Official Factorio Wiki - User contributions [en]

Tutorial:Nuclear power

2019-07-10T16:59:35Z

SilverShadow: /* Enrichment */ 0.17 fix

{{Languages}}[[Nuclear power]] is a major new feature introduced in version 0.15. It requires higher level technology compared to either solar power or steam boiler power, but it offers very high power output in exchange. It's a great solution for middle- to end-game power generation and it works well in combination with other power generation techniques.

This guide is written for people who want to know exactly how nuclear power works, but don't necessarily want all the solutions. It focuses on what you should do and what you should know to get Nuclear up and running, but doesn't tell you what to do or exactly how to solve the problems.

== First steps ==

:'''Technology required:''' [[Nuclear power (research)|Nuclear power]]
:''You can mine uranium ore sooner, but you'll need the nuclear power technology to do anything useful with it.''

=== [[Uranium ore]] ===
To start, you'll need uranium ore. It glows green, so you can't miss it. It tends to form smaller deposits, though, and you may have to search a while to find a good patch.

Like every other ore in the game, you can mine it with an [[electric mining drill|Electric mining drill]]. Unlike every other ore, however, only the [[electric mining drill| Electric mining drill]] will do. You also need to supply [[sulfuric acid]] to the drill. The drills conduct excess acid through themselves, so a row of drills can be supplied by acid from a single side.

:'''Mixed ores:''' If a mining drill covers even a single patch of uranium ore, acid must be supplied to the miner or the mining drill will stop running once it encounters the uranium ore. The miner will produce mixed ore, as usual.

=== [[Uranium processing|Ore processing]] ===
Once you've got raw uranium ore, you'll need to process it into [[uranium-235]] and [[uranium-238]]. You do this in a centrifuge.

In an un-moduled [[centrifuge]], you can process ten ore every 12 seconds.

Centrifuges produce a combination of U-235 (the light green stuff) and U-238 (the dark green stuff). Every ten ore processed have a chance to become precisely one of these two products. Out of every 10k ore you process, you can expect to get, on average:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Count !! Product
|-
| 7 || U-235
|-
| 993 || U-238
|}

That means you can roughly expect to get a single U-235 in one out of every 1428 ore. A centrifuge can then be expected to produce U-235 every 1716 seconds. Later on, this won't matter so much. However, when you first start out, this will be an important bottleneck.

:'''Regarding averages:''' Be aware, random is random. These values are ''average'' values. Which means that over the long term, they work out to about these figures. In reality, you'll see long stretches with no U-235 and short stretches with lots of them. Eventually, it won't matter much. But early on, make sure your generation rate is sufficiently high, or you have a sufficient reserve, so you don't find yourself without power when you hit an unlucky stretch.

=== Fuel ===
Before you can burn it in a nuclear reactor, you need to create [[uranium fuel cell]]s. You'll probably be using an assembling machine 2, so these will take 13.3 seconds to create as well. Which is fine because fuel cell creation will very rarely be the bottleneck.

You won't want to automatically convert all U-235 into fuel. Only convert what you need to fill your reactor. You're going to want a big fat stockpile of it when you research [[Kovarex enrichment process|kovarex enrichment]] later on.

Fuel cells are produced in stacks of 10, and to produce one such stack you need 1 U-235, 19 U-238, and 10 iron plate.

:'''Tip:''' It isn't a bad idea to use a chest and just stick a pile of iron in it rather than belting the iron in. A full chest of iron probably won't run out before you get bots and replace it with a requester.

Each fuel cell has a nominal energy value of 8 GJ, but it's possible to make them go even farther with reactor neighbor bonuses (more on that later).

=== [[Nuclear reactor]] ===
Once you've got fuel, you'll need to burn it in a nuclear reactor. This is the first step toward turning it into usable energy.

A reactor will produce exactly 40 MW of heat energy. Since a Watt is a Joule per second, this means the reactor will consume one fuel cell every 200 seconds.

Once expended, reactors will produce a "[[used up uranium fuel cell]]", which will need to be cleared. Initially, these will simply accumulate in a chest. Eventually, you can reprocess them into U-238.

:'''Working backward:''' A reactor consumes a fuel cell every 200 seconds and each U-235 gives 10 fuel cells, so every U-235 provides 2000 seconds of reactor power. A centrifuge requires about 1714 seconds to produce a U-235, so you'll need about one processing centrifuges per reactor.

The reactor needs input of fuel and produces heat that needs to be exported using [[heat pipe]]s that go to a [[heat exchanger]] (unless a [[heat exchanger]] is attached to the reactor).

=== [[Heat exchanger]] ===
The heat exchanger takes heat and uses it to convert [[water]] into [[steam]]. It works much like the boiler, but instead of burning fuel, you need to connect it to a heat source. The heat input is marked by a flame when you're placing it.

For simple reactor designs, you can connect it directly to your reactor (which produces heat at points also marked with a flame).

Heat exchangers also require water input, in precisely the way boilers do. They can heat up to 103.09 units/second of water into 500°C steam.

Heat exchangers produce nothing when they are below 500°C. Since they only cool as a consequence of heating water, they will never cool to below that temperature once they've reached it.

Heat exchangers transfer 10 MW of power, so you'll need 4 exchangers to fully consume the power produced by a lone reactor. (Neighbor bonuses can increase this significantly. Again, discussed later.)

The [[steam]] can then be transported to the [[Steam turbine]] using normal [[Pipe]]s

==== [[Heat pipe]]s ====
More complex designs will require heat pipes. Heat pipes work much like regular pipes. Like regular pipes, they have limited throughput, which means that shorter pipes are better.

Connect heat pipes point to point, flame to flame, exactly as you would with water pipes. Heat pipes cannot go underground, so if water pipes need to cross them, the water pipe will need to go under. They don't block movement, though, so you can walk right over them.

Throughput on heat pipes is far more limited than regular pipes, in part because there is no analogous "Heat pump". Here are some rough limits on transfer distance:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Power !! Distance
|-
| 40 MW || ~140
|-
| 80 MW || ~80
|-
| 120 MW || ~55
|-
| 160 MW || ~45
|}

Past these distances, less than 100% of the power will be transferred. This is because at this distance, the heat from the reactor does not travel fast enough to heat the pipe to beyond 500ºC in a running setup. However, if the heat is unused, the heat will spread much farther, because there is no heat loss over time or distance, so it builds up until it is used again.

:'''Heat pipe storage:''' Heat pipes can store quite a bit of heat as well. A single heat pipe can hold as much energy as a tank with 5.1k steam in it, which makes them even more space efficient than tanks for holding energy (though considerably more expensive). Be cautious, however, with how slowly heat moves through the system. A reactor always burns fuel if provided but will never go above 1000 degrees. Insufficient heat pipes may not send enough heat to exchangers and will allow the reactor to hit 1000 degrees at which point fuel is being wasted - heat is going into nothing rather than exchangers.

=== [[Steam turbine]] ===
These are the steam engine's beefy big brother. Using regular fluid pipes, you'll pipe the steam produced by heat exchangers into these turbines.

:'''Perfect matches:''' The steam turbine is a perfect match for the heat exchanger. The steam engine is a perfect match for the boiler. Although it is possible to get energy out of mismatched systems, it's very wasteful and there's no real reason to do it.

Steam turbines consume up to 60 units of steam/second, so you need roughly two steam turbines for every heat exchanger. At large scales, however, you can use fewer turbines, since exchangers only produce 103.09 steam/second. You'll require a separate pump for every 20 turbines.

=== Simplest thing that works ===
At this point, you have all the parts to build your very first reactor:

* A few uranium miners, supplied with sulfuric acid
* 1 Centrifuge, processing uranium ore
* 1 Assembling machine, making uranium fuel cells
* 1 Nuclear reactor
* 4 Heat exchangers, supplied by a single off-shore pump
* 8 Steam turbines

And, of course, assorted belts, inserters, filter inserters, and other tools for moving things around. This will produce a maximum of 40 MW of power.

== Moving forward ==
Past your simplest reactor, there are some additional nuclear features of which you should be aware.

=== Neighbor bonus ===
This is a critical part of how nuclear designs scale, but it's not complicated. Simply put:

'''Every reactor gets +100% heating power for every active neighboring reactor.'''

Neighbors have to align completely on each side, so reactors will line up in a nice square grid. When they do, the neighbor bonus is activated. You can see the current bonus by hovering over an active reactor.

The bonus to heating power does not increase the fuel consumption. Rather, it simply increases the heat produced!

This, of course, means you'll need more heat exchangers and steam turbines to turn that heat into electricity.

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Configuration !! Reactors !! Exchangers !! Turbines !! Power !! Power per reactor
|-
| Single || 1 || 4 || 7 || 40MW || 40MW
|-
| 2x1 || 2 || 16 || 28 || 160MW || 80MW
|-
| 2x2 || 4 || 48 || 83 || 480MW || 120MW
|-
| 2x3 || 6 || 80 || 138 || 800MW || 133MW
|-
| 2x4 || 8 || 112 || 193 || 1120MW || 140MW
|-
| 2x5 || 10 || 144 || 248 || 1440MW || 144MW
|}

'''How to count heat exchangers:''' Count the number of edges where reactors fully touch. Double that. Add the total number of reactors. Then multiply it all by 4. That's your count of Heat Exchangers. You'll need 1.718 turbines per exchanger (rounded up). Each exchanger will provide up to 10 MW of power.

=== Always on! ===
Unlike every other power generation technique, nuclear reactors '''DO NOT''' scale down power usage. Nuclear reactors will continue consuming one fuel cell every 200 seconds, regardless of the need.

As the reactor consumes its fuel, it heats up to a maximum temperature of 1000°C. At that point, additional fuel burned is simply wasted. This is the only way to lose energy in the system as all heat transfers are perfectly efficient.

Turbines do scale their production (and steam consumption) to match demand. Likewise, exchangers won't consume heat if there's nowhere to put the steam.

:'''Turbines and engines:''' Be aware that steam turbines and steam engines are both the same "class" of energy producer, so they'll need to be scaled all together. This means that in a complete energy system, your coal boilers may be running when the nuclear plant could fully cover the load. And, worse yet, the nuclear power is just being wasted!
:Consider using accumulators, switches, and circuit logic to disable the coal boilers when nuclear systems can cover the demand.

The simplest solution to this problem is to just run the nuclear reactors part of the time. You can store steam in tanks. (And check out the "fill gauge"; the steam floats!) Since exchanges produce 103 steam/second and a tank holds 25k steam, a tank will keep 242.5 seconds worth of heat exchanger.

You can put a tank or two at the end of each heat exchanger and use circuit logic to only insert a fuel into the reactors when they get low. Make sure all reactors are fueled at the same time, or you won't get full reactor neighbor bonuses. If you can't keep it from over-fueling, you can also add extra tanks to lengthen the cycle.

=== Enrichment ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Kovarex enrichment process (research)|Kovarex enrichment process]]
:''Kovarex Enrichment allows you to turn some U-238 into U-235, but it's slow and takes a lot of U-235 as catalyst.''

Your first few patches of uranium ore will last you a reasonable length of time, but eventually you will start running out of ore and places to put extraneous U-238. Enrichment helps solve both problems.

The enrichment process takes 60 seconds in an un-moduled centrifuge. It requires 40 U-235 (!) and 5 U-238 and makes 41 U-235 and 2 U-238. In effect, it takes 3 U-238 and turns it into 1 U-235; it just requires an extra 40 U-235 and 2 U-238 along for the ride to act as a catalyst.

:'''All the things!:''' Before you ''enrich all the things!'', be aware that you do need 19 U-238 for each fuel cell, as well as requiring it for uranium ammo you will want for storing inside biters and their nests. Circuit logic can help you put a limiter on large-scale enrichment operations.

