DEVS: Please have NO radiation from Nuclear energy sites!

Question

I have posted once on this and got negative views...   But I think it is NOT a Good Thing to show nuclear power stations as being insanely radioactive.  Not only is this totally untrue - but it aids the fear-mongers who have set this technology back maybe 30 years. Many young people are playing this GREAT game and I hate to see more negative views of nuclear energy needlessly spread around.

The nuclear plants should be safe - but if you want to create a 'challenge' with horrific nuclear waste or some Chernobyl-like disaster - make it come from some dumb accident or something that fails.  But the plants and properly stored waste should not by default by radioactive.  And if they were as bad as the game shows - a hazmat suit would do NOTHING.

I know I'll get tons of negs on this and hear a lot of "...it's only a game - chill!"  But these things have a way of perpetuating false info.

Comments

Satisfactory doesn’t have the control depth to have any meaningful implementation of meltdowns or reactor incidents (I’m hoping for Oxygen not Included on that one). If you remove the radiation damage you lose one of the challenge elements that come from nuclear power.

What about this: change uranium to some made-up element / compound. That way you’re clearly giving yourself licensense to deviate from reality.

-another strong nuclear power proponent

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Because everyone's opinion is valid, I don't downvote. But, I do disagree with your statement. If people are getting their cultural/political/religious values from video games, they don't have their heads on straight to begin with.

We also don't overclock the CPU in our PC's by going out and killing power slugs but it's fun to find and process them in the game! :)

BTW, I'm also a nuclear power proponent. Let's let Coffee Stain make a great game and let everyone else educate themselves on the important issues of the day.

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It’s easy to say ‘it’s just a game’, but—sadly—pop culture depictions hugely shape public opinion. He’s not wrong

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I'm not a fan of Nuclear power, but with that said, I do agree with what you are saying here. Uranium is not anywhere near as radioactive as a lot of peoples think and is relatively safe to handle as long as it's done properly. The big problem with nuclear power is the fact that we humans do make mistakes, that the consequences of those mistakes are long lasting, and there is also the question of what to do with the waste.

Answer 1

I upvoted the suggestion for the title : the plant itself shouldn't be deadly.

However I do appreciate the challenge of dealing with radiations from uranium and nuclear waste. It adds challenge to the game and funny situation. For example you try to build from far away so you don't need a suit, you remove a conveyor because you f**ed it up with the distance, and you die because that move just sent uranium in your pocket :)

Maybe they should provide ways to make conveyors safer, or add a way to remotely configure the nuclear plant.

Comments

Yes - the radiation hazard is a must - but NOT in an operating power plant.  TOO unrealistic.  The waste (and to some extend the fuel) should be dangerous and require special handling.

The hazmat suit seems a bit weak - but I guess it is ok..  :-)

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I suggested changing the nuclear plant design (juste the look of of it) and reactions made it look as if I sh*t in the coffee mug.
Current design is radioactive but its juste a concrete chimney...
Current design is a giant water vapor chimney but the plant doesn't use water...
Current design requires the hazmat suit just to change the plant efficiency from 100% to 50%. There's no control room...

There's room for improvement without ruining the feeling that "yes, this is obviously a nuclear plant  like the ones I see from the highway irl"

Answer 2

Uranium in nature isn't radioactive either, I think its currently just a challenge to progression. You say the plants and "properly stored" waste shouldn't be radioactive. We don't currently have technology in the game that "properly stores" the irradiated material, so it makes sense that they all are radioactive, and the slow/fast(proximity) kill is as close as one can get to reality and still be a game. I hope that they give us tech that will properly store material, because nuclear power can be safe, but Satisfactory's current tech just isn't.

