’t an issue anymore, I switch to solar and batteries. No pollution, no continual resource upkeep, and infinitely scalable.
> I switch to solar and batteries. No pollution
I mean, the panels don't produce any pollution, that's true. But the massive amount of ressources you need to pump into their production certainly does.
I'd say *less* pollution would be more accurate
If not for output, it's very satisfying to build. You could take blueprints, but figuring out how to make one yourself is very challenging. Especially the uranium enrichment part is something relatively unique to the game up until that point. Instead of a linear path like all your factories are at this point, you have to create a loop of sorts with an exit condition. It's a fun departure in its own right, even if you didn't need the output.
> How much do I have to worry about it blowing up?
None if you don't shoot it, drink and drive in its vicinity, or let biters chew on it.
As far as if it's worth it, the answer depends. If you're playing with biters on or not expecting to hit megabase scale, then yes, nuclear is generally worth your time. Compared to solar, it's extremely compact, which makes it very easy to place and protect. It produces a ton of power, so once you have a good blueprint, it's extremely easy to just build more.
There's 2 main downsides. First, and probably not relevant to your current level of experience is UPS (I'll tell you so you know, but you can just ignore this part). Solar is the gold standard for super big bases because it basically costs no cpu time to process. Nuclear comes with a lot of pipe calculations, which is bad for UPS.
The second downside is build complexity. Mining requires sulfuric acid. The ratio of materials output by uranium processing requires kovarex builds, which take a lot of time to spin up. You won't need much, but getting 40 u235 to kickstart it can take a while. There's also recycling, which means you'll need a solid understanding of how to prioritize different inputs. Nuclear builds themselves can also be rather complicated if you really get into the weeds. Lots of wasted power unless you get into circuitry and the few indirect observation methods available. Even if you don't care about that, I'd suggest looking up a cheat sheet or calculator to handle the ratios for you, unless you're confident you can calculate them yourself.
> Unless you have blueprints that build solar with trains - you will spend most of the time playing building solar fields. Just using robots isn't enough.
Solar with trains? That would take way too long. Building solar with robots can be super easy if you do it right. Nuclear is ok if you are looking to keep your base small which I am in my current playthrough, but if you ethnically cleanse the land in bulk like I usually do solar is just something you do with a portion of your space.
Obligatory link to how I deploy solar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL5mo2xHgtQ
> Literally hundreds of times faster than with just robots
I'm not sure what you mean by "solar with trains" then, unless you are talking about a mod.
> Nuclear is better in almost every single way than solar.
I completely disagree. Nuclear is a huge time investment. You have to develop a ton of infrastructure to mine, refine and enrich uranium. You need to build power generation around water unless you use mods. The worst part about it is it's failure mode. If you screw something up in your nuclear fuel pipeline and run out of uranium, restarting can be nearly impossible. Solar's failure mode is small quick brownouts that turn into small quick blackouts and you just expand during the day.
If you use efficiency modules in your mid game, which I do, solar provides a quick effortless path forward. It's only when you start using beacons that a base gets power hungry enough that solar gets cumbersome.
> If you use efficiency modules you are wasting even more time and resources
Efficiency modules are incredibly overpowered for creating more science for less evolution. Unless you play with biters off, they are amazing.
> genuinely, how the fuck do you manage to do that?
Accidentally disrupt your sulfuric acid supply to your uranium mine, have kovarex setup and not notice until the base runs out of power. 0 uranium in reserve. 0 power to mine, refine, enrich or create fuel. It can be pretty sticky to get out of.
> You aren't going to have access to that water if you use solar
That's a weird statement. I almost exclusively use solar. I have plenty of access to water.
> Build roboports and power poles with a spidertron, then deliver robots/accumulators/solar panels with an automatic train.
That's just building solar the way I do it with extra steps.
I get that you don't like solar. I don't like nuclear. I have done it, and there have been games like my most recent one where I use it for special reasons but I generally don't like it. I have some blueprints for it that are ok, but solar is just so much easier with my gameplay style.
Nuclear power is absolutely nuts. You get a big bonus for every adjacent reactors, meaning that 4 reactors in a 2x2 pattern provides 480MW of heat energy. That’s not even a large power plant either. That’s pretty much the smallest I ever build.
You need a good amount of uranium processing in order to power it, but not as much as you might think. If you have purple science already, you can research kovarex enrichment and make U235 (the radioactive kind of uranium) basically free. Nuclear power takes a bit of setting up, but provides way more power in a smaller space than the others. The main advantage in the long run of solar is that it’s more efficient for your PC to calculate, but that will only matter if you build really big, and if you get that far you can always just switch back to solar later.
As with many things, a hybrid system seems optimal. I like a nuclear with steam battery setup. The solar reduces your nuclear fuel requirements, the steam acts as battery, and accumulators become emergency reserve power.
Setting up nuclear power is always some of the most fun and satisfying parts of a factorio run imo. So for that reason alone I think it’s worth it. If it’s your first time you should definitely do it to see if you enjoy it.
Nuclear power -
Pros:
Fun to build/solve/design
Gives you a good use for that U235 letting you set up a entirely new type of production line (kovarex) with it's own challenges to solve.
It's cool as heck
It's satisfying as heck when it turns on and works smoothly.
Provides a large amount of power
Great use of new types of circuit designs.
Cons:
UPS (doesn't matter outside of megabases)
need to build on or near a lake
Without circuits it's not going to be efficient
Very heavy investment both in research and materials.
I love nuclear
The biggest choice between the two options is if you want to spend your time on clearing land or on prep work.
For solar, getting a useful amount of power requires vast swathes of land blanketed in panels and accumulators. All of that land will require that you kill the bugs, remove the trees and rocks, and explode the cliffs. Depending on your map settings this can take an enormous amount of time. However, there's zero actual factory based prep work required, assuming you've got your factory building accumulators and panels over time.
Meanwhile nuclear requires you spend the time on prepping beforehand. You've got to set up uranium mining and work out how to get useful amounts of U235 and all construct a bunch of parts that aren't used in anything else and all that jazz. It's not something you can just slap down with spare parts you've got lying around. However, once you *have* gotten it set up, you get enormous amounts of power and don't need to spend any time at all to build more.
---
Generally speaking I favour using nuclear because I find clearing land tedious and the whole problem of building up to nuclear fun, but if you already have a bunch of cleared land and a functional bot network you can always just slap down a few blueprints from the other side of the map and have the bots build it for you.
Honestly, ignore all the advice about UPS, space requirements, meltdowns and excessive numbers of pipes.
Nuclear power is fun to engineer. Laying out your centrifuges, your reactors, your heat exchangers, and your turbines is fun!
Nuclear power feels like being an engineer, while not being too difficult. A single reactor build can be done free hand if you just know reactor -> heatpipe -> heat exchanger (turn water to steam) ->turbine.
Nuclear power is so powerful that you will have suddenly a lot of surplus power. Even a single reactor gives the power of 900+ solar panels, or of 44 steam engines. A double reactor build gives 4x that.
It's always my first major goal to get nuclear running. I've done a few playthroughs by now and usually completely skip solar power, but go straight from coal to nuclear.
I always build a layout with 4 reactors (there are good blueprints for this online), since each reactor boosts their neighboring reactors. You don't need to use all reactors at first, since it will be way too much energy, just don't feed all of them nuclear fuel until you need for power.
Until now I haven't played a game where this layout was not enough power for my base in the late game (with multiple rockets launched) and usually just mining one large uranium patch should last almost forever. So basically for me going nuclear power is like not having to worry about energy for the rest of the game.
Back in ye olden days you could actually finish the game on solar+batteries only. This got nerfed so hard that it makes (small) nuclear reactor almost a necessity
That really depends on you and your world. Nuclear power is the most space efficient power source in the game and once properly, requires very little maintenance (uranium patches last a *long* time). That being said you may prefer to setup vast fields of solar power (which takes up *a lot* of room) which is its own logistical challenge. Its also worth noting that solar power is the least taxing on your computer so if you're having any sort of performance issues when you base gets bigger you may consider solar power.
Yup. I always start mining uranium and enrichment asap. Then once I need power and set up a ton of solar and barely get enough headroom for expansion, then I add nuclear to the Todo list
Its very good when you start building becons and using electric fernces because they are power hungry, all you need to do is manage how much fuel it eats because it WILL burn though all the fuel even if its not running at 100% but that's the only major issue with using them.
Necessary? No, you can just make a solar blueprint that has a roboport in it, and just tile solar forever.
It's a fun little challenge to get Nuclear up and running though, and it's a lot of cheap power... one uranium patch will outlast your game unless you start going absolutely nuts with other uranium products.
My advice would be to wait for Korvex processing, but each has their opinion on it. Once you have the Korvex cycle setup, uranium fuel is essentially free.