One un-moduled Centrifuge enriching uranium is sufficient to supply 33.33 reactors with fuel, assuming plenty of U-238. One Centrifuge with two Productivity modules is enough to supply 25.2 reactors, one Centrifuge with two Productivity modules 3 is enough to supply 28 reactors.

=== Reprocessing fuel ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Nuclear fuel reprocessing (research)|Nuclear fuel reprocessing]]
:''Reprocessing turns your spent fuel into U-238.''

Eventually, you will run out of places to put spent fuel. You can use reprocessing to turn it back into U-238 to use for enrichment, fuel cells, or ammo. Of the 19 U-238 that go into each 10-pack of fuel cells, this returns 6. This significantly reduces the total ore requirement for nuclear fuel.

=== Weapons ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Uranium ammo (research)|Uranium ammo]] / [[Atomic bomb (research)|Atomic bomb]]
:''Better bullets / Bigger bombs''

With the Nuclear Age comes nuclear weapons. Uranium ammunition is top-tier, especially when you load a tank with it. It mows down biter nests and clears swarms quite quickly. It uses U-238, so you've probably got plenty of it lying around.

On the other side, you can get [[atomic bomb]]s, which are rockets (shot by a [[rocket launcher]]) that do incredible damage. Be aware, they can easily kill you if you fire them anywhere near you, and even at max range, it's advised that you run in the opposite direction. Rather than a single explosion, they do damage in an expanding ring, giving you time to escape. They require a lot of U-235 and blue chips, so they're an expensive weapon.

== Version ==
This guide is compatible with Factorio 0.17, 0.16 and 0.15.13+.

: This guide was originally written by ''alficles'' and published on [https://gist.github.com/alficles/972796997d1bc40d57866b0a3725895a gist].
:'''License:''' [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC BY-SA 4.0]
:As an exception to the above, any or all of this work or adaptations thereof may be used on the official [https://wiki.factorio.com Factorio Wiki].

== Other power related [[tutorials]] ==
* [[Tutorial:Applied power math|Applied power math]]
* [[Tutorial:Producing power from oil|Producing power from oil]]

Tutorial:Nuclear power

2019-07-10T16:35:05Z

SilverShadow: /* Nuclear reactor */ 0.17 fix

{{Languages}}[[Nuclear power]] is a major new feature introduced in version 0.15. It requires higher level technology compared to either solar power or steam boiler power, but it offers very high power output in exchange. It's a great solution for middle- to end-game power generation and it works well in combination with other power generation techniques.

This guide is written for people who want to know exactly how nuclear power works, but don't necessarily want all the solutions. It focuses on what you should do and what you should know to get Nuclear up and running, but doesn't tell you what to do or exactly how to solve the problems.

== First steps ==

:'''Technology required:''' [[Nuclear power (research)|Nuclear power]]
:''You can mine uranium ore sooner, but you'll need the nuclear power technology to do anything useful with it.''

=== [[Uranium ore]] ===
To start, you'll need uranium ore. It glows green, so you can't miss it. It tends to form smaller deposits, though, and you may have to search a while to find a good patch.

Like every other ore in the game, you can mine it with an [[electric mining drill|Electric mining drill]]. Unlike every other ore, however, only the [[electric mining drill| Electric mining drill]] will do. You also need to supply [[sulfuric acid]] to the drill. The drills conduct excess acid through themselves, so a row of drills can be supplied by acid from a single side.

:'''Mixed ores:''' If a mining drill covers even a single patch of uranium ore, acid must be supplied to the miner or the mining drill will stop running once it encounters the uranium ore. The miner will produce mixed ore, as usual.

=== [[Uranium processing|Ore processing]] ===
Once you've got raw uranium ore, you'll need to process it into [[uranium-235]] and [[uranium-238]]. You do this in a centrifuge.

In an un-moduled [[centrifuge]], you can process ten ore every 12 seconds.

Centrifuges produce a combination of U-235 (the light green stuff) and U-238 (the dark green stuff). Every ten ore processed have a chance to become precisely one of these two products. Out of every 10k ore you process, you can expect to get, on average:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Count !! Product
|-
| 7 || U-235
|-
| 993 || U-238
|}

That means you can roughly expect to get a single U-235 in one out of every 1428 ore. A centrifuge can then be expected to produce U-235 every 1716 seconds. Later on, this won't matter so much. However, when you first start out, this will be an important bottleneck.

:'''Regarding averages:''' Be aware, random is random. These values are ''average'' values. Which means that over the long term, they work out to about these figures. In reality, you'll see long stretches with no U-235 and short stretches with lots of them. Eventually, it won't matter much. But early on, make sure your generation rate is sufficiently high, or you have a sufficient reserve, so you don't find yourself without power when you hit an unlucky stretch.

=== Fuel ===
Before you can burn it in a nuclear reactor, you need to create [[uranium fuel cell]]s. You'll probably be using an assembling machine 2, so these will take 13.3 seconds to create as well. Which is fine because fuel cell creation will very rarely be the bottleneck.

You won't want to automatically convert all U-235 into fuel. Only convert what you need to fill your reactor. You're going to want a big fat stockpile of it when you research [[Kovarex enrichment process|kovarex enrichment]] later on.

Fuel cells are produced in stacks of 10, and to produce one such stack you need 1 U-235, 19 U-238, and 10 iron plate.

:'''Tip:''' It isn't a bad idea to use a chest and just stick a pile of iron in it rather than belting the iron in. A full chest of iron probably won't run out before you get bots and replace it with a requester.

Each fuel cell has a nominal energy value of 8 GJ, but it's possible to make them go even farther with reactor neighbor bonuses (more on that later).

=== [[Nuclear reactor]] ===
Once you've got fuel, you'll need to burn it in a nuclear reactor. This is the first step toward turning it into usable energy.

A reactor will produce exactly 40 MW of heat energy. Since a Watt is a Joule per second, this means the reactor will consume one fuel cell every 200 seconds.

Once expended, reactors will produce a "[[used up uranium fuel cell]]", which will need to be cleared. Initially, these will simply accumulate in a chest. Eventually, you can reprocess them into U-238.

:'''Working backward:''' A reactor consumes a fuel cell every 200 seconds and each U-235 gives 10 fuel cells, so every U-235 provides 2000 seconds of reactor power. A centrifuge requires about 1714 seconds to produce a U-235, so you'll need about one processing centrifuges per reactor.

The reactor needs input of fuel and produces heat that needs to be exported using [[heat pipe]]s that go to a [[heat exchanger]] (unless a [[heat exchanger]] is attached to the reactor).

=== [[Heat exchanger]] ===
The heat exchanger takes heat and uses it to convert [[water]] into [[steam]]. It works much like the boiler, but instead of burning fuel, you need to connect it to a heat source. The heat input is marked by a flame when you're placing it.

For simple reactor designs, you can connect it directly to your reactor (which produces heat at points also marked with a flame).

Heat exchangers also require water input, in precisely the way boilers do. They can heat up to 103.09 units/second of water into 500°C steam.

Heat exchangers produce nothing when they are below 500°C. Since they only cool as a consequence of heating water, they will never cool to below that temperature once they've reached it.

Heat exchangers transfer 10 MW of power, so you'll need 4 exchangers to fully consume the power produced by a lone reactor. (Neighbor bonuses can increase this significantly. Again, discussed later.)

The [[steam]] can then be transported to the [[Steam turbine]] using normal [[Pipe]]s

==== [[Heat pipe]]s ====
More complex designs will require heat pipes. Heat pipes work much like regular pipes. Like regular pipes, they have limited throughput, which means that shorter pipes are better.

Connect heat pipes point to point, flame to flame, exactly as you would with water pipes. Heat pipes cannot go underground, so if water pipes need to cross them, the water pipe will need to go under. They don't block movement, though, so you can walk right over them.

Throughput on heat pipes is far more limited than regular pipes, in part because there is no analogous "Heat pump". Here are some rough limits on transfer distance:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Power !! Distance
|-
| 40 MW || ~140
|-
| 80 MW || ~80
|-
| 120 MW || ~55
|-
| 160 MW || ~45
|}

Past these distances, less than 100% of the power will be transferred. This is because at this distance, the heat from the reactor does not travel fast enough to heat the pipe to beyond 500ºC in a running setup. However, if the heat is unused, the heat will spread much farther, because there is no heat loss over time or distance, so it builds up until it is used again.

:'''Heat pipe storage:''' Heat pipes can store quite a bit of heat as well. A single heat pipe can hold as much energy as a tank with 5.1k steam in it, which makes them even more space efficient than tanks for holding energy (though considerably more expensive). Be cautious, however, with how slowly heat moves through the system. A reactor always burns fuel if provided but will never go above 1000 degrees. Insufficient heat pipes may not send enough heat to exchangers and will allow the reactor to hit 1000 degrees at which point fuel is being wasted - heat is going into nothing rather than exchangers.

=== [[Steam turbine]] ===
These are the steam engine's beefy big brother. Using regular fluid pipes, you'll pipe the steam produced by heat exchangers into these turbines.

:'''Perfect matches:''' The steam turbine is a perfect match for the heat exchanger. The steam engine is a perfect match for the boiler. Although it is possible to get energy out of mismatched systems, it's very wasteful and there's no real reason to do it.

Steam turbines consume up to 60 units of steam/second, so you need roughly two steam turbines for every heat exchanger. At large scales, however, you can use fewer turbines, since exchangers only produce 103.09 steam/second. You'll require a separate pump for every 20 turbines.

=== Simplest thing that works ===
At this point, you have all the parts to build your very first reactor:

* A few uranium miners, supplied with sulfuric acid
* 1 Centrifuge, processing uranium ore
* 1 Assembling machine, making uranium fuel cells
* 1 Nuclear reactor
* 4 Heat exchangers, supplied by a single off-shore pump
* 8 Steam turbines

And, of course, assorted belts, inserters, filter inserters, and other tools for moving things around. This will produce a maximum of 40 MW of power.

== Moving forward ==
Past your simplest reactor, there are some additional nuclear features of which you should be aware.

=== Neighbor bonus ===
This is a critical part of how nuclear designs scale, but it's not complicated. Simply put:

'''Every reactor gets +100% heating power for every active neighboring reactor.'''

Neighbors have to align completely on each side, so reactors will line up in a nice square grid. When they do, the neighbor bonus is activated. You can see the current bonus by hovering over an active reactor.

The bonus to heating power does not increase the fuel consumption. Rather, it simply increases the heat produced!

This, of course, means you'll need more heat exchangers and steam turbines to turn that heat into electricity.

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Configuration !! Reactors !! Exchangers !! Turbines !! Power !! Power per reactor
|-
| Single || 1 || 4 || 7 || 40MW || 40MW
|-
| 2x1 || 2 || 16 || 28 || 160MW || 80MW
|-
| 2x2 || 4 || 48 || 83 || 480MW || 120MW
|-
| 2x3 || 6 || 80 || 138 || 800MW || 133MW
|-
| 2x4 || 8 || 112 || 193 || 1120MW || 140MW
|-
| 2x5 || 10 || 144 || 248 || 1440MW || 144MW
|}

'''How to count heat exchangers:''' Count the number of edges where reactors fully touch. Double that. Add the total number of reactors. Then multiply it all by 4. That's your count of Heat Exchangers. You'll need 1.718 turbines per exchanger (rounded up). Each exchanger will provide up to 10 MW of power.

=== Always on! ===
Unlike every other power generation technique, nuclear reactors '''DO NOT''' scale down power usage. Nuclear reactors will continue consuming one fuel cell every 200 seconds, regardless of the need.

As the reactor consumes its fuel, it heats up to a maximum temperature of 1000°C. At that point, additional fuel burned is simply wasted. This is the only way to lose energy in the system as all heat transfers are perfectly efficient.

