Mod is great, it adds a new whole gameplay around 'saftey'.
My only compains are green lit when it's working, it should be blueish, and second is lack of area damage and probably self degradation of unit if reactor is damaged.

area damage is actually not realistic,
real reactors don't explode, they melt.
any explosion that might occur is when the water comes in contact with the hot reactor and evaporates like an explosion.
this is manifested by the fallout cloud that damages living creatures.

It should at least cause fire.

Actually, I think that it should cause damage to nearby players and buildings. Let's say, it's heat damage and high radiation, not the explosion itself.
I'm thinking about game-play value. It would be quite stressful to stand near an active reactor when it can kill you if you screw up. And it would be much bigger satisfaction when you manage to avoid the explosion.
Now, you only lose resources, so stakes are relatively low.

is that even realistic that nearby buildings degrade?
maybe there is a way to create permanent fallout by invisible fallout clouds if you can make smoke-with-trigger ignore the wind entirely...

I think this is realistic enough. High radiation would certainly damage electronics. I assume that produced heat wouldn't be good for the neighbor buildings too.
The thing you need to remember is that this is still a game and it is meant to be played. You seek realism (and I support that) but you still need to balance it with some game-play value. (For example, I made a mod that retextures ores so they are more realistic. The problem is that most of real ores are just gray rocks which would neither look good nor be fun to play with. So, I searched for the most colorful ores of iron and copper that exist and I used them. They aren't that common as gray ones but they better for the player experience and they are still realistic enought to name my mod Realistics Ores.)
So, the things, that I'm suggesting, are actually dictated by what would be fun to play in my opinion. (But I think they are close enough to the real-world.)

what about a setting to add a nuclear explosion that destroys everything within 10 tiles? or just light damage for nearby buildings? and how close?

That little damage is exactly what i was thinking of. After extremely fast evaporation of water, steam throws everything in the air. In this way it's pretty logical that nerby objects would get damaged. If we afterwards connect it with other reactors (with degradation if damaged) in area and long or even pernament radiation of the zone it creates big opportunity to start planning base in way that reactor itself must be protected and shouldn't be part of base.
That also creates risk of losing not resources, but habitable area. Radiation created this way could be also increasing a but evolution adding even more risk in early/mid game.

I would like that option very much.

As I see it:
- Buildings directly neighboring the reactor should take a massive damage (enough to destroy most buildings) and also be set on fire.
- Buildings one square away from the reactor should take moderate damage.
- Buildings two squares from the reactor should take minor damage.
I like the idea of destroying buildings. It's just more fun, IMO. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdbex7bVUHo)

As for the radiation cloud, why not it could be permanent or stay a long time. Actually, you could keep the current cloud which moves with the wind but spawn a new one every x seconds.

[video link removed]
like this or better invisible radiation?
no matter how transparent i make it, the area around the reactor will always be super-greenish
but ingo is at vacation so you still have to wait 2 more weeks...
maybe i will post a pre-alpha version here, i don't feel like waiting 2 weeks and could use some testers because i don't really "play" factorio anymore..

This is so much better. Please, post the pre-alpha. I would like to play this.

I like the looks of it. By which I mean that this smoke/steam really gets in the way and prevent you from seeing sh*t. But it is OK. I think this is realistic and also it is some punishment for screwing up.
Invisible radiation isn't that good idea, IMO. The player wouldn't know what hit him. The green tint is acceptable. I don't expect that you can do anything better without messing with shaders and you cannot do this in mod.

How long exactly does the radiation stays? I should be like an hour so it really matters. If it is just a few minutes, it will be gone at the time when player come from the other part of the factory.
I'm thinking about creating some unique experience, which the base game doesn't offer.

i thought about 100 secs cloud generation which stay for 80 seconds each, the radiation would stay 300 seconds after being spawned.
after all it's a ton of entities that might reduce the performance.
anyway half of the radiation would be very hard to see, so for the most part a player still wouldn't really know what hit him.. (especially if you have grass instead of desert)
i will try to find a better solution but its quite hard because "find_entities_in_area" calls are very performance heavy.
if anybody has some cool graphical fallout effect, please post it here. (can be multiple grades of heaviness)

if i release a pre-alpha there is a good chance that it will not be compatible with future versions of the mod, so i would suggest not using it with your main savegame...

5 mins of radiation isn't too long in game like this. At least it doesn't sound like punishment for bad handling, if player has some resevoir he might event miss the whole radiation
.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7bi587e5s66gr8g/2018-08-20%2016-32-14.mp4?dl=0
(download for hd)
perfect?

https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/mobile/000/022/900/704.jpg

open alpha
looking for bugs and feedback (especially to the reactor stats calculation)
mod = https://forums.factorio.com/download/file.php?id=39290

and my fuel cell curves:
breeders have modifiers that reduce efficiency a lot and power a bit.
open office spreadsheet = https://forums.factorio.com/download/file.php?id=39291

What do you think of this?
When the reactor explodes it leaves behind a damaged reactor building, that generates radiation (i.e. a stationary fallout cloud) forever, until you you build a stone sarcophag (a building made out of steel and concrete) over it. Then radiation would stop.
The damaged reactor buidling would not be removable, the stone sarcophag maybe also not (maybe with a setting to change that).
Then it would be like in Chernobyl, in my opinion that would add a little more realism to the mod...

guys please help us.
ingo wants to remove the settings "static energy consumption when cooling" - "when static is chosen, the reactor will consume 1 mw when the fluid amount changes. otherwise it will consume 1MW per 20MW of cooling"
and "choose a scram bug" -
"stop half-empty = Reactor will take another fuel cell if he needs to and it will stay half-consumed in the reactor when stopped.
consume additional cell = Same as above but the cell will be depleted when the reactor stops.
stop abrupt = The reactor won't drain another fuel cell in scram when the current one is used up.
free energy in scram = The reactor will get disabled immediately and a script produces the usual decay heat."
because he says its too complicated.
and his preferred solutions are "static consumption" and "stop abrupt"....
opinions?

I'd choose non-static consumption, and stop abrupt.

I was MIA for half a year and now the explosion is awesome! What have even happened?!
This is a good stuff. It hurts you even through a few mark II shields. It still doesn't damage buildings but at this level of "OMG, I'm so screwed" it isn't needed anymore. Good job.

The idea with the sarcophagus is great too.

it doesnt damage your buildings? how is that possible?
you mean the nuclear explosion right? huge mushroom all over the screen?