Nuclear plant

[jas19illini 2]

Curious, if u bulldoze a nuclear power plant does it create a bunch of radiation or does it just disappear like other buildings?

[cnelson711 1]

bulldozes like normal, no radiation. The spent fuel rods magically disappear.

[kgpurrs 107]

If it is about to explode, DO NOT BULLDOZE!  When you bulldoze and its about to explode it will explode.  Just turn it off.  I avoid this power plant at all costs unless I have high tech industry city.

[asasa45454 4]

Yep, terrible plant. I've had multiple meltdowns and of course that means that city can never, ever, ever be used again. Its 20 YEARS of in game time for it to go away. 5 years would be pushing it..

[Vaikin 10]

Never had a meltdown...Education level of 3+ and it's been fine. 

[Rhadamant5186 19]

Just to note, if you think the solar power great work is a work-around for powering a large city keep in mind that the solar power great work sets on fire constantly and that'll stop supplying your city with power. Woop. woop.

[ScottyDoesKnow 8]

Never get nuclear. Unlucky earthquake or godzilla and your city's done forever. Unless you want to play a map covered in radiation until it goes away, which I've heard takes 20 years but I've also heard takes 32 years per level (96 years). I saw a screenshot of a bad meltdown, half of the city was the worst radiation, the rest was the 2nd level.

[Zpike 79]

At this point there is really no reason to ever use the Nuke Plant unless you want to see what happens to your city once it blows up.

 

There needs to be a rethink on this power plant.  The fun factor of your city getting whacked by a "Natural Disaster" is good because you can come back from it with a reasonable amount of work and maybe a loan if you are short on cash.  That's not a bad game mechanic.  It just adds a bit of excitement to your city and keeps you from turning it on all night and coming back in the morning with a gazillion dollars and a city that ran it's self all night.  You actually need to pay attention or you will come back to a city that has burned to the ground.

 

The Nuke Plant however has no upside.  Even at max education the plant can blow and at lower education levels it is inevitable. If it does blow you city it toast.  There is no coming back from it.  In fact, the region is blown because who want's to play in a region when one of the contributors is a dust bowl.

 

Maxis needs to rethink that whole mechanic.  This is a game where people want to have fun.  There is no fun in a nuke plant explosion taking your city down.

[ScottyDoesKnow 8]

In my opinion, they need to rethink the whole natural disaster mechanic. If it's just to stop people leaving the game on overnight, find something better or have a disaster like a power surge which shuts things off but doesn't destroy.

 

There was a review that explained this pretty well and I'll try to do the same in different words. It's like you just decorated your living room the way you like it, spent a few hours on it. Then somebody walks in, knocks a few things off the shelves and leaves. You sigh and go put everything back how it was. And they keep doing it every hour.

 

Unless of course you have a nuclear plant and randomly your whole city is lost forever. Or like me you avoid nuclear power for that reason, then get a meteor strike and a section of my city is now lost forever.

 

Every once in a long while you'll get a disaster that tests you, does a bit of damage when you're in a bad spot and you can face the challenge of recovering from it. But most of the time they're just annoying, and every once in a while they'll completely ruin your $%&^!.

 

Personally, I think you should be able to turn them off.

[Zpike 79]

I would like to see them either give us a way to select which disasters we want, or to remove the radiation disasters.  You should be able to recover your city from any disaster with a loan.  It's a poor mechanic that kills your city and gives you no way to come back from it.

[Rhadamant5186 19]

In my opinion, they need to rethink the whole natural disaster mechanic. If it's just to stop people leaving the game on overnight, find something better or have a disaster like a power surge which shuts things off but doesn't destroy.

 

There was a review that explained this pretty well and I'll try to do the same in different words. It's like you just decorated your living room the way you like it, spent a few hours on it. Then somebody walks in, knocks a few things off the shelves and leaves. You sigh and go put everything back how it was. And they keep doing it every hour.

 

Unless of course you have a nuclear plant and randomly your whole city is lost forever. Or like me you avoid nuclear power for that reason, then get a meteor strike and a section of my city is now lost forever.

 

Every once in a long while you'll get a disaster that tests you, does a bit of damage when you're in a bad spot and you can face the challenge of recovering from it. But most of the time they're just annoying, and every once in a while they'll completely ruin your $%&^!.

 

Personally, I think you should be able to turn them off.