Turbines do scale their production (and steam consumption) to match demand. Likewise, exchangers won't consume heat if there's nowhere to put the steam.

:'''Turbines and engines:''' Be aware that steam turbines and steam engines are both the same "class" of energy producer, so they'll need to be scaled all together. This means that in a complete energy system, your coal boilers may be running when the nuclear plant could fully cover the load. And, worse yet, the nuclear power is just being wasted!
:Consider using accumulators, switches, and circuit logic to disable the coal boilers when nuclear systems can cover the demand.

The simplest solution to this problem is to just run the nuclear reactors part of the time. You can store steam in tanks. (And check out the "fill gauge"; the steam floats!) Since exchanges produce 103 steam/second and a tank holds 25k steam, a tank will keep 242.5 seconds worth of heat exchanger.

You can put a tank or two at the end of each heat exchanger and use circuit logic to only insert a fuel into the reactors when they get low. Make sure all reactors are fueled at the same time, or you won't get full reactor neighbor bonuses. If you can't keep it from over-fueling, you can also add extra tanks to lengthen the cycle.

=== Enrichment ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Kovarex enrichment process (research)|Kovarex enrichment process]]
:''Kovarex Enrichment allows you to turn some U-238 into U-235, but it's slow and takes a lot of U-235 as catalyst.''

Your first few patches of uranium ore will last you a reasonable length of time, but eventually you will start running out of ore and places to put extraneous U-238. Enrichment helps solve both problems.

The enrichment process takes about 67 seconds in an un-moduled centrifuge. It requires 40 U-235 (!) and 5 U-238 and makes 41 U-235 and 2 U-238. In effect, it takes 3 U-238 and turns it into 1 U-235; it just requires an extra 40 U-235 and 2 U-238 along for the ride to act as a catalyst.

:'''All the things!:''' Before you ''enrich all the things!'', be aware that you do need 19 U-238 for each fuel cell, as well as requiring it for uranium ammo you will want for storing inside biters and their nests. Circuit logic can help you put a limiter on large-scale enrichment operations.

One Centrifuge enriching uranium is sufficient to supply 30 reactors with fuel, assuming plenty of U-238.

=== Reprocessing fuel ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Nuclear fuel reprocessing (research)|Nuclear fuel reprocessing]]
:''Reprocessing turns your spent fuel into U-238.''

Eventually, you will run out of places to put spent fuel. You can use reprocessing to turn it back into U-238 to use for enrichment, fuel cells, or ammo. Of the 19 U-238 that go into each 10-pack of fuel cells, this returns 6. This significantly reduces the total ore requirement for nuclear fuel.

=== Weapons ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Uranium ammo (research)|Uranium ammo]] / [[Atomic bomb (research)|Atomic bomb]]
:''Better bullets / Bigger bombs''

With the Nuclear Age comes nuclear weapons. Uranium ammunition is top-tier, especially when you load a tank with it. It mows down biter nests and clears swarms quite quickly. It uses U-238, so you've probably got plenty of it lying around.

On the other side, you can get [[atomic bomb]]s, which are rockets (shot by a [[rocket launcher]]) that do incredible damage. Be aware, they can easily kill you if you fire them anywhere near you, and even at max range, it's advised that you run in the opposite direction. Rather than a single explosion, they do damage in an expanding ring, giving you time to escape. They require a lot of U-235 and blue chips, so they're an expensive weapon.

== Version ==
This guide is compatible with Factorio 0.17, 0.16 and 0.15.13+.

: This guide was originally written by ''alficles'' and published on [https://gist.github.com/alficles/972796997d1bc40d57866b0a3725895a gist].
:'''License:''' [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC BY-SA 4.0]
:As an exception to the above, any or all of this work or adaptations thereof may be used on the official [https://wiki.factorio.com Factorio Wiki].

== Other power related [[tutorials]] ==
* [[Tutorial:Applied power math|Applied power math]]
* [[Tutorial:Producing power from oil|Producing power from oil]]

Tutorial:Nuclear power

2019-07-10T16:26:36Z

SilverShadow: /* Ore processing */

{{Languages}}[[Nuclear power]] is a major new feature introduced in version 0.15. It requires higher level technology compared to either solar power or steam boiler power, but it offers very high power output in exchange. It's a great solution for middle- to end-game power generation and it works well in combination with other power generation techniques.

This guide is written for people who want to know exactly how nuclear power works, but don't necessarily want all the solutions. It focuses on what you should do and what you should know to get Nuclear up and running, but doesn't tell you what to do or exactly how to solve the problems.

== First steps ==

:'''Technology required:''' [[Nuclear power (research)|Nuclear power]]
:''You can mine uranium ore sooner, but you'll need the nuclear power technology to do anything useful with it.''

=== [[Uranium ore]] ===
To start, you'll need uranium ore. It glows green, so you can't miss it. It tends to form smaller deposits, though, and you may have to search a while to find a good patch.

Like every other ore in the game, you can mine it with an [[electric mining drill|Electric mining drill]]. Unlike every other ore, however, only the [[electric mining drill| Electric mining drill]] will do. You also need to supply [[sulfuric acid]] to the drill. The drills conduct excess acid through themselves, so a row of drills can be supplied by acid from a single side.

:'''Mixed ores:''' If a mining drill covers even a single patch of uranium ore, acid must be supplied to the miner or the mining drill will stop running once it encounters the uranium ore. The miner will produce mixed ore, as usual.

=== [[Uranium processing|Ore processing]] ===
Once you've got raw uranium ore, you'll need to process it into [[uranium-235]] and [[uranium-238]]. You do this in a centrifuge.

In an un-moduled [[centrifuge]], you can process ten ore every 12 seconds.

Centrifuges produce a combination of U-235 (the light green stuff) and U-238 (the dark green stuff). Every ten ore processed have a chance to become precisely one of these two products. Out of every 10k ore you process, you can expect to get, on average:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Count !! Product
|-
| 7 || U-235
|-
| 993 || U-238
|}

That means you can roughly expect to get a single U-235 in one out of every 1428 ore. A centrifuge can then be expected to produce U-235 every 1716 seconds. Later on, this won't matter so much. However, when you first start out, this will be an important bottleneck.

:'''Regarding averages:''' Be aware, random is random. These values are ''average'' values. Which means that over the long term, they work out to about these figures. In reality, you'll see long stretches with no U-235 and short stretches with lots of them. Eventually, it won't matter much. But early on, make sure your generation rate is sufficiently high, or you have a sufficient reserve, so you don't find yourself without power when you hit an unlucky stretch.

=== Fuel ===
Before you can burn it in a nuclear reactor, you need to create [[uranium fuel cell]]s. You'll probably be using an assembling machine 2, so these will take 13.3 seconds to create as well. Which is fine because fuel cell creation will very rarely be the bottleneck.

You won't want to automatically convert all U-235 into fuel. Only convert what you need to fill your reactor. You're going to want a big fat stockpile of it when you research [[Kovarex enrichment process|kovarex enrichment]] later on.

Fuel cells are produced in stacks of 10, and to produce one such stack you need 1 U-235, 19 U-238, and 10 iron plate.

:'''Tip:''' It isn't a bad idea to use a chest and just stick a pile of iron in it rather than belting the iron in. A full chest of iron probably won't run out before you get bots and replace it with a requester.

Each fuel cell has a nominal energy value of 8 GJ, but it's possible to make them go even farther with reactor neighbor bonuses (more on that later).

=== [[Nuclear reactor]] ===
Once you've got fuel, you'll need to burn it in a nuclear reactor. This is the first step toward turning it into usable energy.

A reactor will produce exactly 40 MW of heat energy. Since a Watt is a Joule per second, this means the reactor will consume one fuel cell every 200 seconds.

Once expended, reactors will produce a "[[used up uranium fuel cell]]", which will need to be cleared. Initially, these will simply accumulate in a chest. Eventually, you can reprocess them into U-238.

:'''Working backward:''' A reactor consumes a fuel cell every 200 seconds and each U-235 gives 10 fuel cells, so every U-235 provides 2000 seconds of reactor power. A centrifuge requires about 1904 seconds to produce a U-235, so you'll need about one processing centrifuges per reactor.

The reactor needs input of fuel and produces heat that needs to be exported using [[heat pipe]]s that go to a [[heat exchanger]] (unless a [[heat exchanger]] is attached to the reactor).

=== [[Heat exchanger]] ===
The heat exchanger takes heat and uses it to convert [[water]] into [[steam]]. It works much like the boiler, but instead of burning fuel, you need to connect it to a heat source. The heat input is marked by a flame when you're placing it.

For simple reactor designs, you can connect it directly to your reactor (which produces heat at points also marked with a flame).

Heat exchangers also require water input, in precisely the way boilers do. They can heat up to 103.09 units/second of water into 500°C steam.

Heat exchangers produce nothing when they are below 500°C. Since they only cool as a consequence of heating water, they will never cool to below that temperature once they've reached it.

Heat exchangers transfer 10 MW of power, so you'll need 4 exchangers to fully consume the power produced by a lone reactor. (Neighbor bonuses can increase this significantly. Again, discussed later.)

The [[steam]] can then be transported to the [[Steam turbine]] using normal [[Pipe]]s

==== [[Heat pipe]]s ====
More complex designs will require heat pipes. Heat pipes work much like regular pipes. Like regular pipes, they have limited throughput, which means that shorter pipes are better.

Connect heat pipes point to point, flame to flame, exactly as you would with water pipes. Heat pipes cannot go underground, so if water pipes need to cross them, the water pipe will need to go under. They don't block movement, though, so you can walk right over them.

Throughput on heat pipes is far more limited than regular pipes, in part because there is no analogous "Heat pump". Here are some rough limits on transfer distance:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Power !! Distance
|-
| 40 MW || ~140
|-
| 80 MW || ~80
|-
| 120 MW || ~55
|-
| 160 MW || ~45
|}

Past these distances, less than 100% of the power will be transferred. This is because at this distance, the heat from the reactor does not travel fast enough to heat the pipe to beyond 500ºC in a running setup. However, if the heat is unused, the heat will spread much farther, because there is no heat loss over time or distance, so it builds up until it is used again.

:'''Heat pipe storage:''' Heat pipes can store quite a bit of heat as well. A single heat pipe can hold as much energy as a tank with 5.1k steam in it, which makes them even more space efficient than tanks for holding energy (though considerably more expensive). Be cautious, however, with how slowly heat moves through the system. A reactor always burns fuel if provided but will never go above 1000 degrees. Insufficient heat pipes may not send enough heat to exchangers and will allow the reactor to hit 1000 degrees at which point fuel is being wasted - heat is going into nothing rather than exchangers.

=== [[Steam turbine]] ===
These are the steam engine's beefy big brother. Using regular fluid pipes, you'll pipe the steam produced by heat exchangers into these turbines.

:'''Perfect matches:''' The steam turbine is a perfect match for the heat exchanger. The steam engine is a perfect match for the boiler. Although it is possible to get energy out of mismatched systems, it's very wasteful and there's no real reason to do it.

Steam turbines consume up to 60 units of steam/second, so you need roughly two steam turbines for every heat exchanger. At large scales, however, you can use fewer turbines, since exchangers only produce 103.09 steam/second. You'll require a separate pump for every 20 turbines.

=== Simplest thing that works ===
At this point, you have all the parts to build your very first reactor:

* A few uranium miners, supplied with sulfuric acid
* 1 Centrifuge, processing uranium ore
* 1 Assembling machine, making uranium fuel cells
* 1 Nuclear reactor
* 4 Heat exchangers, supplied by a single off-shore pump
* 8 Steam turbines

And, of course, assorted belts, inserters, filter inserters, and other tools for moving things around. This will produce a maximum of 40 MW of power.

== Moving forward ==
Past your simplest reactor, there are some additional nuclear features of which you should be aware.

