Fuel Rod Cladding

alaindustrial:empty_fuel_rod

NuclearImplementednuclearreactorfueluraniumrecycling

Summary

The Fuel Rod Cladding is a fuel rod with no uranium in it: an iron sleeve on a shielding base, everything the rod is except the fuel. It arrives by two routes — crafted at a workbench, or handed back by a reactor column once the rod has given up its 144,000 EU/FE — and both routes end in the same recipe: one cladding plus one enriched uranium is a fuelled rod again.

It is the key item of stage 4 of the epic. Before it, a burnt-out rod simply vanished, so every refuelling cost exactly what the first one did: three iron ingots, four nuggets and a shielding plate — a third of a palladium ingot per rod, forever. Palladium is mined in the Nether alone, and a reactor running at the HV ceiling eats 256 rods an hour. The cladding turns that stream into a closed loop: casings are crafted once, and after that only the uranium is bought.

Where it comes from

The rack does not throw the casing away by itself: a spent rod stays where it stood and is visible from outside — dark, against the lit fuelled ones. A column that has worked itself out looks worked out from across the floor, and that same look tells the player there is something in there to collect.

Where it goes

fuel rod cladding + enriched uranium -> fuel rod

The recipe is shapeless: two items in any cells of the grid. That is deliberately the cheapest recipe in the nuclear branch to perform — refuelling a reactor happens dozens of rods at a time, and laying out a 3x3 for each one would be a punishment for scale.

It goes back into a column

A cladding can be put back into a reactor column, and that is not a pointless action: it is how casings are stored where they will be needed. The column keeps two counts: rods — how many rods are standing in it at all — and fuelled — how many of those carry uranium. The reactor counts only the second: an empty casing produces no EU/FE, no heat, and takes no part in adjacency.

The price of a refill against a rod from scratch

A reactor at the HV ceiling burns 256 rods an hour (see The difference between the columns reads like this:

without casings coming back — 256 shielding plates an hour, which is roughly 85 palladium ingots an hour, which is several trips to the Nether an hour; with them — zero palladium after the first batch; however many casings you crafted are however many keep circulating.

How many casings have to be in circulation not by power but by room size: one per slot. A 3x3 layer of nine columns needs 36; a 3x3x3 room packed full needs 108. After that they return by themselves.

Recipes

Craft — x1 at a time.

N I N N = iron nugget x4
I I I = iron ingot x3
N P N P = shielding plate x1

This is exactly the old uranium-rod recipe with an empty middle: sleeve, rivets and shielding base everything but the uranium pellet. That is why it reads by itself: the middle is filled by the second, shapeless recipe.

Refill — shapeless, cladding + enriched uranium -> fuel rod.

Progression

Tier: none (the item carries no energy). Needs: a shielding plate — that is palladium, and therefore the Nether. It needs no uranium: a stock of casings can be made long before the first uranium vein. Unlocks: refuelling the reactor without palladium. The first batch of casings is the only palladium the fuel cycle will ever take.

Related

Fuel Rod — what one enriched uranium turns it into. Reactor Column — what hands it back, and where it goes again. Reactor Controller — what wears rods down, and how fast. Uranium — the chain from ore to enriched uranium. Reactor Casing — where the shielding plate in the recipe comes from.

Crafting

Shaped Crafting

iron n

iron n

iron n

iron n

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Fuel Rod Cladding

Used in

Shapeless Crafting

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Fuel Rod