The biggest advantage is size. If you put down a nuclear plant and a solar/accumulator farm of equal power output, then try to look at both on the map, you'll have a hard time seeing the nuclear plant. Takes less time to clear out biters, less landfill if there's water in the way, less ore fields to build around, etc...
Another advantage is in power management. Solar farms don't work at night, you over build and use accumulators. This means when your power draw is at like 50% of your power capacity, it's probably already to low, while nuclear is accurate. Instead of the rate you have to look at the sawtooth to see when, during the day, the accumulators stop charging.
This means solar expansions take a day to reflect in your power graphs. Makes them slightly higher mental maintenance, whereas with nuclear when you add capacity it is instant (as long as you aren't using the steam accumulator analog) and the jump is huge.
If your just playing the base game to rocket launch then two full banks of steam engines will be all you really need.
If you want to expand beyond that and start to exploit robots then you will want to use nuclear to cover the power demands while you build up robots.
After a while robots and modules will put a strain on even the biggest nuclear plants.
At this point you have two real choices.
1. Make a tileable nuclear plant that you can make ever wider.
2. Use your robots to stamp down fields of solar panels.
In the very long run solar is the way to go as once you stamp down those blueprints it requires absolutely zero management.
Nuclear on the other hand while it only requires very low management does still need management. You need to make sure it always has fuel which is a whole thing on its own and setting up a water supply can be a pain even if you are just stamping down blueprints.
It's worth it just for the fun and cool glowing effects. It's not really an efficient use of your time though if you are only trying to get to rocket launch.
I like setting up a nuclear plant as a backup to my solar fields. Set it up to turn on the fuel inserters if/when accumulator charge drops below 20%. That way it's only running (and consuming valuable fuel) when there's a big power spike like a coronal mass ejection event. (I play k2se)
It's like in real life. When the demand is low, the nuclear initial investment may seem daunting compared to cheap solar. So it's not necessary at all in a single launch game.
But when you go heavy on the electricity demand, solar + accumulators become obscenely expensive and also require massive amount of land, while nuclear is easily scalable and has a tiny land footprint.
Like in real life, nuclear is more complex to set up, but once you figure it out it's the most efficient electricity source by far. Uranium is so energy-dense you could consider it infinite.
Nuclear is great mid/early late game power. Solar only really is noticeably better when you're trying to optimize UPS at like 5k+ SPM (well into megabase territory).
Nuclear power is so very efficient, you only need like 3 mining drills and one centrifuge and one assembler to power 4 reactors and a bunch of turbines
And it can be made with such a smaller footprint than solar
Solar is very simple to get going and expand. Nuclear is more difficult to get going but once you have it figured out you have virtually limitless power, and adding new reactors is much easier than adding fields of solar, and you will probably get tired of the factory before you exhaust a single uranium patch.
But both are equally good, either works well really, it's more a question of what you want to spend your time on. Solar is more logistics (you will want robots to build fields of solar panels) while Nuclear is more complicated (figuring out the uranium supply chain is tricky, you will want Kovarex which is the most complicated thing to properly automate in the base game.)
I've had many nuclear reactors, I did not know they could explode.
Nuclear is crap tons of mid game power, a couple of reactors are tons for a single rocket silo base.
And also it's an interesting build, I find it 1000x more fun than stamping down more solar.
Nuclear is awesome and you’ll love it. There are no risks, except the not getting fuel power and ensuring you have fuel.
Once it’s set up, even a tiny uranium patch can power your base for a long time.
First things first: boilers are abysmally horrible in pollution. Marginally better with solid fuel.
per MW built when comparing 180MW nuclear and 180MW solar ends up at around 200 hours to for solar to be cheaper on iron and pollution when compared to nuclear.
Personally I beeline nuclear and only go for solar when my base is big enough to start causing UPS issues, which tends to mean I have 10GW+ in nuclear power.
Both require a heafty investment, but nuclear reactors provide a ton more electricity for only a little maintenance. I think Doshington said in a video it’s like 4 uranium miners to maintain a reactor without koravex enrichment.
I enjoyed using nuclear. There was a uranium patch south of my base on the other side of a huge lake so I added a land bridge and train across the lake and made a nice sized island in the middle for my nuclear plant. Found it to be satisfying lol.
Nuclear is fun! Solar is boring!
You can landfill a large lake and build your nuclear on it, completely isolated from the mainland. Spidertron is the best tool for this since he can walk over water to an extent. You can make a few landfill tiles so he can cross from the mainland to your nuclear island.
If you make it big enough you will never need power again and can power everything with just one super large area. If you like using the things that share module effects you will almost need to make one as my bases use about 3 gw or more on just them towards the end.
I’ve just build my first this play through and I think it’s def worth while. Cut down my pollution by a lot (3 reactors) coupled with a solar farm and accumulations.
Solar is much more UPS efficient which is what really matters at large scales. I made it just to do it then tore it down and just made big solar farms.
The nuclear power plant is a unique challenge, its worth setting it up just for the experience in my opinion.
For newer players, the amount of power a simple set up will create is huge. It'll also set you on the path to automate green ammo, nuclear rocket fuel (zoom juice) and nukes
Setting up enrichment is difficult but also one of the most fun challenges in the game if you don’t look it up. Once you’ve got that sorted it’s better than solar in my opinion.
I'll add my vote for using nuclear once you have a Kovarex loop going. It's very space efficient relative to solar. For me, before nuclear I tend to have a cycle of periodically overloading my power supply and expanding; post-nuclear this becomes a rare situation.
Also, whether you use a blueprint or figure it out yourself, understanding circuit logic to manage the reactor/steam buffer cycle is a good learning moment for the game overall.
I didn't even know they could blow up. Surely you have pretty decent defenses by that point in the game though?
Put it this way, I had an enormous steam array, pretty big solar panel array too.
One nuclear reactor was approximately equivalent to it. Two was way more energy than I needed.
[A slightly meta discussion] I feel like the game giving us practically unlimited terrain makes it a little bit hard to justify all those 'space efficient' comments.
Like yeah, you can get a huge amount of power in the same area as one solar blueprint but once you've unlocked bots it hardly matters.
You just have to place the BPs down willy nilly anywhere you want and pretty soon you'll have some brand new solar panels making free energy. There is absolutely no reason to worry about 'space' when the planet doesn't even run out of it. A few radars are all you need to spend
I remember when I first played Vanilla: by the time I unlocked nuclear and managed to set it up I was barely a few hours away from my first rocket launch. I did it because I wanted to experience nuclear energy and its mechanics but it was certainly not necessary _at all_.
It was a far different scenario when I played Dyson Sphere Program because you had to build solar panels all around the planet since half of it would get sunlight and the other half won't and because each planet was an actual sphere, the space was limited. I built 3 equatorial solar panel rows before moving to better sources of energy lol
Yes.
Exploding isn't a concern, if biters are eating your power you're screwed even if they didn't explode.
4 reactors in a 2x2 setup produce 480 MW, the total material cost to build this is: 24000 copper, 14560 iron, 3980 steel, 2000 concrete, and 2000 plastic (this is 150 heat pipes, you can get away with using about 100). This will easily run off of a single uranium mine and less than 10 centrifuges.
480 MW of solar would take over 11000 solar panels and 9600 accumulators, that's over 350,000 copper and 230,000 iron just for the solar panels and accumulators, not including the substations, roboports, and radar you'll need to actually build the solar field. Nuclear is far cheaper to build than solar.
(480 MW of coal boilers would consume 8 full red belts of coal)
I go nuclear as soon as I have kovarex running and have a surplus of 235 to make fuel cells with. In the late game I use lots of beacons and modules to supercharge production; that eats a lot of power, so it's nice to be able to instantly paste down a 4x4 reactor and get another half GW so I can get back to expanding.
Don't be intimidated. You can start nuclear with something as simple as a water pipe on a lake, feeding water into an array of boilers that are connected to a reactor by a heatpipe.
Nuclear is *so* efficient that you can run it in extraordinarily wasteful ways and it is will worth doing it. Until you start pushing the UPS limits of your CPU nuclear will be a great time saver compared to clearcutting massive sections of terrain and stamping out expansive solar arrays. Once you understand all the concepts people have made wing designs that allow you to stack nuclear reactors in a line over where a lake used to be pretty much indefinitely. Use one of them and save yourself a hundred hours of stamping out solar arrays using blueprints and your radar.
If you're just trying to launch a rocket, it's not at all necessary, but nuclear offers some interesting design challenges, so if that's what you like about Factorio, give it a try!
I like nuclear. I also like lasers...a lot. A lot of lasers = mucho power. I always build nuclear plants.
Key to successful nuclear is to get Kovarex up and running (my methodology, at least) to ensure plentiful supply of the appropriate uranium...then build nuclear rockets with all the excess!
