I think turning a piece of coal into 1 GJ doesn't make much sense. It would be nice though to be able to turn coal into subatomic particles at around a 75% (or configurable) energy conversion ratio, so you don't need massive steam engine setups which are more UPS intensive. And have an easy way to add in other fuels like solid fuel as well as fuel from mods. Great mod and great work on it's adaptability with the recipes.

Thanks for the ideas! I agree, I think the energy amounts need to be tuned down. Maybe 100MJ or 10MJ instead of 1GJ, I can try out a few options.

To be fair, mass annihilation is crazy powerful and 1GJ for a random pebble is low efficiency.

You want to keep things balanced, but that's a bit difficult under the theme since plain water should be shreddable for nigh-unlimited power.

What if the annihilator was more like the nuclear reactor and had to run full tilt? As in, that piece of coal can provide 1GJ, but you have to catch/spend it in 0.5 seconds. IE: you'd need to let most of it go to waste, have huge accumulator banks, or a 2GW factory eating it.