=== Neighbor bonus ===
This is a critical part of how nuclear designs scale, but it's not complicated. Simply put:

'''Every reactor gets +100% heating power for every active neighboring reactor.'''

Neighbors have to align completely on each side, so reactors will line up in a nice square grid. When they do, the neighbor bonus is activated. You can see the current bonus by hovering over an active reactor.

The bonus to heating power does not increase the fuel consumption. Rather, it simply increases the heat produced!

This, of course, means you'll need more heat exchangers and steam turbines to turn that heat into electricity.

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Configuration !! Reactors !! Exchangers !! Turbines !! Power !! Power per reactor
|-
| Single || 1 || 4 || 7 || 40MW || 40MW
|-
| 2x1 || 2 || 16 || 28 || 160MW || 80MW
|-
| 2x2 || 4 || 48 || 83 || 480MW || 120MW
|-
| 2x3 || 6 || 80 || 138 || 800MW || 133MW
|-
| 2x4 || 8 || 112 || 193 || 1120MW || 140MW
|-
| 2x5 || 10 || 144 || 248 || 1440MW || 144MW
|}

'''How to count heat exchangers:''' Count the number of edges where reactors fully touch. Double that. Add the total number of reactors. Then multiply it all by 4. That's your count of Heat Exchangers. You'll need 1.718 turbines per exchanger (rounded up). Each exchanger will provide up to 10 MW of power.

=== Always on! ===
Unlike every other power generation technique, nuclear reactors '''DO NOT''' scale down power usage. Nuclear reactors will continue consuming one fuel cell every 200 seconds, regardless of the need.

As the reactor consumes its fuel, it heats up to a maximum temperature of 1000°C. At that point, additional fuel burned is simply wasted. This is the only way to lose energy in the system as all heat transfers are perfectly efficient.

Turbines do scale their production (and steam consumption) to match demand. Likewise, exchangers won't consume heat if there's nowhere to put the steam.

:'''Turbines and engines:''' Be aware that steam turbines and steam engines are both the same "class" of energy producer, so they'll need to be scaled all together. This means that in a complete energy system, your coal boilers may be running when the nuclear plant could fully cover the load. And, worse yet, the nuclear power is just being wasted!
:Consider using accumulators, switches, and circuit logic to disable the coal boilers when nuclear systems can cover the demand.

The simplest solution to this problem is to just run the nuclear reactors part of the time. You can store steam in tanks. (And check out the "fill gauge"; the steam floats!) Since exchanges produce 103 steam/second and a tank holds 25k steam, a tank will keep 242.5 seconds worth of heat exchanger.

You can put a tank or two at the end of each heat exchanger and use circuit logic to only insert a fuel into the reactors when they get low. Make sure all reactors are fueled at the same time, or you won't get full reactor neighbor bonuses. If you can't keep it from over-fueling, you can also add extra tanks to lengthen the cycle.

=== Enrichment ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Kovarex enrichment process (research)|Kovarex enrichment process]]
:''Kovarex Enrichment allows you to turn some U-238 into U-235, but it's slow and takes a lot of U-235 as catalyst.''

Your first few patches of uranium ore will last you a reasonable length of time, but eventually you will start running out of ore and places to put extraneous U-238. Enrichment helps solve both problems.

The enrichment process takes about 67 seconds in an un-moduled centrifuge. It requires 40 U-235 (!) and 5 U-238 and makes 41 U-235 and 2 U-238. In effect, it takes 3 U-238 and turns it into 1 U-235; it just requires an extra 40 U-235 and 2 U-238 along for the ride to act as a catalyst.

:'''All the things!:''' Before you ''enrich all the things!'', be aware that you do need 19 U-238 for each fuel cell, as well as requiring it for uranium ammo you will want for storing inside biters and their nests. Circuit logic can help you put a limiter on large-scale enrichment operations.

One Centrifuge enriching uranium is sufficient to supply 30 reactors with fuel, assuming plenty of U-238.

=== Reprocessing fuel ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Nuclear fuel reprocessing (research)|Nuclear fuel reprocessing]]
:''Reprocessing turns your spent fuel into U-238.''

Eventually, you will run out of places to put spent fuel. You can use reprocessing to turn it back into U-238 to use for enrichment, fuel cells, or ammo. Of the 19 U-238 that go into each 10-pack of fuel cells, this returns 6. This significantly reduces the total ore requirement for nuclear fuel.

=== Weapons ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Uranium ammo (research)|Uranium ammo]] / [[Atomic bomb (research)|Atomic bomb]]
:''Better bullets / Bigger bombs''

With the Nuclear Age comes nuclear weapons. Uranium ammunition is top-tier, especially when you load a tank with it. It mows down biter nests and clears swarms quite quickly. It uses U-238, so you've probably got plenty of it lying around.

On the other side, you can get [[atomic bomb]]s, which are rockets (shot by a [[rocket launcher]]) that do incredible damage. Be aware, they can easily kill you if you fire them anywhere near you, and even at max range, it's advised that you run in the opposite direction. Rather than a single explosion, they do damage in an expanding ring, giving you time to escape. They require a lot of U-235 and blue chips, so they're an expensive weapon.

== Version ==
This guide is compatible with Factorio 0.17, 0.16 and 0.15.13+.

: This guide was originally written by ''alficles'' and published on [https://gist.github.com/alficles/972796997d1bc40d57866b0a3725895a gist].
:'''License:''' [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC BY-SA 4.0]
:As an exception to the above, any or all of this work or adaptations thereof may be used on the official [https://wiki.factorio.com Factorio Wiki].

== Other power related [[tutorials]] ==
* [[Tutorial:Applied power math|Applied power math]]
* [[Tutorial:Producing power from oil|Producing power from oil]]

Oil processing

2019-07-10T16:22:31Z

SilverShadow: updated for 0.17 patch. I didn't change ratio for coal liquefaction

{{Languages}}
'''Oil processing''' is a large part of Factorio. Oil processing may refer to [[Oil processing (research)|the researched technology]], the recipe used in the [[oil refinery]], or the overall workings of oil.

== Overview ==
There are various recipes that can be used to process [[crude oil]] into its fractions. Its fraction ([[heavy oil]], [[light oil]] and [[petroleum gas]]) can also be cracked into each other. Their recipes and technology requirements can be seen below.

{|class="wikitable"
|-
! Process !! Input !! Output !! Machine !! Required technology
|-
| {{Icon|Basic oil processing||}} Basic oil processing || {{icon|time|5}} + {{Icon|Crude oil|100}} || {{Icon|Heavy oil|30}} + {{Icon|Light oil|30}} + {{Icon|Petroleum gas|40}} || {{Icon|Oil refinery}} || {{icontech|Oil processing (research)|}} [[Oil processing (research)|Oil processing]]
|-
| {{Icon|Advanced oil processing||}} Advanced oil processing || {{icon|time|5}} + {{Icon|Crude oil|100}} + {{icon|water|50}} || {{Icon|Heavy oil|10}} + {{Icon|Light oil|45}} + {{Icon|Petroleum gas|55}} || {{Icon|Oil refinery}} || {{icontech|Advanced oil processing (research)|}} [[Advanced oil processing (research)|Advanced oil processing]]
|-
| {{Icon|Heavy oil cracking||}} Heavy oil cracking || {{icon|time|2}} + {{Icon|Heavy oil|40}} + {{icon|water|30}} || {{Icon|Light oil|30}} || {{Icon|Chemical plant}} || {{icontech|Advanced oil processing (research)|}} [[Advanced oil processing (research)|Advanced oil processing]]
|-
| {{Icon|Light oil cracking||}} Light oil cracking || {{icon|time|2}} + {{Icon|Light oil|30}} + {{icon|water|30}} || {{Icon|Petroleum gas|20}} || {{Icon|Chemical plant}} || {{icontech|Advanced oil processing (research)|}} [[Advanced oil processing (research)|Advanced oil processing]]
|-
| {{Icon|Coal liquefaction||}} Coal liquefaction || {{icon|time|5}} + {{icon|coal|10}} + {{Icon|Heavy oil|25}} + {{icon|steam|50}} || {{Icon|Heavy oil|90}} + {{Icon|Light oil|20}} + {{Icon|Petroleum gas|10}} || {{Icon|Oil refinery}} || {{icontech|coal liquefaction|}} [[Coal liquefaction (research)|Coal liquefaction]]
|}

== Setting up oil processing ==
[[Pumpjack]]s need to be placed on top of the middle of the oil well, which is highlighted with a green box when the pumpjack is held. Pumpjacks produce a certain amount of [[Crude oil]] per second, shown on the right, at the bottom of the information panel. Over time this value will decrease down to a minimum of 2 oil/s, so a pumpjack will provide unlimited oil but eventually at a very low rate.

Crude oil must be refined in an [[oil refinery]]. The oil refinery needs to have a recipe set (see above for available recipes). Once it is set and "alt-mode" is active, the input and output locations and the expected fluids are shown. The locations of these cannot be changed, only the entire machine can be rotated. The refinery will stop production of all products if one product output is full, so it should be ensured that the products are transported out of the refinery; any products that cannot be used should be (temporarily) stored in a [[storage tank]].

Once the process finishes, the player will be left with 3 products: [[heavy oil]], [[light oil]] and [[petroleum gas]]. Both heavy oil and light oil can be cracked to the next lower type in a [[chemical plant]] (recipe above). This is useful if the player has an abundance of one product, but is lacking another (a common problem).

=== Tips ===
* The [[circuit network]] can be used to easily control how much fluid gets used for each recipe, to ensure that the player always has enough. For examples on how to do this, see the [[Tutorial:Circuit network cookbook#Oil_Setups|circuit-network cookbook]].
* If you run your heavy oil pipe from the refineries past a lubricant-making chemical plant before sending it to the cracking chemical plants, you can be sure that the lubricant production will have priority over cracking.
* [[Solid fuel]] is most efficient when created from light oil. If the player has too much heavy oil, cracking it to light oil then making it into fuel is more efficient than making heavy oil into fuel directly.

=== Transporting fluids ===
There are many ways to move fluids in Factorio, they are listed below:

* [[Pipe]]s
* [[Fluid wagon]]s
* Loading the fluids into [[Barrel]]s and transporting them by [[Railway]] or the [[Logistic network]]

== Optimal Ratios ==
The optimal ratio is the ratio of production that ensures no waste of time or materials.

=== Petroleum gas production ===

For producing petroleum gas, the optimal advanced oil processing ratio is 10:1:5 (advanced oil processing : heavy oil cracking : light oil cracking).
Using coal liquefaction, the ratio is 60:39:55 (coal liquefaction : heavy oil cracking : light oil cracking), and 12:8:11 is close enough.

The refining can be sped up with [[module]]s; to prevent jams or inactive buildings it is recommended to speed everything up evenly. When slowing the process down (by using [[productivity module]]s) you are better off experimenting on altering the ratio or the speed on certain buildings, since the default ratios given above only hold if all the structures involved run at the same speed and have 100% productivity (in other words, no bonuses).



