You insert a fuel element into the Nuclear Reactor. Adjusting the control rod height adjusts the reaction speed/neutron production. Pump speed adjusts the movement of heated fluids through the heat extractor. The heat extractor produces steam which is transferred to the turbines based on the valve opening. If you don't balance things right, it leads to a hydrogen explosion. Pressing the SCRAM button safely resets everything.

It will eventually be added to https://store.steampowered.com/app/2429930/Power_Network_Tycoon/

For those with the DLC, Nuclear Power is one of the most interesting setups I've encountered, and I decided to make a simplified guide for others using what I've learned after building a few of these.

1. The Gist of It

While not strictly necessary, a properly set-up Nuclear Power Plant will basically solve most power issues on an asteroid. As long as you can get your hands on 10 kg/day of Enriched Uranium, one of these babies can run forever with minimal input from your Dupes.

Basically, the Research Reactor takes Enriched Uranium as fuel and any Water as a coolant, heats both of them up, and then pukes hot Nuclear Waste and Steam from the bottom. If you can enclose this in a humongous insulated box with Water inside (let's call this our Reactor Chamber), it'll continuously produce hot Steam, so you can extract power by using Steam Turbines!

2. What You'll Need

Other than a source of Uranium Ore, you're going to need:

- A ton of Refined Metal and Plastic
Each Steam Turbine will need 800 kg of Refined Metal + 200 kg of Plastic, and you'll need at least 10 (or more) to extract all that heat from the Reactor Chamber. The Research Reactor itself costs another 800 kg of Refined Metal. That means we're going to need (at minimum) 8800 kg of Refined Metal and 2000 kg of Plastic for them.
- A bunch of Steel
The Reactor Chamber runs hot, and if all goes well, will basically be at 150-300 degrees C for the rest of the game. A good minimal setup is to run a Steel Aquatuner (1200 Steel) and a Steel Liquid Pump (400 Steel) inside the Reactor Chamber. The purpose of the Aquatuner is to dump as much heat from the Steam Turbines as possible back into the Reactor Chamber, while the Liquid Pump extracts the excess hot Nuclear Waste.
- A lot of Raw Materials, a big empty space and some time
Insulated Tiles cost 400 kg of Raw Material each, and as you can see, a Nuclear Power Plant requires a LOT of space. I like to build mine slowly over time in space, to save time on vacuuming the entire box, and it's going to take time for your Dupes to build such a large contraption. Building in space also allows you to place the entrance at the bottom, which makes it easy to flood the outer chambers with Hydrogen for maximum heat transfer once the whole thing is ready.

3. The Process

There's no "right" way to do it, you can plop one of these down anywhere you have space for it, but my preferred method is:

a) Build the Insulated Tiles, Dry Wall and Ladders
First, find any configuration where you can fit 10 Steam Turbines over a 2 tile high chamber below it. In the images I shared, I used a 1 + 3 + 3 + 3 arrangement, but you can just as easily swap this out to two 2 x 3 grids or a 2 x 5 grid... in general, 10 Turbines will more or less extract all the heat safely from a standard non-limited Research Reactor.

At this stage, I simply leave a "hole" into the Reactor Chamber so that Dupes continue to build inside, and I prefer to build in space so everything's in a vacuum at this stage ("just hold your breath dudes, or take one of those Atmo Suits, whatever").

You'll also need a depression directly below the Research Reactor to catch the hot Nuclear Waste, which incidentally serves as a great place to keep the initial pool of Water that will turn into Steam. While not strictly necessary, placing Tempshift Plates at the border of this pool will be a good way to accelerate heat extraction, and some strategic Tempshift Plates scattered throughout the build ensures that the heat in the Reactor Chamber's steam gets distributed more evenly.

b) Place the Steam Turbines in installments
As the Refined Metal/Plastic production ramps up, I start placing Steam Turbines one by one into their prepared slots. There's no need to worry about connecting them for now, the bulk of the cost will be generating enough resources for the Turbines themselves at this stage.

c) The Cooling System
If you have access to Super Coolant, you'll only need a single cooling loop. Otherwise, something like Salt Water can only cool 5 Steam Turbines effectively, so you'll need two loops. For the pictures above, I started with a primary cooling loop that dumps into the Reactor Chamber, and a secondary cooling loop into the auxiliary steam room on the left. I find it best to setup a Liquid Reservoir for each, place a thermo sensor on the reservoir output, and connect that sensor to the Aquatuners to maintain a target temperature.

