The headline number
One Nuclear Power Plant produces 2,500 MW at 100% clock speed. That is more than ten Fuel-Powered Generators in a single building. The difficulty is not making the rods; it is what comes out the other side.
Nuclear Power Plant specs (verified, v1.2)
All three fuel rods consume the same 240 m³ water/min per plant. Only the rod burn rate, waste type, and waste amount differ:
| Fuel rod | Burn time | Rods/min | Water/min | Waste/min | Waste type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Uranium | 300 s | 0.2 | 240 | 10 | Uranium Waste |
| Plutonium | 600 s | 0.1 | 240 | 1 | Plutonium Waste |
| Ficsonium | 60 s | 1.0 | 240 | 0 | none (zero waste) |
Overclocking scales linearly: at 250% clock the plant draws 600 m³ water/min and outputs 6,250 MW, with waste rates multiplied the same way.
Water math: one Water Extractor produces 120 m³/min, so a single plant at 100% needs two extractors; at 250% it needs five. A Mk.2 pipe carries 600 m³/min, so one pipe feeds a 250%-clocked plant.
The waste trap (the real #1 pain point)
When you burn a Uranium Fuel Rod, you get 10 Uranium Waste per minute. New nuclear players panic because:
- Uranium Waste cannot be sunk. It clogs the AWESOME Sink input.
- Uranium Waste cannot be trashed. The discard button refuses with “Nuclear Waste cannot be destroyed. FICSIT does not waste.”
- It is radioactive (level 10), so it irradiates anything nearby.
The half-true part: you are not actually stuck. Uranium Waste can be stored in Storage Containers indefinitely, and it can be reprocessed into more power. You are never forced to deal with it this second; it just accumulates until you do.
Three ways to handle the waste
1. Store it. Storage Containers hold Uranium Waste forever. Valid for slow or casual play; it simply piles up.
2. Reprocess to Plutonium (Tier 8, Particle Enrichment). Feed Uranium Waste into a Particle Accelerator: 25 Uranium Waste/min + 100 Non-Fissile Uranium/min → 30 Plutonium Pellet/min. Those pellets become Plutonium Fuel Rods, which burn for 1 Plutonium Waste/min per plant. This converts the problem into a different, smaller waste stream.
3. Close the loop with Ficsonium (Tier 9, Peak Efficiency). Plutonium Waste is refined into Ficsonium, then into Ficsonium Fuel Rods, which burn to zero waste. The wiki calls this the “permanently self-sustaining” endgame nuclear setup: you feed waste in, get 2,500 MW out, and nothing accumulates.
Decision rule: if you only want the power and do not care about efficiency, you can sink Plutonium Fuel Rods (they are the last sinkable item in the nuclear chain). But that throws away 43% to 80% of the potential power per uranium ore, depending on the alternate recipes you use. The efficient play is the Ficsonium loop.
Geothermal, the set-and-forget option
Geysers output 100 / 200 / 400 MW by node purity (impure / normal / pure). They need no fuel and no water, so a Geothermal Generator built directly on a geyser is the simplest late-game power you can place and forget.
The catch is location: geysers are where they are. Treat each one as a permanent grid anchor and build around it, because you cannot move the source. Geothermal is large but fixed; nuclear is compact but demands the waste chain above.