== See also ==
* [[Fluid system]]
* [[Crude oil]]
* [[Barrel]]

Infobox:Energy shield

2018-06-21T07:55:11Z

SilverShadow:

{{Infobox
|prototype-type = energy-shield-equipment
|internal-name = energy-shield-equipment
|expensive-total-raw = Time, 80 + Copper plate, 70 + Iron plate, 20 + Plastic bar, 20 + Steel plate, 10
|total-raw = Time, 57.5 + Copper plate, 25 + Iron plate, 10 + Plastic bar, 10 + Steel plate, 10
| category = Items
| category-name = Item
|shield = 50
|stack-size=50
|energy = 240 kW electric
|dimensions = 2x2
|equipped-in = Modular armor + Power armor + Power armor MK2
|recipe = Time, 10 + Advanced circuit, 5 + Steel plate, 10
|required-technologies = Energy shield equipment
|producers =Manual + Assembling machine
|consumers = Energy shield MK2
}}<noinclude>[[Category:Infobox page]]</noinclude>

Talk:Combat shotgun

2018-06-12T12:06:26Z

SilverShadow: Created page with "Does damage bonus from Combat shotgun stacks multiplicatively with Shotgun shell damage (research)? --~~~~"

Does damage bonus from [[Combat shotgun]] stacks multiplicatively with [[Shotgun shell damage (research)]]? --[[User:SilverShadow|SilverShadow]] ([[User talk:SilverShadow|talk]]) 12:06, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Archive:Shotgun shell damage (research)

2018-06-12T11:45:32Z

SilverShadow: typo

{{Languages}}
{{:Infobox:Shotgun shell damage (research)}}

The '''Shotgun shell damage''' technologies affects damage of the [[Shotgun]] and the [[Combat shotgun]].

{| class="wikitable"
! Technology !! Cost !! Effects !! Cumulative <br/>effect
|-
| {{Icontech|Shotgun shell damage (research)|1}} Shotgun shell damage 1 || {{Icon|Time|30}} {{Icon|Science pack 1|1}} <big>X 50</big> || 10% || 10%
|-
| {{Icontech|Shotgun shell damage (research)|2}} Shotgun shell damage 2 || {{Icon|Time|30}} {{Icon|Science pack 1|1}} {{Icon|Science pack 2|1}} <big>X 100</big> || 10% || 20%
|-
| {{Icontech|Shotgun shell damage (research)|3}} Shotgun shell damage 3 || {{Icon|Time|60}} {{Icon|Science pack 1|1}} {{Icon|Science pack 2|1}} {{Icon|Military science pack|1}} <big>X 100</big> || 20% || 40%
|-
| {{Icontech|Shotgun shell damage (research)|4}} Shotgun shell damage 4 || {{Icon|Time|60}} {{Icon|Science pack 1|1}} {{Icon|Science pack 2|1}} {{Icon|Military science pack|1}} <big>X 200</big> || 20% || 60%
|-
| {{Icontech|Shotgun shell damage (research)|5}} Shotgun shell damage 5 || {{Icon|Time|60}} {{Icon|Science pack 1|1}} {{Icon|Science pack 2|1}} {{Icon|Science pack 3|1}} {{Icon|Military science pack|1}} <big>X 200</big> || 20% || 80%
|-
| {{Icontech|Shotgun shell damage (research)|6}} Shotgun shell damage 6 || {{Icon|Time|60}} {{Icon|Science pack 1|1}} {{Icon|Science pack 2|1}} {{Icon|Science pack 3|1}} {{Icon|Military science pack|1}} {{Icon|High tech science pack|1}} <big>X 300</big> || 40% || 120%
|-
| {{Icontech|Shotgun shell damage (research)|7-∞}} Shotgun shell damage 7-∞ || {{Icon|Time|60}} {{Icon|Science pack 1|1}} {{Icon|Science pack 2|1}} {{Icon|Science pack 3|1}} {{Icon|Military science pack|1}} {{Icon|High tech science pack|1}} {{Icon|Space science pack|1}} <big>X <br/>{{Key|2^(Level-7)*1000}}</big> (eg. 1000 for level 7, 2000 for level 8) || 40% per level || 120% + {{Key|40%*(Level-6)}}
|}

== See also ==
* [[Research]]
* [[Technologies]]
* [[Shotgun shell shooting speed (research)|Shotgun shell shooting speed]]

{{TechNav}}

Tutorial:Nuclear power

2018-05-31T20:41:09Z

SilverShadow: Undo revision 159700 by Bilka (talk) 200(one uranium fuel cell processing time in nuclear reactor)/50sec(Kovarex enrichment process)*0.75(Centrifuge crafting speed)*10(Uranium fuel cells per 1 U-235)=30

[[Nuclear power]] is a major new feature introduced in version 0.15. It requires higher level technology compared to either solar power or steam boiler power, but it offers very high power output in exchange. It's a great solution for middle- to end-game power generation and it works well in combination with other power generation techniques.

This guide is written for people who want to know exactly how nuclear power works, but don't necessarily want all the solutions. It focuses on what you should do and what you should know to get Nuclear up and running, but doesn't tell you what to do or exactly how to solve the problems.

== First steps ==

:'''Technology required:''' [[Nuclear power (research)|Nuclear power]]
:''You can mine uranium ore sooner, but you'll need the nuclear power technology to do anything useful with it.''

=== [[Uranium ore]] ===
To start, you'll need uranium ore. It glows green, so you can't miss it. It tends to form smaller deposits, though, and you may have to search a while to find a good patch.

Like every other ore in the game, you can mine it with an [[electric mining drill|Electric mining drill]]. Unlike every other ore, however, only the [[electric mining drill| Electric mining drill]] will do. You also need to supply [[sulfuric acid]] to the drill. The drills conduct excess acid through themselves, so a row of drills can be supplied by acid from a single side.

:'''Mixed ores:''' If a mining drill covers even a single patch of uranium ore, it will require acid to run at all. The mine will produce mixed ore, as usual.

=== [[Uranium processing|Ore processing]] ===
Once you've got raw uranium ore, you'll need to process it into [[uranium-235]] and [[uranium-238]]. You do this in a centrifuge.

In an un-moduled [[centrifuge]], you can process one ore every 13.3 seconds.

Centrifuges produce a combination of U-235 (the light green stuff) and U-238 (the dark green stuff). Every ten ore processed have a chance to become precisely one of these two products. Out of every 10k ore you process, you can expect to get, on average:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Count !! Product
|-
| 7 || U-235
|-
| 993 || U-238
|}

That means you can roughly expect to get a single U-235 in one out of every 143 ore. A centrifuge can then be expected to produce U-235 every 1904 seconds. Later on, this won't matter so much. However, when you first start out, this will be an important bottleneck.

:'''Regarding averages:''' Be aware, random is random. These values are ''average'' values. Which means that over the long term, they work out to about these figures. In reality, you'll see long stretches with no U-235 and short stretches with lots of them. Eventually, it won't matter much. But early on, make sure your generation rate is sufficiently high, or you have a sufficient reserve, so you don't find yourself without power when you hit an unlucky stretch.

=== Fuel ===
Before you can burn it in a nuclear reactor, you need to create [[uranium fuel cell]]s. You'll probably be using an assembling machine 2, so these will take 13.3 seconds to create as well. Which is fine because fuel cell creation will very rarely be the bottleneck.

You won't want to automatically convert all U-235 into fuel. Only convert what you need to fill your reactor. You're going to want a big fat stockpile of it when you research [[Kovarex enrichment process|kovarex enrichment]] later on.

Fuel cells are produced in stacks of 10, and to produce one such stack you need 1 U-235, 19 U-238, and 10 iron plate.

:'''Tip:''' It isn't a bad idea to use a chest and just stick a pile of iron in it rather than belting the iron in. A full chest of iron probably won't run out before you get bots and replace it with a requester.

Each fuel cell has a nominal energy value of 8 GJ, but it's possible to make them go even farther with reactor neighbor bonuses (more on that later).

=== [[Nuclear reactor]] ===
Once you've got fuel, you'll need to burn it in a nuclear reactor. This is the first step toward turning it into usable energy.

A reactor will produce exactly 40 MW of heat energy. Since a Watt is a Joule per second, this means the reactor will consume one fuel cell every 200 seconds.

Once expended, reactors will produce a "[[used up uranium fuel cell]]", which will need to be cleared. Initially, these will simply accumulate in a chest. Eventually, you can reprocess them into U-238.

:'''Working backward:''' A reactor consumes a fuel cell every 200 seconds and each U-235 gives 10 fuel cells, so every U-235 provides 2000 seconds of reactor power. A centrifuge requires about 1904 seconds to produce a U-235, so you'll need about one processing centrifuges per reactor.

The reactor needs input of fuel and produces heat that needs to be exported using [[heat pipe]]s that go to a [[heat exchanger]] (unless a [[heat exchanger]] is attached to the reactor).

=== [[Heat exchanger]] ===
The heat exchanger takes heat and uses it to convert [[water]] into [[steam]]. It works much like the boiler, but instead of burning fuel, you need to connect it to a heat source. The heat input is marked by a flame when you're placing it.

For simple reactor designs, you can connect it directly to your reactor (which produces heat at points also marked with a flame).

Heat exchangers also require water input, in precisely the way boilers do. They can heat up to 103.09 units/second of water into 500°C steam.

Heat exchangers produce nothing when they are below 500°C. Since they only cool as a consequence of heating water, they will never cool to below that temperature once they've reached it.

Heat exchangers transfer 10 MW of power, so you'll need 4 exchangers to fully consume the power produced by a lone reactor. (Neighbor bonuses can increase this significantly. Again, discussed later.)

The [[steam]] can then be transported to the [[Steam turbine]] using normal [[Pipe]]s

==== [[Heat pipe]]s ====
More complex designs will require heat pipes. Heat pipes work much like regular pipes. Like regular pipes, they have limited throughput, which means that shorter pipes are better.

Connect heat pipes point to point, flame to flame, exactly as you would with water pipes. Heat pipes cannot go underground, so if water pipes need to cross them, the water pipe will need to go under. They don't block movement, though, so you can walk right over them.

Throughput on heat pipes is far more limited than regular pipes, in part because there is no analogous "Heat pump". Here are some rough limits on transfer distance:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Power !! Distance
|-
| 40 MW || ~140
|-
| 80 MW || ~80
|-
| 120 MW || ~55
|-
| 160 MW || ~45
|}

Past these distances, less than 100% of the power will be transferred. This is because at this distance, the maximum reactor temperature of 1000ºC is insufficient to heat the pipe to beyond 500ºC.

:'''Heat pipe storage:''' Heat pipes can store quite a bit of heat as well. A single heat pipe can hold as much energy as a tank with 5.1k steam in it, which makes them even more space efficient than tanks for holding energy (though considerably more expensive). Be cautious, however, with transfer efficiencies. It's very easy to lose more power than you store with an inefficient design.

=== [[Steam turbine]] ===
These are the steam engine's beefy big brother. Using regular fluid pipes, you'll pipe the steam produced by heat exchangers into these turbines.

:'''Perfect matches:''' The steam turbine is a perfect match for the heat exchanger. The steam engine is a perfect match for the boiler. Although it is possible to get energy out of mismatched systems, it's very wasteful and there's no real reason to do it.

Steam turbines consume up to 60 units of steam/second, so you need roughly two steam turbines for every heat exchanger. At large scales, however, you can use fewer turbines, since exchangers only produce 103.09 steam/second. You'll require a separate pump for every 20 turbines.

=== Simplest thing that works ===
At this point, you have all the parts to build your very first reactor:

* A few uranium miners, supplied with sulfuric acid
* 1 Centrifuge, processing uranium ore
* 1 Assembling machine, making uranium fuel cells
* 1 Nuclear reactor
* 4 Heat exchangers, supplied by a single off-shore pump
* 8 Steam turbines

And, of course, assorted belts, inserters, filter inserters, and other tools for moving things around. This will produce a maximum of 40 MW of power.

== Moving forward ==
Past your simplest reactor, there are some additional nuclear features of which you should be aware.

=== Neighbor bonus ===
This is a critical part of how nuclear designs scale, but it's not complicated. Simply put:

'''Every reactor gets +100% heating power for every active neighboring reactor.'''

Neighbors have to align completely on each side, so reactors will line up in a nice square grid. When they do, the neighbor bonus is activated. You can see the current bonus by hovering over an active reactor.

The bonus to heating power does not increase the fuel consumption. Rather, it simply increases the heat produced!

This, of course, means you'll need more heat exchangers and steam turbines to turn that heat into electricity.