Comments

Two points:

One: Radioactive materials are radioactive quite a bit away from the source.  Think radon from uranium (https://www.radon.com/radon_facts/).  It IS radioactive at it's source (https://www.livescience.com/39773-facts-about-uranium.html) and it's breakdown is still dangerous and causes cancer.  true: I don't have uranium under my house, but I do have higher levels of radon and have an active mitigation system in place.
Two:  Yes, it can be safe(r), but the "proper" way to store waste doesn't make the surrounding area non-radioactive, it's just less radioactive.  

ref:
 - ran University radon measurements lab (testing and research)
 - physics major
 - pro-nuclear energy (until we can gather much more solar/size)
 - GFW (google)

post thought:  I'm not wanting to get into arguments for this as google can show the answers.  Admins, please feel free to delete my post if it causes any problems as I'm honestly not trying to troll, but educate and wouldn't want to be the cause of a flame war.

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Actually... Uranium found in nature is radioactive. All of the Helium which we use in high technologies such as MRI scanners and to inflate baloons comes from Uranium naturally degrading in the ground and accumulating in reservoirs. The fact that it does not reach lethal levels does not mean that there is no radiation. It's what we call background radiation, aka, radiation that is naturally present in our environment.

@Astronagi
There's most definitely Uranium under your house. About 4 parts per million in the earth's crust is Uranium. Some areas definitely have more then others. In fact, the vast majority of earth's Uranium is likely contained in the crust and upper mantle.

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Not as radioactive as when it become Uranium 235

Answer 3

Your original post was here: https://questions.satisfactorygame.com/26047/technical-issue-with-general-nuclear

There's no need to re-post it a second time.

From the original post:

We have hazmat suits. Put it on when working near your nuclear plant. And make sure your nuclear facility is -FAR- away from the rest of your construction. This isn't a problem. Just wear hazmat suit with lots of filters and you're fine. You can even automate the creation of filters and make hundreds easily.

Your first post was down-voted because almost everyone already knows that there is a solution in-game already: Hazmat suits. Build one and use it, problem solved.

Answer 4

I agree with therealZeroDuck.

Satisfactory is a Game. And if you form you opinions and believes up on a Game you dont have your head on straight to begin with. i mean if the radiation from those plants would be that bad in real life we would all be dead already i guess. People even work there right? and they dont need to be replaced every few weeks. (i hope?! xD) Even coffee stain tried to get close to a nuclear power plant for their work!

This is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtVwiCQ5sZI

 We  dont collect Shards from slugs, we dont have Space Elevators (yet?) we dont respawn in reallife, and we dont heal ourselves (flesh wounds for example) completely by eating a bunch of berries.... we do in game. thats why we play games, because they are fun and let us do things we cant do in real life right?

I think adding radiation to the nuclear power plants is a nice way of adding another challenge to the game. its a nice challenge to even get access to more advanced buildings, like it is at the beginning with the poison gas that emits from completely weird structures (its a game) keeping you away from more advanced areas. or the angry animals around trying to keep u away from more nodes. or the random boulders.them boulders...

Also im not an expert on this but nuclear waste definitaly has radiation right?. why else would we lock it away oO (so this part seems actually realisitic to me)

So summed up. why does this bother you so much? are you really afraid people will like nuclear power less in the future cause of satisfactory?

i feel like this is a bit like the statement of: people that play video games are more aggresive and more likely to start school shootings.

 

Answer 5

if you want to argue with reality you should not compare the nuclear power generator with an entire nuclear station but rather only with its reactor (matches better in size and function). and of course a reactor is not safe to enter and historically a few people had to do just that so we can even compare lethality in reality vs in game. a nuclear power plant therefore requires massive shielding to keep the radiation for the reactor contained and engineers around it safe: https://www.britannica.com/technology/nuclear-reactor/Fissile-and-fertile-materials#ref155147

so what we have ingame is just a reactor chamber without any wiring to enable us to build a control room to monitor and control the reactor from a safe distance.

as for the nuclear waste, a burned fuel rod is a big problem and radiates more then the unused one, roughly 1000 time more. read it up yourself. a short explanation for that you might find in this answer: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/292958/why-is-nuclear-waste-more-dangerous-than-the-original-nuclear-fuel 

so, no as for radiation the game makes a simple but true depiction of radiation problems of that technology in real live. perhaps it would make sense to add radiation shielding walls and foundations to allow us to build a more realistic power plant setup. 

if you want to complain about unrealistic things, than you should focus on the nuclear fuel burn time.