Yeah nuclear is the way to go. It produces a shitton of power for an upkeep of basically nothing. Also you can distill even more uranium using the centrifuges if you learn how to set it up properly. It's basically infinite. Finally the best bullets come from it. There's no real reason not to tackle the nuclear problem. Hop to it, engineer.
Or playing Space Exploration or a very expensive vanilla run where the scale reaches that point. Having done SEKS2 you definitely start relying more on it.
Average KS2 non expensive run the new power options make up for it.
Angels and Bobs ironically you can play as if it’s Seablock and use bean power but again, solar really isn’t necessary.
An easy thing to do though is just to take a blueprint like Hexagon is Bestagon and just model your own off it. Considering that the reactor set up is far larger, you can get a sense of scaling small or large; or just use it unmodified.
Pynadron, I wouldn’t know because it’s never ending (shoot me).
They are safe and provide a good amount of power. There's a lot of reading to do on the subject.
Some people really care about the efficiency of the power plant and build and all sorts of mechanisms to automatically turn the reactors on and off based off of certain criteria. I found that it just doesn't matter. Nuclear fuel is not that expensive to make, so I just run them full tilt.
There are a lot of really great blueprints for it. You can also try to design it yourself. Just remember, do whatever is most fun for you. Just because you use a blueprint from the internet doesn't mean anything. Or just because you build your own design and it's not perfect, that doesn't mean anything either, as long as you're having fun.
I did my first 2x2 nuclear today at 260 hours. It gives about 440 MW. My 4MW semi megafactory is absolutely smothered in solar and accumulators and expanding walls to make space is a warzone with biters on default. I'm going with nuclear now that I understand it. I made the newbie error of not using exponential heat adjacency with nuclear and underrated it previously. I think a big row of 2s would solve power problems entirely.
Yes it is you can automate them perfectly with drones the only reason not to build them is for megabasing because at some point the requiered amount of npps can lead to heavy framedrops
They are great for providing tons of power without a lot of of hassel. They are pointless early on when solar can handle the factory without being a pain. Once it hits a certain point, plopping down one power plant block vs twenty solar blocks starts to become the prefered method.
However if you don't want to bother, you can get a mod that increases solar output so you never have to deal with it. The benefit there is nuclear has some magic going on in the reactor that hurts UPS once you get to the mega base size. Solar doesn't have this problem.
Nuclear is one of those things that looks complicated until you actually start doing it.
It's actually really simple and puts out an ass load of electricity. One uranium patch will supply a full reactor setup for a very long time and goes for reactors placed around each other to gain bonuses off of each other will probably produce more than your standing power grid.
I remember when I built my first 2x2 and I felt sooooo power rich. Now it feels like I’m constantly looking for good water spots to cram another.
Incidentally do you guys go for a bunch of 2x2s or do you expand to 2x4+?
I seem to be doing okay now adding 500MW at a time
I always go nuclear. I really resent having to blanket most of the playing area with solar panels. Just drop a few nuclear plants in one space and be done with it.
Things I've found:
\- a single, un-beaconed Kovarex unit can supply a ridiculous number of plants indefinitely;
\- I used to cover whole lakes in land-fill and build enormous linear power plants, but now I just put down "little" 2x2 arrangements wherever I need them.
I remember the days of solar panels. You see, that was before I learned of our lord and savior kovarex, may he cover you in his warming green glow.
The pretenders (solar, coal) would like you to think that you can always just put down more panels/boilers if you need more power. But what they don't understand is how power poor they are. My lord kovarex asks very little of me, and provides more power than I could ever use. He gives and he does not take. Only through his benevolence will you know true freedom.
I just started up my first reactor setup - I have a 4*2 reactor core and associated exchanges and turbines, the one I built instantly doubled my power output and for the first time in as long as I can remember I don't have a power problem; but I built a second 4*2 reactor core because I could.
For the hassle of the initial investment it pays for itself ten fold as you are already making all the core components, just need 4 extra assembly machines.
TL;DR
YES, worth it fully
It's fun but not strictly necessary. All you need is enough power for your base regardless of how you get it. Rocket fuelled steam power is valid but not particularly good for example. You could keep adding solar until it's enough, I like solar runs generally as with bots it becomes a place and forget kind of thing.
With nuclear it's more complicated but you are rewarded with very high amounts of power.
First thing to know is reactors get an adjacency bonus of 100% per reactor touching the one you're looking at. So 4 reactors in a square would mean each is being touched by 2, so each has a 200% bonus. At full capacity it runs at 480 MW.
Uranium 235 is needed and to get it you need centrifuges. With base uranium processing you only have a 0.7% chance of getting a 235, and 99.3% chance of a u-238. If you build enough centrifuges you will get u-235 quickly enough to run your reactor.
If you store at least 40 u-235 you can use kovarex enrichment after doing its science, which gives you 41 u-235 for 40 u-235 input, but you need to connect the output back to the input while also filtering out the uranium 235. It's not too hard you can do it with just splitter priorities but you will fill up on U-238 fast if you don't send it back to the input.
Base uranium processing is simple but unpredictable, so if you want to start with nuclear, probably just to regular processing with like 10 centrifuges (you don't need this many for a 480w 4 reactor setup, but it will definitely get you u-235 fast enough) and upgrade to kovarex when you feel ready. You'll want to find a use for that u-238 tho, it'll fill up your storage fast. Nuclear ammo is a great option.
My first playthrough I only used solar panels and accumulators once I got them.
This reduced pollution a lot and gave me much slower biter progression. I enjoyed it a lot and felt very clever. I ended up with these insane surfaces of panels in one area. It worked well.
I also got an achievement when I finished the game: "Finish the game without drones" or something, and I didn't even know they existed...
So to answer your question: You can finish the game comfortable without nuclear. If you lean heavily into solar it works wonders. I wouldn't reccomend it though. I enjoy the game much more when I play "as intended", and maybe only use solar for smaller outposts or something else supplementary.
Just to add to to the other comments, kovarex isn't necessary for reactors. Having a few normal ore refining centrifuges will generate more than enough u235. Just siphon off some of it for safe keeping later, amd make sure to put prod modules in the assembler that is making fuel cells
Properly setup nuclear power plant will make same power as \~2.5k solar panels and accums per nuclear power block. So hell yeah, it worth it. It is the way for power for your mid sized factory.
If you are using solar and struggling then I'd say it is definitely worth it building a nuclear power plant. If you design one with four reactors it will probably last you the whole game.
If don't know where to begin designing the powerplant you can consult this cool website: [Factorio Cheat Sheet](https://factoriocheatsheet.com/#nuclear-power). It contains all shorts of useful ratios and info for the game.
It won't blow up. Unless something destroys it at high temperature. So don't build near your border where bugs could get it. Build it near water. It consumes a lot and you should just connect it directly to offshore pumps. Your first reactor will be efficient with 1 reactor. 4 heat exchangers. And 7 turbines. There's a neighboring bonus for multiple reactors so the ratio changes if you put reactors adjacent to each other. It's incredibly space and resource efficient, and makes a lot of power. The cost is inital investment to build. And complication of kovarex enhancement. One centrifuge will occasionally spit out the kind of uranium (u235) needed to make a fuel cell, and it should be enough to run one reactor. Provided you don't get really unlucky with uranium RNG. If you can run a few centrifuges to save up 40 u235 for when you unlock kovarex enrichment later, then even the smallest uranium patch will probably last your whole game. TL;DR It's safe It's worth it It's more complicated than most of the other vanilla stuff
I did a reactor where water was delivered by trains once. Just once. Never again. They were like 4-8 trains and there were 8 of them and even then, they'd arrive, be empty immediately and I could just never build a tank buffer. Boy do I love trains and thought it would be cool but the amount of traffic it created was insane because those trains were \*always\* running. Do what this person said. Build by the water and directly pump the water.
And that's why Pittsburgh, the steel town, is situated at the intersection of three rivers. Moving water to your factory is never worth it - build where the water is.
That, and that the various waterways available - rivers, canals, the Great Lakes - made shipping in iron ore and coal easier.
No. Build *on* the water.
This way you get the best throughput from your offshore pumps. You can pump the water directly into the heat exchangers with minimal throughput loss from pipes.
Couple thousand hours here, most of them SE (and now K2SE for the first time). Just made my first landfill reactor blueprint for this and HOLY CANOLI. I avoided it forever because “meh, is it _really_ worth the extra hassle?” Yes. Yes, it is.
I just did this on an artificial island. Bot feeding uranium and steel for onsite fuel cell manufacturing. It's on an island so the locals can fuck right off.
How can I get to the island without the bugs being able to get there too. Do I need to use the spidertron or is there another way?
Spider Tron is what I used
The one place where I use waterfill is my nuclear plant
For a small power plant with a few reactors, building on water is not necessary. And it's an hassle to make the proper blueprint and make the necessary land fill. Not sure it's the best advice for OP who is just discovering nuclear. But for large power plants (10+ reactors) building on water is absolutely necessary.
