Schall Uranium Processing


Separate pure uranium-235 and pure uranium-238 items? Real-world nuclear industry do NOT work like that! This mod introduces more realistic uranium items of different grades and more realistic uranium enrichment processing. Recipes are kept simple, so even vanilla players will find this easy to master with. (Locale: English, Deutsch, 正體中文, 简体中文, Português Brasileiro, Русский)

Content
3 years ago
0.17 - 1.1
6.63K
Manufacturing

i [Solved] depleted uranium graphics and use

4 years ago

thanks for this awesome mod.

I had problems about understanding which is low enriched or depleted. I can suggest making the depleted uranium completely black perhaps.
what I did? opened vanilla u-238 image and made it black-white. with gimp tool I used colorify without any option, it makes black-white by default. so we have four colors of same/similar image: yellow, black, dark green, light green. instead of three shades of green. if you need the image, I can share it to you even.

another problem I encountered is use of depleted uranium. ammo is good but spending gets limited at one point because laser turret is competitive with regular turret and artillery becomes a better option (for long range).
we need another use of depleted uranium.

4 years ago

Sure, I can provide an option to change icon of depleted uranium (DU), in the next version. DU is metallic silver in reality, according to web knowledge. :-D

Vanilla U-238 is just effectively DU in role (production chain relations), so I just gave it the proper name of DU, but without change of icon. Yet making stronger contrast could be useful to some players, so I will provide it as an option for players to choose from.

The second part of your comment is actually about two major problems (to what I considered) in vanilla game: 1) Laser turret is superior to other turrets (both range, space and logistics concern). 2) Too little use of uranium overall.
For 1), this mod is not for weaponry. But I have expanded the uranium arsenal a bit in my other mods like Schall Tank Platoon and Schall Ammo Turrets. Especially the Cannon turret (128 mm) has an extra long range, and its uranium ammo contains much more DU, so can increase your uranium requirement a few times more.
And I understand 2) leads to stockpiling of uranium, especially to "peaceful mode" players. So I leave the vanilla Kovarex recipe intact to "consume" the otherwise useless DU. (I guess the devs also saw this problem, so introducing this to consume the vanilla U-238.) I am not really creative of inventing a new use of DU, and you may suggest here.
For my mod suite alone, the "modified" Kovarex recipe converts DU to LEU, which can be enriched to HEU. My another mod Schall Alien Tech has an "alchemy" recipe to convert HEU to iron and copper ores, as an addition mean to consume uranium overall.

BTW, I have discussed the issue of DU stockpiling with several players. One of them say he was using other nuclear mods, which convert DU to plutonium and/or thorium. So this can be a choice for you, if you are really annoyed by the stockpiling, and not satisfied with Kovarex recipe.
I do not want to be a copycat, so I will not include any plutonium and thorium cycles in this mod. This mod is designed to be compatible and work well with (most of) other nuclear mods.

4 years ago
(updated 4 years ago)

thanks for response.
I shall check the military mods you mentioned. I play in expensive deathworld generally and use a lot of ammo but I plan like 2-1 ratio of gun/laser and some flamethrower so DU might be a problem still in long term. I shall skip tank mod because I do not like player required activities for biter battle but I see other mod has dependency anyway. of course I can install rampart anyway but lets see.
I dislike kovarex. I prefer to disable it.

I am no expert in uranium or nuclear stuff. I am checking what DU is really used and can find military only but also one thing I found is shields. I think I shall make a recipe for advanced wall for this for short term solution.
I prefer a recipe which is continuously used (like a part of science packs) but have not found an idea yet. some other ideas:
- advanced wall : 1 wall + 5 DU => 1 advanced wall (with higher resistance and health)
- crash back to ore : 20 DU + 1 LU => 3 or 5 uranium ore, enrich it back, something like that. it could be even 5 DU => 1 uranium ore but meaningless I guess. I thing this kind of recipe would fit your mod best. it does not need to have high effectivity anyway but a way of reusing a component which is obligatory garbage fits quite well.
- landfill alternate : 10 stone + 5 DU => 1 landfill
- what I learnt from internet is DU is high density thing (opposite of low density structure) so maybe it can be used for replacement of steel in some recipes. or a new steel recipe can be made like 3 iron + 5 DU => 1 steel

4 years ago

Schall Tank Platoon is the core military mod of my mod suite. It contains NOT ONLY tanks, but also the ammo and vehicle grid system for subsequent mods to use. For example, Schall Ammo Turrets & Schall Gun Pod are using those parts. (It would be much better than making these three mods as standalone, because they actually share a lot of these contents.)
If you do not need the tanks, you can go into mod options and disable the MK1 and MK2 stuff, and just use the ammo systems provided there.

Yup, I dislike using Kovarex too. That's why I added that option and disable it when I play. :-)

In theory, DU has the "useful" U-235 isotope taken away. But in reality, it is unavoidable to have some radioactive content left. But even trace amounts of such residuals are toxic to animals and environment. (Thus a whole issue of DU ammo contaminating food and water supplies to the civilians, well-known as "Gulf War Syndrome".) So it is not surprising that DU has seen little civilian uses.

It is true that DU has high density. That's why it is used in ammo for the penetration power.

