Want to use nuclear without concern for UPS?

This mod provides a set of power plants, as a single game entity. This bypasses all fluid and heat calculations; however, it still requires the same ingredients and space to build one and the fuel to power it.

You can replace massive solar fields with a dramatically smaller number of these, and then devise a way to deliver uranium fuel cells to them.

• Compact designs that fit into City Blocks, etc.
• Recipes to upgrade and downgrade NxM configurations enable you to automate assembling larger sizes and to disassemble them.
• No observable UPS impact!

NxM configurations:

They are functional vanilla designs and use optimal neighbor bonus ratios:

• 1x1 --- 80 MW -- tile dimensions 17x17 -- consumes 1 uranium fuel cell in 200 seconds at full load
• 2x1 -- 160 MW -- tile dimensions 28x30 -- "" 100 seconds
• 2x2 -- 480 MW -- tile dimensions 48x50 -- "" 50 seconds
• 2x3 -- 800 MW -- tile dimensions 66x61 -- "" 33.3 seconds
• 2x4 -- 1.12 GW -- tile dimensions 75x70 -- "" 25
• 2x5 -- 1.44 GW -- tile dimensions 85x80 -- "" 20
• 2x6 -- 1.76 GW -- tile dimensions 94x96 -- "" 16.6

Small NxM power plants are included for completeness and to give you options in the early and late game, such as:

• you're still small, so you start with a 2x1 or a 2x2 and use the upgrade recipe to scale up.
• you have specific power requirements for an outpost.
• you build a mall/hub that assembles larger configurations from smaller ones, like modules.
• you just like the design of a particular size.

How to use it

1. Research "NPP" after "Nuclear Power" to unlock recipes.
2. Craft a power plant.
3. Place it somewhere; most are too big to place by hand -- you will need bots or Far Reach (or equivalent).
4. Place a power pole on the edge.
5. Feed it uranium fuel cells with an inserter -- as if the power plant is one big nuclear reactor.

Optionally, research "NPP Upgrade/Downgrade" to unlock a set of recipes for combining existing power plants to make bigger ones and to disassemble them.

Notes:

• These scale their fuel usage with demand. Unlike vanilla, they are not "always on".
• Water is built in, as if you built on a lake.

Design: Power plant

Priorities and constraints:

• An almost-square rectangle. Game entities use a rect collision/selection box and this mod is ideal for block-base designs.
• Compact. A typical nuclear blueprint has lots of unused tiles. In this case, you can't walk on or use them, so it would unnecessarily take up pixels and grid space. The factory must grow.
• Functional. It must be a real, working, vanilla design.
• Rotational symmetry. Particularly in the larger sizes, because only 2 images are needed to enable rotation, instead of 4.

Design: Recipes

• You are only required to provide the essential materials of a power plant: reactors, heat exchangers, heat pipes, steam turbines, and storage tanks.
• You are not "charged extra" for my design decisions. Eg, extra heat pipes were used for decoration (they do normally store heat), but the recipe only asks for what is needed.
• However, you are charged for the "missing" storage tanks from some designs, that were cut to save grid space.
• Storage tank quantity is scaled consistently with NxM size: 6, 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72, respectively. It works out so that zero additional storage tanks are needed when you upgrade/downgrade, which simplifies recipes for you.

Storage tanks are essential in the recipe because these power plants give you fully on-demand power and since there's no steam calculations involved here, there's no penalty.

Credits

The idea and work by someone1337 that can be found at Someone's nuclear powerplant [WIP] is the basis for this mod.