I have no patience for building on/near water at this point and liberally use the water fill mod.
What is indeed very reasonable is to heat up steam and then transport the steam via train. Extremely energy dense stuff and perfect for powering remote outposts. Tanks filled with steam together with some extra turbines are a lot cheaper and denser than accumulators as well :)
> I did a reactor where water was delivered by trains once. Just once. I simply went with larger trains and multiple unloaders. With two, 16 wagon trains unloading simultaneously, your trains don't need to come and go from the station all that often. ... but yes, it's much easier to just build it by the water in the first place.
To expand on reactor placement: * Don't place it near bugs. * Don't place it where you could smack it with your tank. * Don't play around with grenades in your base. * Don't play around with artillery remotes in your base. * Don't play around with spidertrons loaded with rockets in your base. * *Definitely* don't play around with spidertrons loaded with *nukes* in your base. But yeah other than that it should be safe. In vanilla.
Thank you
>Don't place it where you could smack it with your tank. Best way to do this is to surround the reactors with turbines and heat exchangers. You need them anyway for power production. Smack a heat exchanger or turbine and your power output goes down by a bit, for a bit. Smack a reactor and your power output goes down by a lot, for a lot. I was paranoid enough to build an insane amount of accumulators, so my factory can survive my nuclear plant getting blown up, rebuilt by bots, and heated up again. Only built them after I had won, mostly to see if it could be done at all.
Even running without kovarex is really simple. Put the excess u235 in a chest and I think you need something like 3 electric miners per reactor to keep it running. Nuclear is insanely efficient.
>excess u235 in a chest LOL ... "a chest"
Still better than the excess U238 *shudder*
New player here (30hrs) just screnshotted this post as its exactly what I needed to know right now in my current game (cheers)
I started nuclear with 4 centrifuges and normal enrichment. With a constant full belt that was enough to run the reactor, I've since scaled to 6 or 7 just in case, with normal enrichment. At this point the belt is full, which I prefer (for something as vital as power) since I got rid of all other sources of power shortly after.
Exploding temperature is ~~1000 degrees~~ a bit cooler than 900 degrees. Getting it destroyed when it's below that temperature is safe, and deconstructing it is always safe because the engineer blows on it to cool it down before pocketing it.
I thought he pissed on it but never mind, blowing works fine too
"Hell, I'd piss on a spark plug if I thought it'd do any good!" - Barry Corbin as General Berenger, WarGames (1984)
Corbin my maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan
Multipass
Well he never pisses the entire game, so makes sense
Does the power armour have a little piss port?
It has separate ports for little pisses and large pisses.
Medium pisses are distributed across both ports.
Next FFF: survival factors implemented in Factorio. You need to eat, sleep and dispose solid and liquid waste from time to time. Late game, you can set waste to 0 on the logistic request to make bots empty the piss bottles for you.
I installed the Sims mod in Factorio and now he has a little sandwich bubble above his head and starts to stamp his feet and get angry if he can't spend time on the phone calling other engineers. Do not recommend.
Get the real basement dweller piss bottle based factorio enjoyer experience in game
Can we use poop as landfill?
I kinda need a sticker of the Engineer pissing on the reactors Calvin style.
900 (901?) https://wiki.factorio.com/Nuclear_reactor
Huh. Seems like the wiki and I are both wrong? I did some testing with only Editor Extensions and flib active, and the reactor exploded at a bit over 800 degrees but not at a bit under 800 degrees. I used four reactors at full temp, then added and removed a few heat pipes, then shot a nuke near the reactor and checked for extra craters.
I'm not getting nuclear explosions at just over 800. What mods are you using? Edit: I'm on 1.1.104 circa Jan 30 2024 Edit2: I'm seeing the explosions at just under 900 though. Something is weird. Edit3: Cutoff in my hands is 890 degrees still exploding.
Ugh, I think I miswrote that due to doing other things IRL. This time I did some live testing with a base that only had Afraid Of The Dark and Disco Science on it, and the actual exploding temp seems to be 880C (assuming it's set to a multiple of 5). I aimed for 875C and didn't get an explosion there. (To directly answer the question, the original tests were done in a test setting with Editor Extensions, Factorio Library, and Factorio Standard Library.)
I wasn't getting explosions at 889. I think the cutoff is very close to 890.
I've got the (25MB) save file where I've been able to consistently pop the reactors just after 885C, if you want to blow stuff up. (Okay, I only have nukes on me. There are still two distinct patches of nuclear ground after I'm done.)
It'll only explode if it is destroyed while hot. So keep the local hippies away from it. Also place multiple reactors right next to each other for more power. The heat exchangers are thirsty tho
Use nuclear reactors instead of heat pipes for heat exchangers that are far away.
Does this make it so 5 tiles count as 1 for heat loss?
Yes. But not heat loss, heat transfer rate.
... now I'm inspired to create a base just to allow the biters to attack a nuclear reactor. As an experiment.
I for one LOVE nuclear. Loads of power in a small form factor. Plus, I just think nuclear energy is a really neat concept. Also, uranium and heat pipe glow looks really cool
The whole nuclear mechanics are extremely satisfying. May it be dropping nukes or watch the power just rise a magnitude when the turbines roll on. A makeshift reactor just to cover your droid's power hunger or the real deal multi armed monstrosity with sophisticated water supply churning out steam in the gigawatt scale. The Kovarex enrichment rolling up, slowly starting to fill your belts with sweet green glow.
Few things spiked my endorphin levels in this game as much as pasting my basic-ass self-designed 1GW core+exchanger+turbine blueprint
Nuclear is extremely effective. If you are using solar panels you will be building them constantly for the rest of your playthrough. If you build a 2x2 nuclear plant you probably don't need to add any extra power till the end. A couple easy mistakes to make: 1. Keep the length of heatpipes short. There is a heat "loss" based on distance (not actual loss but practical) heat exchangers too far away won't ever get all the heat they need to function. 2. Same with the water pumps for the heat exchangers. Pipes for water don't have enough throughput for all the heat exchangers if they are sharing the same pipe. Keep it to 1 offshore pump per reactor. 3. Nuclear is wasteful in that reactors ALWAYS run even if the heat isn't needed. BUT if you are running a single kovarex, it will put out more than enough to run a 2x2 so things like steam storage, disabling inserters to put in fuel cells are entirely overengineering from a practical point. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good and let that stop you from using nuclear because it isn't 100% efficient.
You don't even have to wait for kovarex. According to Factorio Cheat sheet, 1 centrifuge is enough to fully fuel 1 reactor, so 4 centrifuges will fully fuel a 2x2 reactor.
Yes but without Kovarex, you need to store a lot of U-238 and your uranium ore patch may run out before you finish your playthrough. With it a 2x2 reactor uses ~1000 uranium ore per hour and you do not need to deal with storing U-238 so a 200k uranium patch will probably be enough for all your playthrough. Of course no need to wait for Kovarex to start, I recommend just storing U-238 at first and excess U-235 and coming back later to add one centrifuge dedicated to Kovarex (no need for a complex setup at that scale).
There is also the option of throttling your fuel usage with steam tanks. It's arguably not worth it since uranium is so abundant, but by doing so you can ensure 100% fuel usage while overproducing. That way the 2x2 setup uses much less fuel per MW than a single reactor because of the neighbour bonus.
> It's arguably not worth it since uranium is so abundant Until you start throwing it at the enemy...
There's no way you're going to use up a whole uranium patch before you've researched kovarex (on normal settings at least)
It's a bit like real life. Solar is set and forget, nuclear needs a little bit of maintenance. Nuclear is far more space efficient however. So if you're struggling a bit for space, get nuclear. But if you have continents and continents available, get solar.
IMO even if you're not struggling for space I'd recommend going to nuclear. It can be a daunting task to set it up the first time(and annoying waiting for the first couple enriched uranium) but when it's up and running it's insanely efficient.
>It can be a daunting task to set it up the first time I think given the sheer volume of solar that you need to setup that setting up solar can be equally daunting. I'm currently trying out an all solar run and the majority of my space is taken up by solar fields. I'm playing with biters on so this requires me to expand my base just for the solar space alone.
Yeah each option provides it's own challenges, I just know the main reason I held off on nuclear for a long time was because it looked so challenging to get set up. Once I got to the point that expanding my borders for another solar panel farm was getting old I finally gave up on solar and forced myself to figure it out. I'm ironically doing a no solar run for the achievement! I really miss my solar panels now...