I posted a new thread a few days ago about a natural disaster actually crippling my city and it DIDN'T destroy my Nuclear Powerplant! A meteor strike took out my sewage and water pumps and I quickly rebuilt the broken sewage and water only to realize when the meteor hit it took out my ENTIRE water table. My water table went from deep blue to white after one meteor hit. There is no water in my entire city and the city is 750k pop so there's no way I could possible import the required 800k/gal that I'd need.

[Srafty 7]

keeps you from turning it on all night and coming back in the morning with a gazillion dollars and a city that ran it's self all night.  You actually need to pay attention or you will come back to a city that has burned to the ground.

err i generally start a new city every second day, and i always leave them runnnig over night, atleased 6/9 so far have been pretty well fine in the morning, takes a few hours to fix it back up - get rid of homeless, pollution, etc etc..

 

as for the nuclear plant,

- 2nd city, never had a single problem with the nuclear power plant in this city, my edu level was atleased 4/12 hats maybe 5 (had 1 of each school +maxed university), tech level was 4 cogs...

4th city = lol 2 libarays, this resulted in unsafe workers, so i turned the nuclear plant off.... months later game time i bulldozed it and it left a MASSIVE circle of radiation

5th city i had 4\5 education hats with no tech and the nuclear plant had a melt down 3 times!! due to unsafe work level

 

yea haven't bothered with a nuclear plant since seems you need to invest way to much into tech, since my tech city was the only one that had no issues. also people only start having unskilled worker issues once they start to increase tech i.e. college or university.

[ScottyDoesKnow 8]

I would like to see them either give us a way to select which disasters we want, or to remove the radiation disasters.  You should be able to recover your city from any disaster with a loan.  It's a poor mechanic that kills your city and gives you no way to come back from it.

 

Almost forgot about them triggering the service vehicles bug too! Almost forgot until I just had an earthquake that took out my fire station and a highschool. Luckily I only lost 1 firetruck and a set of 2 school busses forever though.

[MayorQuimbie 13]

I dont see a problem...... its part of the game.... If your silly enough to build a nuclear plant when all you have is unskilled workers what do you expect......

 

Disasters in general liven things up a little..... there is only so much you can do once your city is up and running anyway....disasters provide a test to my city...

 

I see no problem with adapting my city to deal with the consequences of a disater.....its fun and part of the challenge...

 

I can see that that if your ONLY goal is to build massive skyscrapers or bank millions of $  then yes..... city wide disasters will probably leave you feeling like someones just pissed all over your chips...

[Griffon 19]

from my experience with the nuclear plant as long as your people are educated and you have no disasters that could hit it, then it is the safe to use, also with the fast reactor researched (the 1 that gives 600MW) and the plant fully upgraded it produces 2,400MW (600MW less than the solar farm great work), but if it says anything other than safe on worker skill do not bulldoze it, if u have to turn it off, bulldozing an unsafe reactor causes radioactivity

 

even if your people are not educated it took me 2 game years to cause it to have a nuclear meltdown, even after I destroyed 1 reactor with a meter to get some radiation to hopefully cause it to explode faster

 

apparently its 1 of the secret achievements to have a nuclear meltdown and to get it you have to let it blow up on it's own

 

btw it gave me like 20 warnings that my nuclear plant was unsafe so if it gets to where your workers are uneducated you have time to turn it off and probably get a different power source

I however do not normally use nuclear power plants because they take up too much room, I normally use oil power plant, it gives 150MW per smoke stack and it's the cheapest to research at a university for the clean version, also it's so much small than a nuclear power plant and if u need more than 600MW then you can always buy from other people or build another

[Hyprodimus 0]

Yeah its a bug that no matter what, the tech level of the plant doesnt get replenished. Ive tested it by placing it right beside the university. Every other building goes back to dark green in tech level, but not the nuclear power plant. This bug + trains + vehicles not coming to the trade port are killing my city. Hopefully they fix them in the next patch.

[Griffon 19]

to get more skilled workers in the nuclear plant u have to turn it off and turn it back on, it will fire all the people working there and always hire skilled workers, but you may have to wait for them to hire more people if you are having a worker shortage

and a lot of the trade port and recycling center glitches can be fixed by bulldozing it and rebuilding (but that costs way! too much money to do often and needs to be fixed so that doesn't happen)

[necroascendant 0]

I have never had a problem with the nuclear power plant. Even in cities with a grade school for its primary source of education.

 

Nuclear takes up very little space and produces a lot of power. The only downside i see to it is the amount of water it takes up.