Plutonium Fuel Rod

The Plutonium Fuel Rod is a late-game fuel item by reprocessing Uranium Wastes. It can be consumed in a Nuclear Power Plant for power, creating Plutonium Waste in the process. Alternatively, it can sunk into the AWESOME Sink to get rid of the Uranium Waste at the cost of not getting any power. If used in a Nuclear Power Plant, it burns at a rate of 1 rod every 10 minutes, or 0.1 / min, creating Plutonium Waste at a rate of 1 / min, resulting in 10 Waste per rod.

Alternate recipes analysis
The following shows different ways to produce 1 Plutonium Fuel Rod / second, or 60 / min:
 * The optimum production rate for Plutonium Fuel Rod is 22.4 / min due to the Uranium Waste capped at 2520/min. The calculation above is normalized at 60 / min for comparison only.
 * If the production rate of Uranium Fuel Rod is sacrificed, then the maximum production rate can be up to 30.54 / min.
 * Weighted Point is the weighted consumption rate which is calculated by: . The lower the better.
 * Energy per item can be used to measure how much power is consumed for the entire production chain. The lower the better.
 * The net energy for each Plutonium Fuel Rod, after subtracting manufacturing energy and energy to supply Water to the Nuclear Power Plant, are written in green under the product.
 * The Resin byproduct from Aluminum processing can be fed into other intermediate parts, saving some of the Crude Oil, energy and space.
 * Space refers to building space, excluding belts and pipes. The lower the better.
 * Among multiple ways to produce each of the ingredient, the recipe with the lowest WP is chosen. Exception is mentioned below:
 * Encased Plutonium Cell - Instant Plutonium Cell
 * Heat Sink
 * Steel Ingot
 * Electromagnetic Control Rod
 * Fused Modular Frame
 * Radio Control Unit

AWESOME Sink
Sinking of Plutonium Fuel rods is intentional, as it gives players a choice of either sinking them and getting rid of waste permanently, or burning them for extra power but creating permanent waste.

Tips

 * Uranium Waste can be completely eliminated if the Plutonium Fuel Rods are sunk. If the Plutonium Fuel Rods are burned in Nuclear Power Plants, the amount of Waste is still greatly reduced.
 * Depending on the recipes used, Uranium Waste is converted to Plutonium Fuel Rods at a rate between 225:1 and 75:2.
 * The storage area will, however, be more radioactive as Plutonium Waste is more radioactive than Uranium Waste.
 * When making Plutonium Fuel Rods in order to destroy Uranium Waste, the default recipes are best since they have the highest ratio of waste consumed to power used.
 * The Uranium Waste-handling chain consumes 483 MJ/Uranium Waste, not counting other inputs which make up only a small portion of consumption. By comparison, a uranium-burning Nuclear Power Plant produces 15,000 MJ/Uranium Waste.
 * A production module using whole machines includes 2 Blenders, 1 Particle Accelerator, 3 Assemblers and 2 Manufacturers, not counting other inputs. This setup consumes 100 Uranium Waste/min (or the output of 10 Nuclear Power Plants), and uses 805 MW.
 * Consuming Plutonium Fuel Rods increases the nuclear power generation capacity by 89% when compared to sinking them.
 * Without Overclocking or using alternate recipes, one Manufacturer creating Plutonium Fuel Road can use all the Uranium Waste for up to six Nuclear Power Plants with no Uranium Waste left over and near constant Plutonium Fuel Rod production.
 * Adding a seventh Nuclear Power Plant will make more waste then a single Manufacturer producing Plutonium Fuel Rods can handle. Overclocking or additional production buildings will be required. Alternatively the excess Uranium Waste can be stored.
 * The amount of Uranium Waste demanded by one production line of Plutonium Fuel Rods requires 6 Uranium Waste per minute more then the six Nuclear Power Plants will provide. That deficient can be used to remove excess Uranium Waste collect at Crash Sites, given by Lizard Doggos, or left over by a backup in Plutonium Fuel Rod production.

Trivia

 * As of Patch 0.4.0.8, the most Plutonium Fuel Rods that can be made per minute is 30.54 alongside 22.91 Uranium Fuel Rods. However, this does not yield the most power. Producing 22.4 Plutonium Fuel Rods alongside 50.4 Uranium Fuel Rods does, sustaining a total of 476 Nuclear Power Plants producing exactly 1,190,000 MW (or 1.19 TW) of power.
 * After subtracting the power used to run this system itself (~99.8 GW), the net power is about 1.090 TW. Cost of Miners and Extractors included. The cost of transportation such as trains are not included.

History

 * Patch 0.4.0.8:
 * Halved Plutonium Waste output per minute (was 2 per generator, is now 1).
 * Energy value increased from 375,000 MJ to 1,500,000 MJ
 * Default recipe:
 * Changed recipe craft time from 120 to 240 seconds
 * Changed Encased Plutonium Cell cost from 15 to 30
 * Changed Steel Beam cost from 8 to 18
 * Changed Electromagnetic Control Rod cost from 3 to 6
 * Changed Heat Sink cost from 5 to 10
 * Alternate: Plutonium Fuel Unit:
 * Changed recipe craft time from 60 to 120 seconds
 * Changed Encased Plutonium Cell cost from 10 to 20
 * Patch 0.4.0.0: Introduced