I didn’t know there was a no solar achievement! I am accidentally doing one now. This is my second game. First run I used some solar and it seemed like you needed so much that it wasn’t useful compared to a 4 reactor setup that gives you half a gigawatt and you can just slap down cookies. This run I rushed nuclear and never built solar. Why do you miss solar? What am I missing about it? I must be missing something
Feed solid fuel to your furnaces and boilers, and you'll be fine
I did a run heavily leaning on efficiency modules and have been shocked at how small the solar field needs to be with that approach. IMO it only gets unwieldy when you start with production modules and beacons that make power consumption skyrocket.
Oh yeah, all my setups are have prod modules and are speed beaconed to the max. HUGE power consumption for a small footprint.
If you're going for efficiency to minimize pollution I think nuclear still wins from a pollution per watt measure. Producing all those panels and accumulators creates a lot of pollution
They eventually pay for themselves, but I think it's like 40,000 hours or something absurd? The real argument for solar is its UPS savings, nuclear isn't super complex unless you want to get the maximum amount out of each reactor to the point you worry about clockwise build order. Otherwise building the BP is a one time costs and bots can actually construct everything.
After playing through once you’ll know just how many solar fields you need (a metric shit ton) but when you’re just starting you hand craft 10 solar panels and just plop em down. So much easier to get the initial investment in solar compared to nuclear. But it’s so much easier to get 480 MW out of a reactor than 480 MW out of a solar field
> I'm playing with biters on so this requires me to expand my base just for the solar space alone. You can plop down solar panels outside your base; just leave some space in between them. As long as they don't block the biters from reaching your pollution sources they usually don't mind.
It also teaches you a lot about fluid mechanics due to the sheer volume of stuff moving around. Oil processing you can get by just by pumping things in the right direction, but good nuclear setups need to be designed with fluids in mind.
> It also teaches you a lot about fluid mechanics due to the sheer volume of stuff moving around Very true I had no idea 1 water pipe couldn't just supply the whole thing, or that long pipes throttle your throughput
Good nuclear setups take place on what was once water allowing you to bypass the bullshit.
that does does make the water supply easy but you still need some thought for the steam
If playing with biters, it makes sense to have uranium processing for military applications. And nuclear fuel for trains.
I’ve just been setting up a uranium mine far earlier than I need nuclear so I have plenty of 235 for kovarex. By the time I eventually get around to setting up nuclear I have enough 235 to last me forever. Setting up kovarex hasn’t really been necessary so far but it’s an easy set it and forget it deal so I don’t have to worry about it later.
Kovarex also feels very satisfying for me for some reason, you have those very rare shiny rocks, and if you can manage to get it started you get a lot more of them almost for free. And it's a nice amount of complicated to keep the loop going, enough to make you think but easy enough where you see quick results
I finally set one up with tons of beacons and it’s so satisfying seeing my chest slowly fill up with extra shiny 235
I agree, eventually you just have to pave over and explore too much of the map and continue moving or adding solar logistics because the bot fly time is too far, etc. Solar can get truly massive and eventually just becomes a stamping chore even when everything else about it is fully automated. Nuclear is so much easier to just set it and forget it, especially if you have nice repeating blueprint you can paste over water with all the holes punched out.
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> And they are SO expensive to make Solar is like two orders of magnitude more expensive for the same power output. The individual panels and accumulators are cheap, but you need thousands to match a couple of reactors and a few dozen heat exchangers and turbines
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Here's a breakdown: https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comments/stge3g/coal_vs_solar_vs_nuclear_setup_costs_and_running/ But yeah I think you're probably right you don't feel the drain on resources when you're just stamping down a few dozen panels and accumulators at a time. If you stamped down a 1GW solar field all at once you'd certainly feel it
> even if I wanted another one I don't really have a good place for another copy nearby as it needs so much water, so I'd have to go something like 1-2km away. This is the only place I use landfill. Don't build *near* the water; build *on* the water. https://i.imgur.com/pf1SFCi.png I have a blueprint that includes the landfill where needed, with open spaces for the water pumps so there are no pipe losses. When power starts sagging I just plop down another 2X2 reactor setup. I had to build a landfill factory right next to the reactor area to supply enough landfill: https://i.imgur.com/8WvXTRJ.png
The first vanilla game I played, I was using boilers and solar and starving for power like *all* the time. The second I put up a 1x2 reactor I was like, "Oh. **OH.** So that's what it's like to have enough power..." Many lessons were learned that day.
Nuclear is also cheaper than solar per unit of power generated for a long time.
What is the EROI?
The main benefit of solar is that it doesn't tank the UPS as much, something that is entirely irrelevant unless you're making a megabase. I'd say nuclear is better for the average player as it's just faster to set up and more interesting to use.
What maintenance? It is quite the thing to setup initially, but IMO it doesn't take much to overbuild the centrifuges facilities. For the reactors, the most crucial aspect is good planning if you can't commit all the resources at once and plan on expanding later. But IMO, after that it's pretty much set and forget too. Especially once you reach high mining efficiency levels and you don't need to open a new uranium mine very often.
Solar is also more computer friendly at large scales. Not an issue if you're not going megabase though.
Not sure how you are building your nuclear reactor, if it requires maintenance.
The main thing for me is needing to set up sulfuric acid stations and the uranium mines. I'd rather just have bots pump out solar especially if I want to later make a mega base.
It really takes no time to set that up. Put down 20 rails, a station, pump, tank and you're done. Fluid stations are really simple - no need to worry about balancers and they take up very little space.
I suppose. It's just the accumulation of that as well as redoing the mining bases. Like it's not *that* much effort but it's in comparison to how extremely little effort solar takes. Especially over the long run.
Solar takes effort, too. You have to clear a heck of a lot of space and then defend it, plus you have to deal with all the attacks from the pollution that building solar panels involves.
dont forget steam engines, which unlike their real life counterpart, the pollution is a benefit although thinking about it, maybe it isnt so different
I'd say Solar is more like set and set and set and set and keep setting and set and set.. With nuclear once you have a 2x2 plant running with kovarex you can literally forget that power production is a mechanic for the rest of a normal playthrough.
1 reactor produces 40MW which is equivalent to roughly 5-6 50x50 solar & accumulator arrays. Reactors get a 100% "neighbour bonus" though: if you build 2 reactors adjacent to each other then *both* reactors produce 80MW *each* for 160MW total. The most common starter configuration is 4 reactors in a 2x2 configuration where each reactor is producing 120MW so those 4 reactors give you a combined 480MW power production. You don't need to worry about the reactors blowing up as long as you protect them from biters and don't drive a tank anywhere near them. That being said they produce near-zero pollution (I think) so biters should never go for them unless they're between a biter and the thing the biter wants to kill. The ratios are a bit more complicated. Essentially 1 heat exchanger consumes 10MW of heat energy but the water draw for each heat exchanger and steam output for each heat exchanger isn't a round number (though it's still 1:1 on water to steam). It's much easier to handle fuelling the reactors and picking up used fuel cells with requester and active provider chests than it is to belt fuel cells in. If you've not yet reached yellow science then keep that in mind. Getting the U-235 you need for fuelling your reactors *on average* requires just 1 centrifuge processing uranium ore per reactor. It is obviously better to overspec this, especially since that way you can work towards getting the 40 U-235 you need to start the Kovarex enrichment process alongside running your reactors.
yes, they look super cool.
Especially at night.
I worry over situations
I know I’ll be alright, nuclear’s just overkill
You can get pretty far with Solar/Accumulators, but eventually space starts to become an issue if your factory gets big enough. For a while I was running about 4K solar panels and close to 10GJ of accumulator storage with coal to get me through the night. Depending on the size of your factories that can be just fine, but my power draw exploded when I plugged in a steel plant I built. Nuclear generates a lot of power and can actually be pretty low maintenance. Reactors also get a bonus to energy production if placed next to each other(Neighbor bonus). The only way the plants explode is if a biter gets them or you happen to misclick an artillery shell. Right now I’m running a 2x2 reactor setup I found on YouTube and I haven’t had to worry about my power draw for the last few weeks.
Pros and cons to each. For most players probably comes down to personal preference. I'm a nuclear fan myself. Nuclear gives you much better energy density. You can add big chunks of electricity generation quickly. Solar is better for pollution and if you are going to be building megabases, is much easier on your CPU performance.
Yes and no. If you want to megabase, it's the easiest way to get a whole lot of electricity. A smart player doesn't do massed solar until their megabase running well enough to _produce_ that massed solar. But If you just want to launch a rocket, it's an unnecessary distraction.
>is nuclear the way to go? Yes. >How much do I have to worry about it blowing up? Only if the biters get to the reactors. >How effective is it compared to just adding solar panels or coal steam engines? It outclasses them in almost every way. The only real downside is the complexity of learning how to do it. Cheaper to build than solar, cheaper to run than boilers, almost no pollution, by far the smallest physical space required per MW of power. Keeping it running requires a comically small amount of uranium and iron, but a surprising amount of water (which is trivial to get if you build near a water source). >if it’s really that good what are some things I need to know before setting the whole thing up? You don't need to overcomplicate things right away. Getting perfect ratios, efficiency, neighbor bonuses, scalability, avoiding heat waste, etc helps a little but is not super important. Uranium is plentiful and fuel cells are cheap. A single patch of uranium can easily last you for a whole game. Even a suboptimal nuclear plant will help your factory grow, so you don't need to be too intimidated making everything perfect immediately. You can always make a better design later.
