Getting Started (NuclearCraft)

This is a community-written guide. It was written to help players to get accustomed to NuclearCraft.

Introduction
NuclearCraft is a tech mod that focuses on generating power using nuclear reactors. It is intended to be used in mod packs to provide power for your activities. Unlike Extreme Reactors, NuclearCraft takes a semi-realistic view, introducing radioactive isotopes, multi-step chemical processes for crafting and realistic nuclear fission and fusion byproducts. The consequences of mistakes are less cinematic than in other reactor mods.

About this Guide
This guide is not an exhaustive description of items, nor a tutorial on using each item, and does not touch on every aspect of the mod. It is a helping hand to get you started with NuclearCraft, particularly the mod's fission reactors. Throughout this guide you'll find links to various blocks and items. Be sure to explore these links for full details, descriptions and illustrations and also check out the Navigation Box at the bottom of the page for more info about other parts of the mod that are not covered here.

The foundation
Start by stockpiling all the NuclearCraft ores that you find. You'll need a lot. You'll also need quite a lot of and, some , , and.

Unless other power options are available to get started, your first step is to create a Decay Generator to power your early machinery. Decay Generators generate power from the heat generated by the decay of adjacent uranium and thorium blocks - they are very inefficient so you'll want to upgrade pretty quickly.

Now craft your first NuclearCraft utility machine, the Manufactory. With it, you will create Crushed Coal, Graphite Dust and Crushed Quartz, and can also be used a a simple ore doubler if you choose. The recipe is rather simple. It requires the first example of a NuclearCraft machine component: a Copper Solenoid.

At this point, consider replacing your Decay Generators with Basic Solar Panels (5 RF/t during daylight) or Uranium RTGs (4 RF/t constantly).

Now your power is a little more stable, make an Alloy Furnace. You'll be using this machine a lot, so you might want to make more than one.

If you already have a good RF power generation setup, consider adding some Speed Upgrades to your machines.

The Isotope Separator is your next step and the most important parts of initial nuclear material processing. It separates materials into their constituent Isotopes.

Once you have your Isotope Separator set up, it is time to build your first Fission Controller, the heart of a Fission Reactor.

Building a Fission Reactor - WIP
We're almost ready to make our first, very basic Fission Reactor, but we're going to need a lot of Basic Plating, Tough Alloy and Steel to make one. The main article on Fission Reactors describes how to build a Fission Reactor in general, but this section will show how you may want to go about coming up with your own reactor designs. For simplicity, we will consider only a few of the the cheaper passive coolers, and also leave out the consideration of active coolers. You'll need to decide how big a reactor to make: due to the complex nature of how Fission Reactors work, it's not really possible to recommend a best size - you're going to have to think carefully about your design from the get-go. As a demonstration, we will construct a small, 3x3x3 reactor using LEU-235, an entry-level fuel:

Reactor Components
A basic fission reactor consists of five main components: the controller, casing, cells, moderators and coolers:

The Fission Controller is the heart of the reactor - it takes in fuel rods and outputs their depleted counterparts and keeps note of the reactor's heat and power gen stats.

Reactor Casing is used to build the shell of the reactor structure. Every fission reactor consists of a cuboidal interior enveloped by a layer of casing - each side of the interior must be covered, but crucially, the edges must not be or the reactor structure will not be recognised!

The Reactor Cells hold the fission fuel while it is depleting and generating heat and power. Basically, the more cells, the more heat and power produced. Additionally, cells directly adjacent to one another or separated by at most four moderator blocks in a straight line will become more efficient and generate more power - this does come at a cost of generating more heat, though.

The moderator blocks (currently Graphite or Beryllium) are used to increase the efficiency of the reactor. For every cell adjacent to each moderator block, additional power and heat is produced, making the reactor more efficient, again at a cost of producing more heat.

The coolers are the blocks which remove excess heat from the reactor. This is very important, as a reactor that overheats will melt into a nasty mess of molten corium. There are fifteen coolers available, and as well as each having their own cooling rates, they also have their own placement rules - each cooler's positioning must satisfy certain conditions to function, making cooling a reactor the most complex aspect of building a safe reactor.

Again, for more in-depth information about the mechanics of these blocks, consult the dedicated article on the Fission Reactor.

Designing the Reactor
The best place to start is to estimate a reasonable number of cells to put into our reactor. To do this, it is useful to refer to this list of all of the available coolers' stats, which is also available in-game on the coolers' tooltips. It will also be useful to keep the fuel's base stats in mind, taken from this page: 120 RF/t, 50 H/t.

TO BE FINISHED...


 * 1) Place 6 Reactor Casings on the ground in a 2x3 shape. NUCC-TutorialReactor-Step1.jpg
 * 2) On top of the Reactor casings, Place 3 Water Coolers in one row and then the two Reactor Cells with a Graphite Block between them. NUCC-TutorialReactor-Step2.jpg
 * 3) Place 6 Water Coolers on top of the second layer. You should have one left over. NUCC-TutorialReactor-Step3.jpg
 * 4) Cover all exposed surfaces with Reactor Casings. NUCC-TutorialReactor-Step4.jpg
 * 5) Place the Fission Controller on one of the edges. NUCC-TutorialReactor-Step5.jpg
 * 6) Open the Fission Controller GUI with a right-click. Insert your TBU fuel rod into the inventory slot on the left. NUCC-TutorialReactor-Step6.jpg

If you've done everything correctly, it should report a 2x2x3 Fission Reactor that generates 255 RF/t, with a heat of -64 H/t and an efficiency of 212%. If not, check the steps and images above to find where you went astray. If it all looks good, apply a redstone signal with a Lever and it will start generating power!

A note about Heat: Following the exact steps above will result in a safe reactor that will not overheat and melt down. Using a different fuel with a different heat number may damage your reactor. Such details are outside the scope of this Getting Started guide. Please see the article on Fission Reactors for a more in-depth discussion about heat, fuels and coolers.

Afterword
Hopefully this guide has been useful in getting you up and running with your first reactor. Your next step is to explore the various links in this wiki, learn about the other parts and see what amazing reactors you can make! Separate articles on Fission Reactors and Fusion Reactors will go into more detail on advanced reactor design.