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Configuration !! Reactors !! Exchangers !! Turbines !! Power !! Power per reactor
|-
| Single || 1 || 4 || 7 || 40MW || 40MW
|-
| 2x1 || 2 || 16 || 28 || 160MW || 80MW
|-
| 2x2 || 4 || 48 || 83 || 480MW || 120MW
|-
| 2x3 || 6 || 80 || 138 || 800MW || 133MW
|}

'''How to count heat exchangers:''' Count the number of edges where reactors fully touch. Double that. Add the total number of reactors. Then multiply it all by 4. That's your count of Heat Exchangers. You'll need 1.718 turbines per exchanger (rounded up). Each exchanger will provide up to 10 MW of power.

=== Always on! ===
Unlike every other power generation technique, nuclear reactors '''DO NOT''' scale down power usage. Nuclear reactors will continue consuming one fuel cell every 200 seconds, regardless of the need.

As the reactor consumes its fuel, it heats up to a maximum temperature of 1000°C. At that point, additional fuel burned is simply wasted.

Turbines do scale their production (and steam consumption) to match demand. Likewise, exchangers won't consume heat if there's nowhere to put the steam.

:'''Turbines and engines:''' Be aware that steam turbines and steam engines are both the same "class" of energy producer, so they'll need to be scaled all together. This means that in a complete energy system, your coal boilers may be running when the nuclear plant could fully cover the load. And, worse yet, the nuclear power is just being wasted!
:Consider using accumulators, switches, and circuit logic to disable the coal boilers when nuclear systems can cover the demand.

The simplest solution to this problem is to just run the nuclear reactors part of the time. You can store steam in tanks. (And check out the "fill gauge"; the steam floats!) Since exchanges produce 120 steam/second and a tank holds 25k steam, a tank will keep 208 seconds worth of heat exchanger.

You can put a tank or two at the end of each heat exchanger and use circuit logic to only insert a fuel into the reactors when they get low. Make sure all exchangers are powered at the same time, or you won't get full neighbor bonuses. If you can't keep it from over-fueling, you can also add extra tanks to lengthen the cycle.

=== Enrichment ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Kovarex enrichment process (research)|Kovarex enrichment process]]
:''Kovarex Enrichment allows you to turn some U-238 into U-235, but it's slow and takes a lot of U-235 as catalyst.''

Your first few patches of uranium ore will last you a reasonable length of time, but eventually you will start running out of ore and places to put extraneous U-238. Enrichment helps solve both problems.

The enrichment process takes about 67 seconds in an un-moduled centrifuge. It requires 40 U-235 (!) and 5 U-238 and makes 41 U-235 and 2 U-238. In effect, it takes 3 U-238 and turns it into 1 U-235; it just requires an extra 40 U-235 and 2 U-238 along for the ride to act as a catalyst.

:'''All the things!:''' Before you ''enrich all the things!'', be aware that you do need 19 U-238 for each fuel cell, as well as requiring it for uranium ammo you will want for storing inside biters and their nests. Circuit logic can help you put a limiter on large-scale enrichment operations.

One Centrifuge enriching uranium is sufficient to supply 30 reactors with fuel, assuming plenty of U-238.

=== Reprocessing fuel ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Nuclear fuel reprocessing (research)|Nuclear fuel reprocessing]]
:''Reprocessing turns your spent fuel into U-238.''

Eventually, you will run out of places to put spent fuel. You can use reprocessing to turn it back into U-238 to use for enrichment, fuel cells, or ammo. Of the 19 U-238 that go into each 10-pack of fuel cells, this returns 6. This significantly reduces the total ore requirement for nuclear fuel.

=== Weapons ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Uranium ammo (research)|Uranium ammo]] / [[Atomic bomb (research)|Atomic bomb]]
:''Better bullets / Bigger bombs''

With the Nuclear Age comes nuclear weapons. Uranium ammunition is top-tier, especially when you load a tank with it. It mows down biter nests and clears swarms quite quickly. It uses U-238, so you've probably got plenty of it lying around.

On the other side, you can get [[atomic bomb]]s, which are rockets (shot by a [[rocket launcher]]) that do incredible damage. Be aware, they can easily kill you if you fire them anywhere near you, and even at max range, it's advised that you run in the opposite direction. Rather than a single explosion, they do damage in an expanding ring, giving you time to escape. They require a lot of U-235 and blue chips, so they're an expensive weapon.

== Version ==
This guide is compatible with Factorio 0.15.13. Newer versions may, and likely will, change many of the values and mechanics on which this guide depends.

: This guide was originally written by ''alficles'' and published on [https://gist.github.com/alficles/972796997d1bc40d57866b0a3725895a gist].
:'''License:''' [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC BY-SA 4.0]
:As an exception to the above, any or all of this work or adaptations thereof may be used on the official [https://wiki.factorio.com Factorio Wiki].

Tutorial:Nuclear power

2018-05-31T20:33:26Z

SilverShadow: Undo revision 159704 by SilverShadow (talk)

[[Nuclear power]] is a major new feature introduced in version 0.15. It requires higher level technology compared to either solar power or steam boiler power, but it offers very high power output in exchange. It's a great solution for middle- to end-game power generation and it works well in combination with other power generation techniques.

This guide is written for people who want to know exactly how nuclear power works, but don't necessarily want all the solutions. It focuses on what you should do and what you should know to get Nuclear up and running, but doesn't tell you what to do or exactly how to solve the problems.

== First steps ==

:'''Technology required:''' [[Nuclear power (research)|Nuclear power]]
:''You can mine uranium ore sooner, but you'll need the nuclear power technology to do anything useful with it.''

=== [[Uranium ore]] ===
To start, you'll need uranium ore. It glows green, so you can't miss it. It tends to form smaller deposits, though, and you may have to search a while to find a good patch.

Like every other ore in the game, you can mine it with an [[electric mining drill|Electric mining drill]]. Unlike every other ore, however, only the [[electric mining drill| Electric mining drill]] will do. You also need to supply [[sulfuric acid]] to the drill. The drills conduct excess acid through themselves, so a row of drills can be supplied by acid from a single side.

:'''Mixed ores:''' If a mining drill covers even a single patch of uranium ore, it will require acid to run at all. The mine will produce mixed ore, as usual.

=== [[Uranium processing|Ore processing]] ===
Once you've got raw uranium ore, you'll need to process it into [[uranium-235]] and [[uranium-238]]. You do this in a centrifuge.

In an un-moduled [[centrifuge]], you can process one ore every 13.3 seconds.

Centrifuges produce a combination of U-235 (the light green stuff) and U-238 (the dark green stuff). Every ten ore processed have a chance to become precisely one of these two products. Out of every 10k ore you process, you can expect to get, on average:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Count !! Product
|-
| 7 || U-235
|-
| 993 || U-238
|}

That means you can roughly expect to get a single U-235 in one out of every 143 ore. A centrifuge can then be expected to produce U-235 every 1904 seconds. Later on, this won't matter so much. However, when you first start out, this will be an important bottleneck.

:'''Regarding averages:''' Be aware, random is random. These values are ''average'' values. Which means that over the long term, they work out to about these figures. In reality, you'll see long stretches with no U-235 and short stretches with lots of them. Eventually, it won't matter much. But early on, make sure your generation rate is sufficiently high, or you have a sufficient reserve, so you don't find yourself without power when you hit an unlucky stretch.

=== Fuel ===
Before you can burn it in a nuclear reactor, you need to create [[uranium fuel cell]]s. You'll probably be using an assembling machine 2, so these will take 13.3 seconds to create as well. Which is fine because fuel cell creation will very rarely be the bottleneck.

You won't want to automatically convert all U-235 into fuel. Only convert what you need to fill your reactor. You're going to want a big fat stockpile of it when you research [[Kovarex enrichment process|kovarex enrichment]] later on.

Fuel cells are produced in stacks of 10, and to produce one such stack you need 1 U-235, 19 U-238, and 10 iron plate.

:'''Tip:''' It isn't a bad idea to use a chest and just stick a pile of iron in it rather than belting the iron in. A full chest of iron probably won't run out before you get bots and replace it with a requester.

Each fuel cell has a nominal energy value of 8 GJ, but it's possible to make them go even farther with reactor neighbor bonuses (more on that later).

=== [[Nuclear reactor]] ===
Once you've got fuel, you'll need to burn it in a nuclear reactor. This is the first step toward turning it into usable energy.

A reactor will produce exactly 40 MW of heat energy. Since a Watt is a Joule per second, this means the reactor will consume one fuel cell every 200 seconds.

Once expended, reactors will produce a "[[used up uranium fuel cell]]", which will need to be cleared. Initially, these will simply accumulate in a chest. Eventually, you can reprocess them into U-238.

:'''Working backward:''' A reactor consumes a fuel cell every 200 seconds and each U-235 gives 10 fuel cells, so every U-235 provides 2000 seconds of reactor power. A centrifuge requires about 1904 seconds to produce a U-235, so you'll need about one processing centrifuges per reactor.

The reactor needs input of fuel and produces heat that needs to be exported using [[heat pipe]]s that go to a [[heat exchanger]] (unless a [[heat exchanger]] is attached to the reactor).

=== [[Heat exchanger]] ===
The heat exchanger takes heat and uses it to convert [[water]] into [[steam]]. It works much like the boiler, but instead of burning fuel, you need to connect it to a heat source. The heat input is marked by a flame when you're placing it.

For simple reactor designs, you can connect it directly to your reactor (which produces heat at points also marked with a flame).

Heat exchangers also require water input, in precisely the way boilers do. They can heat up to 103.09 units/second of water into 500°C steam.

Heat exchangers produce nothing when they are below 500°C. Since they only cool as a consequence of heating water, they will never cool to below that temperature once they've reached it.

Heat exchangers transfer 10 MW of power, so you'll need 4 exchangers to fully consume the power produced by a lone reactor. (Neighbor bonuses can increase this significantly. Again, discussed later.)

The [[steam]] can then be transported to the [[Steam turbine]] using normal [[Pipe]]s

==== [[Heat pipe]]s ====
More complex designs will require heat pipes. Heat pipes work much like regular pipes. Like regular pipes, they have limited throughput, which means that shorter pipes are better.

Connect heat pipes point to point, flame to flame, exactly as you would with water pipes. Heat pipes cannot go underground, so if water pipes need to cross them, the water pipe will need to go under. They don't block movement, though, so you can walk right over them.

Throughput on heat pipes is far more limited than regular pipes, in part because there is no analogous "Heat pump". Here are some rough limits on transfer distance:

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Power !! Distance
|-
| 40 MW || ~140
|-
| 80 MW || ~80
|-
| 120 MW || ~55
|-
| 160 MW || ~45
|}

Past these distances, less than 100% of the power will be transferred. This is because at this distance, the maximum reactor temperature of 1000ºC is insufficient to heat the pipe to beyond 500ºC.

:'''Heat pipe storage:''' Heat pipes can store quite a bit of heat as well. A single heat pipe can hold as much energy as a tank with 5.1k steam in it, which makes them even more space efficient than tanks for holding energy (though considerably more expensive). Be cautious, however, with transfer efficiencies. It's very easy to lose more power than you store with an inefficient design.

=== [[Steam turbine]] ===
These are the steam engine's beefy big brother. Using regular fluid pipes, you'll pipe the steam produced by heat exchangers into these turbines.

:'''Perfect matches:''' The steam turbine is a perfect match for the heat exchanger. The steam engine is a perfect match for the boiler. Although it is possible to get energy out of mismatched systems, it's very wasteful and there's no real reason to do it.

Steam turbines consume up to 60 units of steam/second, so you need roughly two steam turbines for every heat exchanger. At large scales, however, you can use fewer turbines, since exchangers only produce 103.09 steam/second. You'll require a separate pump for every 20 turbines.