You'll also need an initial supply of water from an external source into the Reactor itself. Eventually the 95 degree water from the Steam Turbines can be recycled into the Reactor, so you can hook up all the outputs of the Steam Turbines into a pipe junction that goes to both a Liquid Vent (back into the chamber) and the Reactor itself (to recycle as coolant). Once the supply is stable, you can cut the external line and the entire system becomes self sufficient.

d) The Fuel Feeder
Once the system starts up, the Reactor Chamber will be FLOODED with radiation, becoming a hazard even with Lead Suits equipped. A safe way to feed fuel is to run a conveyor line into a Steel Autosweeper right next to the Reactor. and drop the Enriched Uranium fuel from a manual-use Conveyor Loader somewhere FAR FAR AWAY.

e) The Research Reactor
I like to place this last. Before you put the Reactor down, I suggest placing an automation wire connected to a standard switch on the bottom-most middle tile of the Reactor. Trust me, you do NOT want this thing to suddenly turn on in the middle of construction. The 'master switch' allows you to turn it off until you're ready.

f) Priming the System
We're almost ready! Fill up your cooling loops, have a vent outside to dump the hot Nuclear Waste (or store it for radbolt generation), seal the Reactor Chamber, flood the outside with your gas of choice (Hydrogen works best), save your game, and flip the master switch. Everything glows green and the Reactor Chamber will start heating up... 3-4 cycles later, the pool turns into Steam and you've gone nuclear! Congratulations!

4. Final Words

I'll admit that before building one myself, nuclear power seemed like a daunting, insurmountable task. Having now made a few without melting them down, I hope that what I've learned will be useful for anyone looking for build one for the first time. It's really fun! You can use the radiation and power it generates for all sorts of late-game stuff! Diamonds! Interplanetary launchers! Sped-up research!

Good luck!!

View Poll

CAn anyone enligten me abount the nuclear reactor. Is it good or bad? I have a base close around a lot of uranitnite crystal so they won't be hard to get if that matters.

I've built a 40+ turbine reactor before, but this run I just wanted to build the simplest reactor possible, so I could build one on multiple worlds - the goal is a functional colony on -every- asteroid).

So here's my latest version!

It uses basic materials (a little steel (the stuff in the waste pool), lots of aluminum, lead (for the stuff outside the steam chamber), and igneous. Only rare material is supercoolant, which just saves an AT. The only automation is to pump out excess waste, and to flip the radbolts on/off. I didn't even include a power screen, because it's just 3 direct wires.

It's rock-stable, runs at full power (7650kW), and produces over 7600 radbolts/cycle, meaning it can fully fuel an empty radbolt engine in about half a cycle. All for 10kg of uranium per cycle!

Most importantly, since I intend to eventually build 7 of 'em, it's pretty small, really easy to build and really hard to screw up. :)

(my 43-turbine reactor build is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Oxygennotincluded/comments/12un0c3/welcome_to_the_nuclear_future )

So I recently got into subnautica and I already have 3 different power sources in my base. Thermal Reactor, Bio and Solar Panels.

The description for the reactor says to NEVER remove the rods without the protection and I never really used it although I think it might be worth it as (if I'm not mistaken) it has 2000 energy. So?

Basically instead of having a nuclear reactor that that directly produces power or electricity, produces steam instead? IMO that would be a great way to include nuclear power without it being overpowered/overshadowed by the engines already in the game. They would have a niche as a power supply for PACs, fortresses, and super late game crafts. The purpose is to sacrifice space to limit material usage after a large initial investment, but you will still have to make space for, create, and protect your steam engines.

They will basically be a way to generate unlimited power without having to rely on rtgs, but they wouldn't replace them because land vehicles, flyers, and Sats won't have access to the water to create the steam. They would also be balanced somewhat by the fact that now you need a massive amount of space to build a nuclear reactor + all the required plumbing. I have always wanted a way to produce a ton of power without using mats for super late game, and this seems like a really good way to implement that without completely breaking the game balance.

It might make subs a lot more interesting with a lot more options, though it might also just make them broken lol. Subs with top mounted PACs creating massive holes in your craft sounds terrifying, but could also give torps some much needed value.