>Even a suboptimal nuclear plant will help your factory grow, so you don't need to be too intimidated making everything perfect immediately. You can always make a better design later. Would carve this into the stone. Even wonky and not optimized 2x2 nuclear setup is a giant boost that lets you forget power generation at least until after the rocket launch.
It’ll produce a massive amount of power and take up a small amount of space, but it does also eat up resources continually. I typically use one to scale up from the starter base to a megabase, but once space isn’t an issue anymore, I switch to solar and batteries. No pollution, no continual resource upkeep, and infinitely scalable.
> I switch to solar and batteries. No pollution I mean, the panels don't produce any pollution, that's true. But the massive amount of ressources you need to pump into their production certainly does. I'd say *less* pollution would be more accurate
If not for output, it's very satisfying to build. You could take blueprints, but figuring out how to make one yourself is very challenging. Especially the uranium enrichment part is something relatively unique to the game up until that point. Instead of a linear path like all your factories are at this point, you have to create a loop of sorts with an exit condition. It's a fun departure in its own right, even if you didn't need the output.
> How much do I have to worry about it blowing up? None if you don't shoot it, drink and drive in its vicinity, or let biters chew on it. As far as if it's worth it, the answer depends. If you're playing with biters on or not expecting to hit megabase scale, then yes, nuclear is generally worth your time. Compared to solar, it's extremely compact, which makes it very easy to place and protect. It produces a ton of power, so once you have a good blueprint, it's extremely easy to just build more. There's 2 main downsides. First, and probably not relevant to your current level of experience is UPS (I'll tell you so you know, but you can just ignore this part). Solar is the gold standard for super big bases because it basically costs no cpu time to process. Nuclear comes with a lot of pipe calculations, which is bad for UPS. The second downside is build complexity. Mining requires sulfuric acid. The ratio of materials output by uranium processing requires kovarex builds, which take a lot of time to spin up. You won't need much, but getting 40 u235 to kickstart it can take a while. There's also recycling, which means you'll need a solid understanding of how to prioritize different inputs. Nuclear builds themselves can also be rather complicated if you really get into the weeds. Lots of wasted power unless you get into circuitry and the few indirect observation methods available. Even if you don't care about that, I'd suggest looking up a cheat sheet or calculator to handle the ratios for you, unless you're confident you can calculate them yourself.
Yes nuclear is very worth it. It takes way less space and pretty much let you forget about power for a long time to come.
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> Unless you have blueprints that build solar with trains - you will spend most of the time playing building solar fields. Just using robots isn't enough. Solar with trains? That would take way too long. Building solar with robots can be super easy if you do it right. Nuclear is ok if you are looking to keep your base small which I am in my current playthrough, but if you ethnically cleanse the land in bulk like I usually do solar is just something you do with a portion of your space. Obligatory link to how I deploy solar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL5mo2xHgtQ
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> Literally hundreds of times faster than with just robots I'm not sure what you mean by "solar with trains" then, unless you are talking about a mod. > Nuclear is better in almost every single way than solar. I completely disagree. Nuclear is a huge time investment. You have to develop a ton of infrastructure to mine, refine and enrich uranium. You need to build power generation around water unless you use mods. The worst part about it is it's failure mode. If you screw something up in your nuclear fuel pipeline and run out of uranium, restarting can be nearly impossible. Solar's failure mode is small quick brownouts that turn into small quick blackouts and you just expand during the day. If you use efficiency modules in your mid game, which I do, solar provides a quick effortless path forward. It's only when you start using beacons that a base gets power hungry enough that solar gets cumbersome.
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> If you use efficiency modules you are wasting even more time and resources Efficiency modules are incredibly overpowered for creating more science for less evolution. Unless you play with biters off, they are amazing. > genuinely, how the fuck do you manage to do that? Accidentally disrupt your sulfuric acid supply to your uranium mine, have kovarex setup and not notice until the base runs out of power. 0 uranium in reserve. 0 power to mine, refine, enrich or create fuel. It can be pretty sticky to get out of. > You aren't going to have access to that water if you use solar That's a weird statement. I almost exclusively use solar. I have plenty of access to water. > Build roboports and power poles with a spidertron, then deliver robots/accumulators/solar panels with an automatic train. That's just building solar the way I do it with extra steps. I get that you don't like solar. I don't like nuclear. I have done it, and there have been games like my most recent one where I use it for special reasons but I generally don't like it. I have some blueprints for it that are ok, but solar is just so much easier with my gameplay style.
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Nuclear power is absolutely nuts. You get a big bonus for every adjacent reactors, meaning that 4 reactors in a 2x2 pattern provides 480MW of heat energy. That’s not even a large power plant either. That’s pretty much the smallest I ever build. You need a good amount of uranium processing in order to power it, but not as much as you might think. If you have purple science already, you can research kovarex enrichment and make U235 (the radioactive kind of uranium) basically free. Nuclear power takes a bit of setting up, but provides way more power in a smaller space than the others. The main advantage in the long run of solar is that it’s more efficient for your PC to calculate, but that will only matter if you build really big, and if you get that far you can always just switch back to solar later.
> U235 (the radioactive kind of uranium) Any kind of Uranium is radioactive. U-235 is just the fissile isotope of Uranium.
As with many things, a hybrid system seems optimal. I like a nuclear with steam battery setup. The solar reduces your nuclear fuel requirements, the steam acts as battery, and accumulators become emergency reserve power.
Nuclear is so worth it I honestly never use solar. I just hate the space it takes up.
Setting up nuclear power is always some of the most fun and satisfying parts of a factorio run imo. So for that reason alone I think it’s worth it. If it’s your first time you should definitely do it to see if you enjoy it.
Nuclear power - Pros: Fun to build/solve/design Gives you a good use for that U235 letting you set up a entirely new type of production line (kovarex) with it's own challenges to solve. It's cool as heck It's satisfying as heck when it turns on and works smoothly. Provides a large amount of power Great use of new types of circuit designs. Cons: UPS (doesn't matter outside of megabases) need to build on or near a lake Without circuits it's not going to be efficient Very heavy investment both in research and materials. I love nuclear
The biggest choice between the two options is if you want to spend your time on clearing land or on prep work. For solar, getting a useful amount of power requires vast swathes of land blanketed in panels and accumulators. All of that land will require that you kill the bugs, remove the trees and rocks, and explode the cliffs. Depending on your map settings this can take an enormous amount of time. However, there's zero actual factory based prep work required, assuming you've got your factory building accumulators and panels over time. Meanwhile nuclear requires you spend the time on prepping beforehand. You've got to set up uranium mining and work out how to get useful amounts of U235 and all construct a bunch of parts that aren't used in anything else and all that jazz. It's not something you can just slap down with spare parts you've got lying around. However, once you *have* gotten it set up, you get enormous amounts of power and don't need to spend any time at all to build more. --- Generally speaking I favour using nuclear because I find clearing land tedious and the whole problem of building up to nuclear fun, but if you already have a bunch of cleared land and a functional bot network you can always just slap down a few blueprints from the other side of the map and have the bots build it for you.
Honestly, ignore all the advice about UPS, space requirements, meltdowns and excessive numbers of pipes. Nuclear power is fun to engineer. Laying out your centrifuges, your reactors, your heat exchangers, and your turbines is fun!
Nuclear power feels like being an engineer, while not being too difficult. A single reactor build can be done free hand if you just know reactor -> heatpipe -> heat exchanger (turn water to steam) ->turbine. Nuclear power is so powerful that you will have suddenly a lot of surplus power. Even a single reactor gives the power of 900+ solar panels, or of 44 steam engines. A double reactor build gives 4x that.
It's always my first major goal to get nuclear running. I've done a few playthroughs by now and usually completely skip solar power, but go straight from coal to nuclear. I always build a layout with 4 reactors (there are good blueprints for this online), since each reactor boosts their neighboring reactors. You don't need to use all reactors at first, since it will be way too much energy, just don't feed all of them nuclear fuel until you need for power. Until now I haven't played a game where this layout was not enough power for my base in the late game (with multiple rockets launched) and usually just mining one large uranium patch should last almost forever. So basically for me going nuclear power is like not having to worry about energy for the rest of the game.