=== Simplest thing that works ===
At this point, you have all the parts to build your very first reactor:

* A few uranium miners, supplied with sulfuric acid
* 1 Centrifuge, processing uranium ore
* 1 Assembling machine, making uranium fuel cells
* 1 Nuclear reactor
* 4 Heat exchangers, supplied by a single off-shore pump
* 8 Steam turbines

And, of course, assorted belts, inserters, filter inserters, and other tools for moving things around. This will produce a maximum of 40 MW of power.

== Moving forward ==
Past your simplest reactor, there are some additional nuclear features of which you should be aware.

=== Neighbor bonus ===
This is a critical part of how nuclear designs scale, but it's not complicated. Simply put:

'''Every reactor gets +100% heating power for every active neighboring reactor.'''

Neighbors have to align completely on each side, so reactors will line up in a nice square grid. When they do, the neighbor bonus is activated. You can see the current bonus by hovering over an active reactor.

The bonus to heating power does not increase the fuel consumption. Rather, it simply increases the heat produced!

This, of course, means you'll need more heat exchangers and steam turbines to turn that heat into electricity.

{| class="wikitable" |-
! Configuration !! Reactors !! Exchangers !! Turbines !! Power !! Power per reactor
|-
| Single || 1 || 4 || 7 || 40MW || 40MW
|-
| 2x1 || 2 || 16 || 28 || 160MW || 80MW
|-
| 2x2 || 4 || 48 || 83 || 480MW || 120MW
|-
| 2x3 || 6 || 80 || 138 || 800MW || 133MW
|}

'''How to count heat exchangers:''' Count the number of edges where reactors fully touch. Double that. Add the total number of reactors. Then multiply it all by 4. That's your count of Heat Exchangers. You'll need 1.718 turbines per exchanger (rounded up). Each exchanger will provide up to 10 MW of power.

=== Always on! ===
Unlike every other power generation technique, nuclear reactors '''DO NOT''' scale down power usage. Nuclear reactors will continue consuming one fuel cell every 200 seconds, regardless of the need.

As the reactor consumes its fuel, it heats up to a maximum temperature of 1000°C. At that point, additional fuel burned is simply wasted.

Turbines do scale their production (and steam consumption) to match demand. Likewise, exchangers won't consume heat if there's nowhere to put the steam.

:'''Turbines and engines:''' Be aware that steam turbines and steam engines are both the same "class" of energy producer, so they'll need to be scaled all together. This means that in a complete energy system, your coal boilers may be running when the nuclear plant could fully cover the load. And, worse yet, the nuclear power is just being wasted!
:Consider using accumulators, switches, and circuit logic to disable the coal boilers when nuclear systems can cover the demand.

The simplest solution to this problem is to just run the nuclear reactors part of the time. You can store steam in tanks. (And check out the "fill gauge"; the steam floats!) Since exchanges produce 120 steam/second and a tank holds 25k steam, a tank will keep 208 seconds worth of heat exchanger.

You can put a tank or two at the end of each heat exchanger and use circuit logic to only insert a fuel into the reactors when they get low. Make sure all exchangers are powered at the same time, or you won't get full neighbor bonuses. If you can't keep it from over-fueling, you can also add extra tanks to lengthen the cycle.

=== Enrichment ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Kovarex enrichment process (research)|Kovarex enrichment process]]
:''Kovarex Enrichment allows you to turn some U-238 into U-235, but it's slow and takes a lot of U-235 as catalyst.''

Your first few patches of uranium ore will last you a reasonable length of time, but eventually you will start running out of ore and places to put extraneous U-238. Enrichment helps solve both problems.

The enrichment process takes about 67 seconds in an un-moduled centrifuge. It requires 40 U-235 (!) and 5 U-238 and makes 41 U-235 and 2 U-238. In effect, it takes 3 U-238 and turns it into 1 U-235; it just requires an extra 40 U-235 and 2 U-238 along for the ride to act as a catalyst.

:'''All the things!:''' Before you ''enrich all the things!'', be aware that you do need 19 U-238 for each fuel cell, as well as requiring it for uranium ammo you will want for storing inside biters and their nests. Circuit logic can help you put a limiter on large-scale enrichment operations.

One Centrifuge enriching uranium is sufficient to supply 29 reactors with fuel, assuming plenty of U-238.

=== Reprocessing fuel ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Nuclear fuel reprocessing (research)|Nuclear fuel reprocessing]]
:''Reprocessing turns your spent fuel into U-238.''

Eventually, you will run out of places to put spent fuel. You can use reprocessing to turn it back into U-238 to use for enrichment, fuel cells, or ammo. Of the 19 U-238 that go into each 10-pack of fuel cells, this returns 6. This significantly reduces the total ore requirement for nuclear fuel.

=== Weapons ===
:'''Required technology:''' [[Uranium ammo (research)|Uranium ammo]] / [[Atomic bomb (research)|Atomic bomb]]
:''Better bullets / Bigger bombs''

With the Nuclear Age comes nuclear weapons. Uranium ammunition is top-tier, especially when you load a tank with it. It mows down biter nests and clears swarms quite quickly. It uses U-238, so you've probably got plenty of it lying around.

On the other side, you can get [[atomic bomb]]s, which are rockets (shot by a [[rocket launcher]]) that do incredible damage. Be aware, they can easily kill you if you fire them anywhere near you, and even at max range, it's advised that you run in the opposite direction. Rather than a single explosion, they do damage in an expanding ring, giving you time to escape. They require a lot of U-235 and blue chips, so they're an expensive weapon.

== Version ==
This guide is compatible with Factorio 0.15.13. Newer versions may, and likely will, change many of the values and mechanics on which this guide depends.

: This guide was originally written by ''alficles'' and published on [https://gist.github.com/alficles/972796997d1bc40d57866b0a3725895a gist].
:'''License:''' [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ CC BY-SA 4.0]
:As an exception to the above, any or all of this work or adaptations thereof may be used on the official [https://wiki.factorio.com Factorio Wiki].

Tutorial:Nuclear power

2018-05-31T20:32:20Z

SilverShadow: Undo revision 159700 by Bilka (talk)

Tutorial:Nuclear power

2018-05-31T16:19:25Z

SilverShadow: /* Enrichment */

Infobox:Laser turret

2018-05-30T17:44:35Z

SilverShadow:

{{Infobox
|prototype-type = electric-turret
|internal-name = laser-turret
|expensive-total-raw = Time, 80 + Battery, 12 + Copper plate, 100 + Iron plate, 40 + Steel plate, 20
|health = 1000
|stack-size=50
|category = Combat
|recipe = Time, 20 + Battery, 12 + Electronic circuit, 20 + Steel plate, 20
|boosting-technologies =
|energy = 2.4 MW electric
|drain = 24 kW electric
|range = 24
|shooting-speed = 3
|damage = 20 (laser)
|dimensions=2x2
|required-technologies = Laser turrets
|total-raw = Time, 45 + Battery, 12 + Copper plate, 30 + Iron plate, 20 + Steel plate, 20
|consumers = Discharge defense + Personal laser defense
}}<noinclude>[[Category:Infobox page]]</noinclude>

Pollution

2018-05-26T13:41:15Z

SilverShadow: /* Polluters */

{{languages}}
[[File:Pollution.png|400px|thumb|Example of in-game pollution (red squares) in the map]]

Pollution is represented as an abstract "cloud", updated [[Chunk|per chunk]] every game second (60 ticks) and visible on the minimap and map, when "alt-view" is on (default [[Keyboard bindings|Alt-Key]]). It appears as a red colored blocky cloud.

It is produced by many buildings involved in processing items and spreads outwards at a steady rate.

The [[Enemies#Evolution|evolution factor]] is not increased by the spreading/absorbed pollution, but by the pollution produced by all the player's [[Pollution#Polluters|machinery]] at every tick. This means that no matter how hard the player tries to contain the pollution, [[enemies]] will still evolve at the same rate. They just won't attack the player as frequently. The pollution cloud is used to trigger biter attacks and determines the size of the attacks.

== Pollution spread ==

As soon as a chunk has reached 15.0 pollution it starts spreading in all four cardinal directions at a rate of 2% per [[game-second]] (60 ticks).

For example, a chunk with 400.0 pollution and 4 adjacent chunks with 100.0 pollution each, raises the pollution in all adjacent chunks by 8.0 while reducing its own pollution by 32.0. But everyone of the 4 surrounding spreads 2.0 pollution "back" to the center chunk, so it only loses 24.0 + [[Pollution#De-polluters|absorbed value]].

== Pollution dissipation==

* Every [[chunk]] (32x32) of map slowly reduces the pollution it covers (See [[Pollution#Chunks]]). So the more the pollution spreads, the more is absorbed.
* [[Tree]]s also absorb some pollution (See [[Pollution#Trees]]).
* [[Enemies#Spawner|Spawners]] absorb a great amount of pollution, and use this to produce enemies.

== Native life ==
Pollution attracts [[Enemies|biters]] to the Player's factory. Biters who find themselves in a polluted area will attempt to reach the source of pollution and destroy it.

Each [[Enemies|spawner]] absorbs 20 + 0.01 * [chunk's pollution] every game second (60 ticks) if the chunk's pollution is greater than 20. If there is 20 or less pollution in the chunk, the spawner absorbs all the pollution.

Higher pollution values decrease the time it takes for biters to join the attack force. After a certain amount of pollution is absorbed the spawner sends one of its biters/spitters to a rendezvous point. Every 1 to 10 minutes (random) the mustered biters launch an attack. If not all biters have arrived at the rendezvous point by that time, they will wait up to an additional 2 minutes for stragglers.

Required pollution to add an additional biter/spitter to the attack wave:
{| class="wikitable"
! Pollution !! Type
|-
|200 || Small biter
|-
|1000 || Medium biter
|-
|4000 || Big biter
|-
|20000 || Behemoth biter
|-
|200 || Small spitter
|-
|600 || Medium spitter
|-
|1500 || Big spitter
|-
|10000 || Behemoth spitter
|-
|}

With 1350 absorbed pollution at the time of attack the following wave consists of 6 small biters and 1 medium biter OR 6 small spitters and 2 medium spitters depending on the spawner's type and [[Enemies#Spawn_chances_by_evolution_factor|evolution factor]].

== Modules ==
[[Module]]s that list "+x% pollution" increase pollution multiplier, not a flat pollution rate. Final pollution value is (pollution multiplier * energy usage multiplier * base pollution), meaning heavily boosted buildings are likely to account for most of the pollution produced in a factory.

== Production ==
These tables contain information about the levels of pollution produced/absorbed by items in the game.
=== Polluters ===
{| class="wikitable"
| '''Object''' || '''Pollution per KW per game second (60 ticks)''' || '''Pollution per game second at full power'''
|-
| {{Imagelink|Stone furnace}} || 0.01/KW || 1.8
|-
| {{Imagelink|Steel furnace}} || 0.02/KW || 3.6
|-
| {{Imagelink|Electric furnace}} || 0.005/KW || 0.9
|-
| {{Imagelink|Burner mining drill}} || 0.03333/KW || 9.999
|-
| {{Imagelink|Electric mining drill}} || 0.1/KW || 9
|-
| {{imagelink|pumpjack|Pumpjack}} || 0.1/KW || 9
|-
| {{Imagelink|Assembling machine 1}} || 0.03333/KW || 2.9997
|-
| {{Imagelink|Assembling machine 2}} || 0.016/KW || 2.4
|-
| {{Imagelink|Assembling machine 3}} || 0.00857/KW || 1.7997
|-
| {{Imagelink|Pump}} || 0.004/KW || 0.12
|-
| {{imagelink|Boiler}} || 0.01538/KW || 27.6923
|-
| {{Imagelink|Oil refinery}} || 0.00857/KW || 3.5994
|-
| {{Imagelink|Chemical plant}} || 0.00857/KW || 1.7997
|-
| {{Imagelink|Centrifuge}} || 0.20622/KW || 5.6
|-
|}

=== De-polluters ===

==== Spawner ====
If a chunk's pollution is greater than 20, each enemy spawner absorbs 20 + 0.01 * [chunk's pollution] every game second (60 ticks), otherwise it absorbs the chunk's total pollution.