Honestly, I do not like these ideas of uranium applications, which is quite far from realism. (DU is toxic, so one of the worst thing for landfill. The use on wall like some simple RPG inventory system: copper wall, iron wall, steel wall, uranium wall, thorium wall, ...)
But I like your idea as ingredient of a new science pack. I have planned long for a new "future tech" mod, which would contain new stuff like the MK4 system (tanks, power armours, equipment) and advanced weapons (which is further enhancement from MK3 system introduced by Schall Alien Tech). I would use a lot of my new synthetic material and uranium on the new items. Though I never have the time to really start the work yet...

4 years ago

realism-wise I disagree. this is a game, there are a lot of things away from realism here.

contamination also should not be a problem as we pollute the planet to hell anyway. in game we are not farmers at all.

since you mentioned I shall give some details in my mod. I am already doing what you are planning in a different way:
in my mod I use u-235 as ingredient for yellow science (which outputs 2) for fun and challenge. the recipe became quite expensive actually when I installed your mod. the requirement was immense even with kovarex recipe before your mod and now it is beyond imagination because of excess DU. if I change the ingredient to LEU then everything is very simple and straight but DU is still there. at least continuous kovarex is a challenge for some people to setup. I am looking for something in the middle of this challenge so I focus on getting rid of DU in a balanced way.

in your mod 1 HEU corresponds to around 140 DU. if you use HEU or LEU in a continuous recipe (like science pack) then the excess DU is impossible to get rid of.

I still have plans of testing some of the above recipes and new ones locally. thanks for your long comments with explanations. I appreciate it.

4 years ago

To clarify, I do not mind some fantasy / sci-fi elements. My whole Schall Alien Tech mod is about totally new stuff without any realism. But realism (or strictly speaking: logical or reasonable) is a good guideline to help to limit and balance things from making things overpowered or trivial.

From this viewpoint, a "MK3 wall" using uranium (and other material) will make sense in Schall Alien Tech, since it provided more firepower but without providing walls of higher strength / health. I will consider this when I have time to do a major update of that mod.

I can add a new synthetic material using DU as one of the major ingredients, for a whole new branch of weapons/structures. But I fear that Schall Alien Tech already have enough contents inside, considering a new material always involve a whole new branch in techtree. So I guess I have to put that instead into the "future tech" mod, as mentioned in previous reply.

I have carefully adjusted the yellowcake : LEU : HEU enrichment ratios to make sure they fit the vanilla uranium processing ratio of 0.007 U-235 to 0.993 U-238 (which is about 1:140). From the same amount of uranium ore, roughly the same amount of HEU can be obtained like U-235 from vanilla.
So it sounds strange to me if this mod will makes your recipes (or any other mods) more expensive.

(A little ad here. You can try my other mod Schall Machine Scaling which introduced extra-large machines that can simplify your production lines a lot.)

I look for things to expand my mods in a reasonable way. So I really like in-depth and useful discussions. Glad you do not mind of wall of text. :-D

4 years ago

Just released 0.17.5, having an option for players to switch DU to dark gray.

Further changes would be dealt later.
For example, I will go for the uranium wall (in Schall Alien Tech, I assume) next week.

4 years ago

I have released Schall Alien Tech 0.17.14, which has introduced uranium wall and uranium mining drill.
They both use DU as ingredient. They may not be sufficient to eliminate your whole DU dump stockpiles, so at least turn part of those into better use.

4 years ago

that was nice of you, thanks.
it is still something to spend on since there is not much to spend so everything counts.

4 years ago

Hi, sorry for necro'ing but I just posted a possible bug and I wanted to add, that according to this,

https://web.evs.anl.gov/uranium/faq/mgmt/faq26.cfm

DU is used as radiation shielding, so adding/adjusting to the reactor's manufacturing cost could be feasible to bind at least some DU since it doesn't serve any purpose in peacefull/no enemies mode except to load it into a rocket and send it to the one place that hasn't been corrupted by capitalism

SPAYCE ;p

4 years ago

I do not mind necroing that much, as long as it is a continual of the discussion. Though things have to be relevanet. No hijacking.
I check posts often. Your bug report post is seen (and being worked on), so no need to mention that here. ;-)

The use as radiation shielding is reasonable, however, players never seem to build a lot reactors. (Unless where some scenarios and/or mods have reenabled the hidden "1000°C meltdown" mechanism, and use it intentionally as atomic bombs... But still, not using that much.) Adding to recipe cost would probably consume hundreds to thousands of DU, where such amount is quite negligible.
Yea, we share the same headache with nuclear experts IRL on where to use/dispose DU, for peaceful purposes...

4 years ago

An idea just came to me.

Armored Bots

DU gets proccessed into armor plates. 1 DU = 1 AP (or whatever size DU is). 4 plates apiece. 2 times the health. Infinite Bot research takes care of the rest. Usefull for (not)peacefull. Done.

3 years ago

Instead of trying to put DU into random things, I have an ultimate (though not optimal) solution.

Burning/incinerating wastes have been the age-old methods used by humans. I just made a new mod Schall Radioactive Waste. A kind of incinerator you can put DU or used up uranium fuel cell into it.
The item will vanish, turned into pollution (and thus evolution factor). As you are playing peaceful mode, pollution or evolution factor is not a problem at all.

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