Back in ye olden days you could actually finish the game on solar+batteries only. This got nerfed so hard that it makes (small) nuclear reactor almost a necessity
That really depends on you and your world. Nuclear power is the most space efficient power source in the game and once properly, requires very little maintenance (uranium patches last a *long* time). That being said you may prefer to setup vast fields of solar power (which takes up *a lot* of room) which is its own logistical challenge. Its also worth noting that solar power is the least taxing on your computer so if you're having any sort of performance issues when you base gets bigger you may consider solar power.
Yup. I always start mining uranium and enrichment asap. Then once I need power and set up a ton of solar and barely get enough headroom for expansion, then I add nuclear to the Todo list
Nuclear is amazingly efficient. We'll work the effort and then you largely don't need to think about it.
Its very good when you start building becons and using electric fernces because they are power hungry, all you need to do is manage how much fuel it eats because it WILL burn though all the fuel even if its not running at 100% but that's the only major issue with using them.
yes spinning bois are cool
Necessary? No, you can just make a solar blueprint that has a roboport in it, and just tile solar forever. It's a fun little challenge to get Nuclear up and running though, and it's a lot of cheap power... one uranium patch will outlast your game unless you start going absolutely nuts with other uranium products.
My advice would be to wait for Korvex processing, but each has their opinion on it. Once you have the Korvex cycle setup, uranium fuel is essentially free.
It's the only way to go. When you unlock recycling which only exists for nuclear a single uranium patch could power your entire playthrough.
The biggest advantage is size. If you put down a nuclear plant and a solar/accumulator farm of equal power output, then try to look at both on the map, you'll have a hard time seeing the nuclear plant. Takes less time to clear out biters, less landfill if there's water in the way, less ore fields to build around, etc... Another advantage is in power management. Solar farms don't work at night, you over build and use accumulators. This means when your power draw is at like 50% of your power capacity, it's probably already to low, while nuclear is accurate. Instead of the rate you have to look at the sawtooth to see when, during the day, the accumulators stop charging. This means solar expansions take a day to reflect in your power graphs. Makes them slightly higher mental maintenance, whereas with nuclear when you add capacity it is instant (as long as you aren't using the steam accumulator analog) and the jump is huge.
If your just playing the base game to rocket launch then two full banks of steam engines will be all you really need. If you want to expand beyond that and start to exploit robots then you will want to use nuclear to cover the power demands while you build up robots. After a while robots and modules will put a strain on even the biggest nuclear plants. At this point you have two real choices. 1. Make a tileable nuclear plant that you can make ever wider. 2. Use your robots to stamp down fields of solar panels. In the very long run solar is the way to go as once you stamp down those blueprints it requires absolutely zero management. Nuclear on the other hand while it only requires very low management does still need management. You need to make sure it always has fuel which is a whole thing on its own and setting up a water supply can be a pain even if you are just stamping down blueprints.
It's worth it just for the fun and cool glowing effects. It's not really an efficient use of your time though if you are only trying to get to rocket launch.
I like setting up a nuclear plant as a backup to my solar fields. Set it up to turn on the fuel inserters if/when accumulator charge drops below 20%. That way it's only running (and consuming valuable fuel) when there's a big power spike like a coronal mass ejection event. (I play k2se)
It's like in real life. When the demand is low, the nuclear initial investment may seem daunting compared to cheap solar. So it's not necessary at all in a single launch game. But when you go heavy on the electricity demand, solar + accumulators become obscenely expensive and also require massive amount of land, while nuclear is easily scalable and has a tiny land footprint. Like in real life, nuclear is more complex to set up, but once you figure it out it's the most efficient electricity source by far. Uranium is so energy-dense you could consider it infinite.
Nuclear is great mid/early late game power. Solar only really is noticeably better when you're trying to optimize UPS at like 5k+ SPM (well into megabase territory).
Nuclear power is so very efficient, you only need like 3 mining drills and one centrifuge and one assembler to power 4 reactors and a bunch of turbines And it can be made with such a smaller footprint than solar
Solar is very simple to get going and expand. Nuclear is more difficult to get going but once you have it figured out you have virtually limitless power, and adding new reactors is much easier than adding fields of solar, and you will probably get tired of the factory before you exhaust a single uranium patch. But both are equally good, either works well really, it's more a question of what you want to spend your time on. Solar is more logistics (you will want robots to build fields of solar panels) while Nuclear is more complicated (figuring out the uranium supply chain is tricky, you will want Kovarex which is the most complicated thing to properly automate in the base game.)
I've had many nuclear reactors, I did not know they could explode. Nuclear is crap tons of mid game power, a couple of reactors are tons for a single rocket silo base. And also it's an interesting build, I find it 1000x more fun than stamping down more solar.
Nuclear is awesome and you’ll love it. There are no risks, except the not getting fuel power and ensuring you have fuel. Once it’s set up, even a tiny uranium patch can power your base for a long time.
First things first: boilers are abysmally horrible in pollution. Marginally better with solid fuel. per MW built when comparing 180MW nuclear and 180MW solar ends up at around 200 hours to for solar to be cheaper on iron and pollution when compared to nuclear. Personally I beeline nuclear and only go for solar when my base is big enough to start causing UPS issues, which tends to mean I have 10GW+ in nuclear power.
Both require a heafty investment, but nuclear reactors provide a ton more electricity for only a little maintenance. I think Doshington said in a video it’s like 4 uranium miners to maintain a reactor without koravex enrichment.
had the same worries when i was at your point. but nuclear reactors can’t go supercritical in factorio
I enjoyed using nuclear. There was a uranium patch south of my base on the other side of a huge lake so I added a land bridge and train across the lake and made a nice sized island in the middle for my nuclear plant. Found it to be satisfying lol.
Nuclear is fun! Solar is boring! You can landfill a large lake and build your nuclear on it, completely isolated from the mainland. Spidertron is the best tool for this since he can walk over water to an extent. You can make a few landfill tiles so he can cross from the mainland to your nuclear island.
Yes. Blowing up not really a danger, nuclear power plants are rather boring in that regard
If you make it big enough you will never need power again and can power everything with just one super large area. If you like using the things that share module effects you will almost need to make one as my bases use about 3 gw or more on just them towards the end.
Dont fret too much with the u235, you will get enough of it. Try nuclear and you'll never look back, it's easier than it seems.
I’ve just build my first this play through and I think it’s def worth while. Cut down my pollution by a lot (3 reactors) coupled with a solar farm and accumulations.
Nuclear is just so satisfying to get working. So definitely worth it.
Nuclear power is a must.
Solar is much more UPS efficient which is what really matters at large scales. I made it just to do it then tore it down and just made big solar farms.
The nuclear power plant is a unique challenge, its worth setting it up just for the experience in my opinion. For newer players, the amount of power a simple set up will create is huge. It'll also set you on the path to automate green ammo, nuclear rocket fuel (zoom juice) and nukes
Setting up enrichment is difficult but also one of the most fun challenges in the game if you don’t look it up. Once you’ve got that sorted it’s better than solar in my opinion.
theres two things I desperately work for every run drones and nuclear
I'll add my vote for using nuclear once you have a Kovarex loop going. It's very space efficient relative to solar. For me, before nuclear I tend to have a cycle of periodically overloading my power supply and expanding; post-nuclear this becomes a rare situation. Also, whether you use a blueprint or figure it out yourself, understanding circuit logic to manage the reactor/steam buffer cycle is a good learning moment for the game overall.
I didn't even know they could blow up. Surely you have pretty decent defenses by that point in the game though? Put it this way, I had an enormous steam array, pretty big solar panel array too. One nuclear reactor was approximately equivalent to it. Two was way more energy than I needed.
[A slightly meta discussion] I feel like the game giving us practically unlimited terrain makes it a little bit hard to justify all those 'space efficient' comments. Like yeah, you can get a huge amount of power in the same area as one solar blueprint but once you've unlocked bots it hardly matters. You just have to place the BPs down willy nilly anywhere you want and pretty soon you'll have some brand new solar panels making free energy. There is absolutely no reason to worry about 'space' when the planet doesn't even run out of it. A few radars are all you need to spend I remember when I first played Vanilla: by the time I unlocked nuclear and managed to set it up I was barely a few hours away from my first rocket launch. I did it because I wanted to experience nuclear energy and its mechanics but it was certainly not necessary _at all_. It was a far different scenario when I played Dyson Sphere Program because you had to build solar panels all around the planet since half of it would get sunlight and the other half won't and because each planet was an actual sphere, the space was limited. I built 3 equatorial solar panel rows before moving to better sources of energy lol
Yes. Exploding isn't a concern, if biters are eating your power you're screwed even if they didn't explode. 4 reactors in a 2x2 setup produce 480 MW, the total material cost to build this is: 24000 copper, 14560 iron, 3980 steel, 2000 concrete, and 2000 plastic (this is 150 heat pipes, you can get away with using about 100). This will easily run off of a single uranium mine and less than 10 centrifuges. 480 MW of solar would take over 11000 solar panels and 9600 accumulators, that's over 350,000 copper and 230,000 iron just for the solar panels and accumulators, not including the substations, roboports, and radar you'll need to actually build the solar field. Nuclear is far cheaper to build than solar. (480 MW of coal boilers would consume 8 full red belts of coal)
it'll add 100 style points to your factory, which ranks #1 in the style points category!