==== Chunks ====
Every chunk has a natural absorption rate per tick which is determined by the weighted average of its floor tiles.

Following numbers are the pollution reduction for a full chunk (32x32 tiles) composed of the same floor tiles per tick.
{| class="wikitable"
! Tile !! Pollution per tick !! Pollution per second
|-
|Grass 1, Grass 2 || -0.00045|| -0.027
|-
|Grass 3, Grass 4 || -0.0004|| -0.024
|-
|Dry dirt, Dirt 1-7 || -0.00045|| -0.027
|-
|Sand 1, Sand 2 || -0.00025|| -0.015
|-
|Sand 3 || -0.0002|| -0.012
|-
|Red desert 0-2 || -0.00045|| -0.027
|-
|Red desert 3 || -0.0004|| -0.024
|-
|Green water || -0.0005 || -0.03
|-
|Deep green water || -0.0005 || -0.03
|-
|Water || -0.0006 || -0.036
|-
|Deep water || -0.0006 || -0.036
|-
|Path tiles (Stone bricks, concrete etc) || 0.0 || 0.0
|-
|}

==== Trees ====
Every single tree absorbs a small amount of pollution in its chunk per tick.

{| class="wikitable"
! Object !! Pollution per tick !! Pollution per second
|-
| [[File:Green tree.png|120px]] Tree, red tree, brown tree || -0.001 || -0.06
|-
| [[File:Dead dry hairy tree.png|120px]] Dead dry hairy tree || -0.0001 || -0.006
|-
| [[File:Dead grey trunk.png|120px]] Dead grey trunk || -0.0001 || -0.006
|-
| [[File:Dead tree desert.png|120px]] Dead tree - desert || -0.0001 || -0.006
|-
| [[File:Dry hairy tree.png|120px]] Dry hairy tree || -0.0001 || -0.006
|-
| [[File:Dry tree.png|120px]] Dry tree || -0.0001 || -0.006
|-
|}

== Achievements ==
Pollution is directly connected to the following achievement:
{{Achievement|it-stinks-and-they-dont-like-it}}

== History ==

{{history|0.13.2|
* Optimized rendering of huge pollution clouds on the map.}}

{{history|0.13.0|
* Large amounts of pollution is created when burning fires.
* Pollution creation of the productivity module was reduced drastically.
* Optimized pollution rendering on map and minimap.
}}

{{history|0.12.0|
* [[Tree]]s degenerate slowly when exposed to pollution at high levels. }}

{{history|0.8.0|
* Added option to turn off pollution visibility even when detailed info is on. }}

{{history|0.7.1|
* Speed modules no longer produce extra pollution.
* Added missing pollution descriptions.
* Pollution is only shown on the minimap with alt mode on.
}}

{{history|0.7.0|
* Introduced concept of pollution.}}

== See also ==
* [[Crafting]]
* [[Module]]s
* [[Enemies]]

Electric system

2018-05-19T18:34:07Z

SilverShadow: As far as I understand 0.15 patch had multiplied all fluid amounts in storage tank by 10 and while calculations was edited on this page, plain text wasn't

{{Languages}}

The '''Electric system''' is used to power a lot of different machines; the game can hardly be played without using electricity. Every machine has its own internal electric capacity. When energy is produced, it is evenly distributed to all machines in the network that need electricity.

== Network mechanics ==
=== Generators ===

There are four ways to produce electricity. More details about each method are available on the [[Power production]] page.

# [[Steam engine]]s – Most common, requires [[Boiler|Boilers]] (which consume [[Water]] and [[fuel]]).
# [[Solar panel]]s – Free energy, but only works during daylight. Usually used with Accumulators.
# [[Accumulator]]s – Energy storage, see below
# [[Steam turbine]]s – High-power Steam engines. Used to generate power from a [[Nuclear reactor]].

If a network consumes less power than is produced, its Steam Engines and Turbines will slow down so that no power is wasted.

=== Storage ===
[[File:electrical-network-example-2.png|thumb|256px|Accumulator array consisting of 48 accumulators and a substation providing 240 MJ storage capacity.]]

Energy can be stored in:
* [[Fuel]]. It can be burnt to generate power.
* [[Accumulator]]s. Accumulators charge using excess power generated, and discharge when demand exceeds normal production.
* [[Steam]]. It can be created in [[boiler]]s or [[heat exchanger]]s and stored in the [[storage tank]], allowing steam engines or steam turbines to operate on-demand.

==== Steam tanks as power storage ====
A storage tank filled with [[heat exchanger]] 500°C steam stores around 2.4GJ; a storage tank filled with [[boiler]] 165°C Steam stores 750MJ.

There are several advantages to storing energy in storage tanks compared with storing it in an accumulator:
* The energy density of a storage tank tile is much higher than it is with accumulators.
** For 165°C steam (produced with [[boiler|boilers]]), a single storage tank stores as much as 150 accumulators: <code>750MJ / 5MJ = 150</code>
** For 500°C steam (produced using [[Heat exchanger|heat exchangers]]), a single storage tank stores as much as 480 accumulators: <code>2400MJ / 5MJ = 480</code>
* A [[nuclear reactor]] always fully burns a fuel cell, releasing 8GJ (or more with the multiple reactor bonus) even if power demand is lower. The excess energy can be stored as steam.
* A single [[accumulator]]'s maximum discharge rate is 300kW. On a very heavy load (e.g. laser turret firing), a small accumulator array may not discharge fast enough, causing power disruptions. A steam engine can produce 900kW of energy from the stored steam (3 times faster discharge rate), and a turbine can produce 5800kW (6.4 times faster discharge rate). In other words, a number of turbines or steam engines with steam storage can cope with much higher bursts than the same number of accumulators.
* Steam can be transferred via trains and then consumed remotely via turbines or steam engines. This essentially "transports electricity" using trains.

=== Distribution ===

Power poles are used to transmit energy. There are 4 types of power pole, each having differently configured properties. The properties are coverage area (area in which machines are placed to be affected by the pole) and wire reach (the distance across which a pole can connect with another pole). If two poles of different wire reach are to be connected, the smallest of either applies.

# [[Small electric pole]] – Second smallest coverage area, shortest cable length, available without research.
# [[Medium electric pole]] – Second largest coverage area, average cable length.
# [[Big electric pole]] – Smallest coverage area, longest cable length.
# [[Substation]] – Largest coverage area, second longest cable length, but most expensive to build.

=== Consumption ===

The majority of machines in Factorio consume electricity. There are two aspects to a machine's energy use.

* Energy consumption – The energy consumed by the machine while it is actively carrying out a process (crafting an item, moving an item, etc). If an electric network does not have enough power generation to supply all the machines in it, the electricity will be evenly spread across all machines in the network (based on each machine's demand), and all machines will slow down proportionally to the power available.
** For example: If an [[Assembling machine 3]] (210kW) and an [[Electric mining drill]] (90kW) are on a network (90+210 = 300kW), but the network only has 3 [[Solar panel]]s (3x60kW = 180kW) to power them, the Assembling machine and Mining drill will both run at 60% speed (180/300=0.6).
* Drain – The energy consumed by the machine whether it is active or not. Most machines consume a small amount of power just being connected to a network. This is usually negligible, but can become notable in small factories where power is limited.

=== Connection ===
[[File:Electric-network-1.png|thumb|256px|Simple example of a small electric network.]]

A network is created by placing electrical generators ([[Steam engine]]s or [[Solar panel]]s) and electrical consumers, then ensuring a connection between the generator and consumer can be made using Distributors (such as [[Small electric pole]]s) that are connected together. Electric poles cover differently sized areas depending on their type. The area of coverage appears as a blue overlay around the pole. If two poles are placed close enough, the poles connect automatically. A building is connected if one tile of the building is in a covered area. Hovering the cursor over a pole reports the current satisfaction of power demands in that pole's network, and clicking on a pole will provide a detailed GUI about that pole's electric network. (See below)

* Use shift-click on a existing pole to remove all its connections to other poles.
* Unconnected poles can be connected with a single [[Copper cable]] dragging from pole to pole (Left click on the ''bottom'' of the pole with the cable in hand.)
* Individual connections can be removed by "connecting" them with copper cable. This will not consume the cable.
* You can use place-key (default left mouse) while running/driving to auto-place poles at their greatest connectible distance while covering all unpowered entities on the way. This allows for complete efficiency when connecting long distances. If connecting over long distances, using [[Big electric pole]]s is recommended.

== Electric network screen ==
[[File:Electric network info screen.png|thumb|400x400px|The Electric network info GUI]]

The Electric network info GUI can be accessed by left-clicking any electric pole nearby.

'''You can see only the info from the electric network to which that pole is connected!''' Unlike the production-info (press P) the electric network info is not measured globally, but by network.

# '''Satisfaction''' – The current amount of energy consumed by the network. This bar should be full. If it is not full, it means that the machines connected to the network are consuming more power than is produced, and the bar will change color to yellow (>50%) or red (<50%).
# '''Production''' – The current energy produced by the network. This bar should never be full. If it is full, it means that the machines connected to the network are consuming all available energy. The less full this bar is, the more surplus energy is available.
# '''[[Accumulator|Accumulator]] capacity''' – How much energy is currently held inside of the accumulators connected to your network. Measured in [[Units|joule]]s; 1 Joule = 1 Watt * 1 second (see also [[wikipedia:Joule]]). This bar should be able to fill fully before emptying again.
# '''Timespan''' - Set the [[Time|time]] span for the graphs below. "5s" means over the last 5 seconds.
# '''Detailed Consumption''' – A list of consumers from highest power consumption to lowest. In the picture example, 16 [[Radar|radars]] consume the most power, at 4.7 MW.
# '''Detailed Production''' – A list of producers from highest power production to lowest. In the picture example, 160 [[Steam engine]]s produce all the electricity in the factory.
# '''Consumption Graph''' – Shows the consumption of the different parts of the network over time.
# '''Production Graph''' – Shows the production of the different producers of the network over time.

Note that the timeframe influences the shown detailed production/consumption: the displayed watts is the total average power production or consumption over the full time. Setting longer timeframes also allows seeing the past production or consumption of machines even if they are not currently connected to the network.

== Network priorities ==

Electricity is provided on a priority basis. The demand for energy is satisfied by generators in following order:

* [[Solar panel]]s – Top priority; they always work at maximum performance available, unless they can cover all demand of the network, in which case they match demand.
* [[Steam engine]]s and [[Steam turbine]]s – They match whatever demand solar panels cannot satisfy; note that Engines and Turbines do have the same priority, leftover demand is equally divided among both.
* [[Accumulator]] – Last resort. They are only discharged when demand cannot be met by other means. They are also only charged when all demand is met, and there is yet more power available.

There may be situations where different behaviour is desired (such as solar panels combined with accumulators for night-and-day delivery), in which case clever use of a [[power switch]] and the [[circuit network]] is in order.

A newly-placed electric pole will be automatically connected to nearby poles according to the following rules:
# It will be connected to other available poles, starting with the closest one.
# It won't be connected to 2 poles connected to each other (it won't form a 3 pole triangle).
# It will not be connected to more than 5 other poles.

A player can manually connect poles together with Copper Wire, if they are within reach of each other, as long as either pole does not already have 5 connections.

== See also ==
* [[Tutorial:Producing power from oil|Producing power from oil]]
* [[Power production]]
* [[Fluid system]]
* [[Units]]