While the changes I’ve made since the latest post aren’t merged yet, I think it is about time to talk about them. Keep in mind, that since these changes I’ll be talking about are not yet merged, they are still subject to change based on Gregs review of the PR.
I already discussed the most significant general changes in previous posts, the removal of the 1x1 reactor core reverted and of the centrifuging recipe for refined uranium ore returning U-235. While these changes are the new default, they can still be reverted through new config options.
The biggest and potentially most dangerous change however is the complete rebalancing of the reactor coolants. Helium, Molten Tin and Molten Sodium as a reactor coolants have been buffed, so existing reactors using them are at risk when updating, as their increased neutron output could cause explosions and turn previously stable reactors into supercritical reactors. The changes themself are as follows:
- Gas coolants: These coolants don’t effect the factor anymore. This previously made CO2 too powerful and Helium rather useless. Now CO2 is rather unspectacular, being a little worse than water based coolants stat wise. Helium is slightly better than water and therefore also CO2, which is appropriate, since it is harder to come by than CO2. Since they, unlike water based coolant, don’t moderate fuel rods inside them, they are still very useful for building efficient supercritical reactors.
- Molten metal coolants: These coolants are still intended for use in breeder reactors. They now increase the factor of fuel rods inside them, making them much more useful for breeding, allowing critical breeder reactors using U-235 and equivalent fuels. Since breeding now basically requires supercritical reactors, this change is rather important.
- Heavy and Tritiated Water have been change to lower the neutron maximum of any fuel rods they contain quite significantly. This, while making them less useful for creating efficient power generating reactors, makes them much more useful for burner reactors.
These changes really help define the roles of the different reactor coolants to fit different reactor types:
- IC2 Coolant for stable reactors.
- Distilled Water for cheap (no boiler required) moderated supercritical reactors.
- Semi-Heavy Water for safer moderated supercritical power producing reactors.
- Heavy and Tritiated Water for burner reactors.
- Carbon Dioxide, Helium and Molten Lithium Chloride for supercritical power producing reactors.
- Molten Tin and Molten Sodium for supercritical breeder reactors.
- Thorium Salt for unique efficient supercritical power producing reactors.
Previously CO2 was the best coolant for practically all use-cases other than stable reactors.
Another change that was made that effects the reactor balance a bit is regarding fuels: Cobalt-60 has been nerfed quite significantly. It is now practically useless as a reactor fuel for power producing reactors, having a emission of zero. The self was raised quite a bit, so it is still somewhat usable in stable reactors more akin to RTGs. Its “intended” use is for burning it into Thorium (changed from Uranium-238) using a burner reactor. Though remember, just because the base emission is zero it still can emit extra neutrons based on the number of neutrons on it.
Breeding/burning balance has also been changed a bit, breeding Thorium and Uranium-238 now takes four times more neutrons than before to complete, which seemed more reasonable after calculating the time required times for breeding. The Lithium breeder rod was also changed to use normal Lithium rather than the even rarer Litium-6, which itself is more useful in a fusion reactor than Tritium anyway, while only requiring slightly more neutrons than before. Depleted fuel rods now also return 6/72 of dust rather than 4/72 to make burner reactors a bit better.
On a very different note, new 9 guide books have been added to be found in dungeons and strongholds containing very helpful information about nuclear reactors and one less useful one on them has also been added. With the merge of these changes I will also compile their content with a bit of formatting into a PDF that should be more comfortable to read for most.