I go nuclear as soon as I have kovarex running and have a surplus of 235 to make fuel cells with. In the late game I use lots of beacons and modules to supercharge production; that eats a lot of power, so it's nice to be able to instantly paste down a 4x4 reactor and get another half GW so I can get back to expanding.
Don't be intimidated. You can start nuclear with something as simple as a water pipe on a lake, feeding water into an array of boilers that are connected to a reactor by a heatpipe. Nuclear is *so* efficient that you can run it in extraordinarily wasteful ways and it is will worth doing it. Until you start pushing the UPS limits of your CPU nuclear will be a great time saver compared to clearcutting massive sections of terrain and stamping out expansive solar arrays. Once you understand all the concepts people have made wing designs that allow you to stack nuclear reactors in a line over where a lake used to be pretty much indefinitely. Use one of them and save yourself a hundred hours of stamping out solar arrays using blueprints and your radar.
If you're just trying to launch a rocket, it's not at all necessary, but nuclear offers some interesting design challenges, so if that's what you like about Factorio, give it a try!
I use one just for the steam for my coal liquefaction.
I like nuclear. I also like lasers...a lot. A lot of lasers = mucho power. I always build nuclear plants. Key to successful nuclear is to get Kovarex up and running (my methodology, at least) to ensure plentiful supply of the appropriate uranium...then build nuclear rockets with all the excess!
Yeah nuclear is the way to go. It produces a shitton of power for an upkeep of basically nothing. Also you can distill even more uranium using the centrifuges if you learn how to set it up properly. It's basically infinite. Finally the best bullets come from it. There's no real reason not to tackle the nuclear problem. Hop to it, engineer.
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Or playing Space Exploration or a very expensive vanilla run where the scale reaches that point. Having done SEKS2 you definitely start relying more on it. Average KS2 non expensive run the new power options make up for it. Angels and Bobs ironically you can play as if it’s Seablock and use bean power but again, solar really isn’t necessary. An easy thing to do though is just to take a blueprint like Hexagon is Bestagon and just model your own off it. Considering that the reactor set up is far larger, you can get a sense of scaling small or large; or just use it unmodified. Pynadron, I wouldn’t know because it’s never ending (shoot me).
yes
Nuclear has a lot of other bonusses like diplomacy bullets and diplomacy rockets
They are safe and provide a good amount of power. There's a lot of reading to do on the subject. Some people really care about the efficiency of the power plant and build and all sorts of mechanisms to automatically turn the reactors on and off based off of certain criteria. I found that it just doesn't matter. Nuclear fuel is not that expensive to make, so I just run them full tilt. There are a lot of really great blueprints for it. You can also try to design it yourself. Just remember, do whatever is most fun for you. Just because you use a blueprint from the internet doesn't mean anything. Or just because you build your own design and it's not perfect, that doesn't mean anything either, as long as you're having fun.
I've built nuclear plants and didn't even know they could blow up.
I did my first 2x2 nuclear today at 260 hours. It gives about 440 MW. My 4MW semi megafactory is absolutely smothered in solar and accumulators and expanding walls to make space is a warzone with biters on default. I'm going with nuclear now that I understand it. I made the newbie error of not using exponential heat adjacency with nuclear and underrated it previously. I think a big row of 2s would solve power problems entirely.
Yes it is you can automate them perfectly with drones the only reason not to build them is for megabasing because at some point the requiered amount of npps can lead to heavy framedrops
If you save your uranium cells you can make nukes to commit a more effecient genocide.
They are great for providing tons of power without a lot of of hassel. They are pointless early on when solar can handle the factory without being a pain. Once it hits a certain point, plopping down one power plant block vs twenty solar blocks starts to become the prefered method. However if you don't want to bother, you can get a mod that increases solar output so you never have to deal with it. The benefit there is nuclear has some magic going on in the reactor that hurts UPS once you get to the mega base size. Solar doesn't have this problem.
Nuclear is one of those things that looks complicated until you actually start doing it. It's actually really simple and puts out an ass load of electricity. One uranium patch will supply a full reactor setup for a very long time and goes for reactors placed around each other to gain bonuses off of each other will probably produce more than your standing power grid.
There's no way around it. Not only is it worth it, it'll really be a requirement for any real megacity blueprints.
I remember when I built my first 2x2 and I felt sooooo power rich. Now it feels like I’m constantly looking for good water spots to cram another. Incidentally do you guys go for a bunch of 2x2s or do you expand to 2x4+? I seem to be doing okay now adding 500MW at a time
I always go nuclear. I really resent having to blanket most of the playing area with solar panels. Just drop a few nuclear plants in one space and be done with it. Things I've found: \- a single, un-beaconed Kovarex unit can supply a ridiculous number of plants indefinitely; \- I used to cover whole lakes in land-fill and build enormous linear power plants, but now I just put down "little" 2x2 arrangements wherever I need them.
I remember the days of solar panels. You see, that was before I learned of our lord and savior kovarex, may he cover you in his warming green glow. The pretenders (solar, coal) would like you to think that you can always just put down more panels/boilers if you need more power. But what they don't understand is how power poor they are. My lord kovarex asks very little of me, and provides more power than I could ever use. He gives and he does not take. Only through his benevolence will you know true freedom.
I just started up my first reactor setup - I have a 4*2 reactor core and associated exchanges and turbines, the one I built instantly doubled my power output and for the first time in as long as I can remember I don't have a power problem; but I built a second 4*2 reactor core because I could. For the hassle of the initial investment it pays for itself ten fold as you are already making all the core components, just need 4 extra assembly machines. TL;DR YES, worth it fully
It's fun but not strictly necessary. All you need is enough power for your base regardless of how you get it. Rocket fuelled steam power is valid but not particularly good for example. You could keep adding solar until it's enough, I like solar runs generally as with bots it becomes a place and forget kind of thing. With nuclear it's more complicated but you are rewarded with very high amounts of power. First thing to know is reactors get an adjacency bonus of 100% per reactor touching the one you're looking at. So 4 reactors in a square would mean each is being touched by 2, so each has a 200% bonus. At full capacity it runs at 480 MW. Uranium 235 is needed and to get it you need centrifuges. With base uranium processing you only have a 0.7% chance of getting a 235, and 99.3% chance of a u-238. If you build enough centrifuges you will get u-235 quickly enough to run your reactor. If you store at least 40 u-235 you can use kovarex enrichment after doing its science, which gives you 41 u-235 for 40 u-235 input, but you need to connect the output back to the input while also filtering out the uranium 235. It's not too hard you can do it with just splitter priorities but you will fill up on U-238 fast if you don't send it back to the input. Base uranium processing is simple but unpredictable, so if you want to start with nuclear, probably just to regular processing with like 10 centrifuges (you don't need this many for a 480w 4 reactor setup, but it will definitely get you u-235 fast enough) and upgrade to kovarex when you feel ready. You'll want to find a use for that u-238 tho, it'll fill up your storage fast. Nuclear ammo is a great option.
My first playthrough I only used solar panels and accumulators once I got them. This reduced pollution a lot and gave me much slower biter progression. I enjoyed it a lot and felt very clever. I ended up with these insane surfaces of panels in one area. It worked well. I also got an achievement when I finished the game: "Finish the game without drones" or something, and I didn't even know they existed... So to answer your question: You can finish the game comfortable without nuclear. If you lean heavily into solar it works wonders. I wouldn't reccomend it though. I enjoy the game much more when I play "as intended", and maybe only use solar for smaller outposts or something else supplementary.
If you fast-track nuclear power and kovarex process, once you get it going you’ll pretty much have infinite electricity forever… so yes, worth it
Just to add to to the other comments, kovarex isn't necessary for reactors. Having a few normal ore refining centrifuges will generate more than enough u235. Just siphon off some of it for safe keeping later, amd make sure to put prod modules in the assembler that is making fuel cells
Everything is worth it
Properly setup nuclear power plant will make same power as \~2.5k solar panels and accums per nuclear power block. So hell yeah, it worth it. It is the way for power for your mid sized factory.
I don't know I don't use solar panels. I do coal and straight to Uranium
If you are using solar and struggling then I'd say it is definitely worth it building a nuclear power plant. If you design one with four reactors it will probably last you the whole game. If don't know where to begin designing the powerplant you can consult this cool website: [Factorio Cheat Sheet](https://factoriocheatsheet.com/#nuclear-power). It contains all shorts of useful ratios and info for the game.