Nuclear Reactors - Not as bad as you think

[UntCaptain 6]

So my first post on the Simtropolis forums Hi there

I've spent many lunch breaks at work reading tips and disasters on the forums here about many things, traffic and bugs being high up there. But I'd like to condense the information I've found about nuclear reactors into this post. So sorry in advance to the people who may have read this info, but some of it is new and I've not seen it while browsing.

So here goes...

After playing co-op with 2 friends in a region we tried a plan of having 1 city with all services, power, water and sewerage for us all. It was going relatively well untill the 2 residential cities started waning more power.

After sending the utility city a few million simolions he built a nuclear reactor and upgraded it with more towers. Knowing what I know now this was a massive mistake! His city was totaly uneducated and none of us knew how to use a nuclear reactor properly. Within 10 mins of real time it had a melt down and wiped out his city with the nuclear fallout. Now while chatting over Skype and hearing this we all found it very funny! The downside to this was all our city's were now up the creek without a paddle, no utility's or services at all, BIG problem. So we gave up on the region and started again.

This time I took the lead in building the power supply for the cities, but we all decided to provide our own services water and sewerage.

So here's where I start on how to go about building a succesful Nuclear Reactor and powering 4 cities safely.

The first thing you need to have in your city is educated sims. So lets run through how to get to 5 star education and 3 star tech levels. Towards the edge or corner of your city build a Grade School. (you will be building all the school around the edge of your city and the university in the middle, it's worth while planning this in advance) Make sure to get bus stops out, I recommend 1 per street, do not plop the stops on avenues as this will cause traffic. Then as your sims start getting educated and you get to the 1 star marker plop down 3 or 4 library's depending on how big your city and population is. Spread these about your city just inside the outer limits of the residential buildings. The library's serve to keep your education levels rising steadily and then keep them high when they get there. By this point you should have a 2 star education city. Now lets get the High School plopped! Put this on the opposite side of the city to the Grade School, don't bother with a gymnasium. (my opinion only there, I just don't feel it's worth the space and cost) Check your map education levels a this point and maybe put on some more school busses, lets get those kids to school! You city should now be well on the way to being a 3 star educated city Lets get the Community College down now again in an opposite corner of your city to the Grade School and High School. It is worth while building the extension for this as all your students from the Grade School and High School will come here for more learning fun!

You should now have access to the University, plop it in the middle of your city giving full access for all the city to learn, when this goes down you can close (and demolish if you want) the Grade School and High School, keep the Community College as this serves as an education for new residents coming into your city.

So I'm hoping at this point you have a 4 or 5 star educated city and a 2 or 3 star tech level. Awesome stuff eh? So we have people who are clever enough to run a Nuclear Reactor, lets get it plopped!!

BUT WAIT!! We aren't there yet!!

*goes to get a drink before continuing*

Something I've not read anywhere about Nuclear Reactors is that they need A LOT of water, so much so that they not only draw off your water system, but off the lands water table too. Building a Sewerage Treatment Plant next to your planned Nuclear Reactor keeps water in the ground. Plop your Water Pumping Station right next to the Sewerage Treatment Plant so you will never run out of water for the city. When you need to extend your sewerage plant I highly advise to put the filters around the Nuclear Reactor. This keeps plenty of water in the ground and makes sure that it doesn't run dry. Make sure your Water Pumping Station has at least a 100 excess before going any further! Important stuff that is!

Okay so we have educated sims and endless, plentiful water supply. Lets plop the Nuclear Reactor!! (Finally *sighs* )

And there you have it, crazy amounts of power with research from the university in your city, enough water to re-float the Titanic, and a non polluting power station.

I hope this helps any of you thinking about a reactor in your city or who have had problems in the past.

Happy gaming from UntCaptain (online most UK evenings and nights)

[Rian Gray 12]

IMO, nuclear reactors are actually better than solar farm great work: it takes less space than any other power sources, no pollution unless meltdown, and uses the resource (water) that is supposedly infinitely available. Once one city has more than fully upgraded power plant running, the amount of power to supply the entire region comes with very ease.

 

The problem is, EA decided to make Simcity somewhat anti-nuclear game. I am quite serious. Nuclear power reactors are literally made out of thick concretes that are at least good 10 feet. At this point, our technologies promise, unless sudden disaster like earthquake messes up the inner mechanism like cooling, it is literally impossible to simply destroy nuclear power plants in one shot. I believe it was France which tested the safety of nuclear reactors by bombarding one of the unused nuclear power plants.

 

And now, here we are again, big lizards simply walking into the nuclear plants and destroy 80% of the city with radiation from meltdown. I don't know what Maxis nor EA were thinking of big lizards, but one does not simply walk into nuclear reactor and destroy it.

[TheCrazyHeadGamer 3]

The problem with that is that you need education + the nuclear power plant in the same city...

As it is right now, region playing don't allow you to have those in separate cities since student commuters are so few !

[UntCaptain 6]

I agree with your point. I've survived 2 disasters with my Nuclear Reactor putting out 1000 MW of power for 3 cities. It does require you to keep a close eye on it when disasters come and shut it down if it's going to be hit. That way if any part of it does get destroyed there is no nuclear fallout.

[UntCaptain 6]

The problem with that is that you need education + the nuclear power plant in the same city...

As it is right now, region playing don't allow you to have those in separate cities since student commuters are so few !

I don't see the problem, having education in a city isn't a bad thing at all. Educated sims cause less fires, commit less crime, don't get sick / injured as much. I'm running a 100k population city with only 3 of each emergency service vehicles. And they do a fine job.

[dirtguru 24]

Thanks for sharing, UntCaptain. My nuclear powered region currently exceeds all of the education/tech requirements as well as the water and sewer plant locations sharing the same corner of my city tile.

Until now, I was not aware of the nuclear reactors affect on the water table! For the sake of realism my sewage treatment/municipal water are located on the lowest point of the map next to the river. (tiny valley next to the river in Brakemans Folly).

Since I now must move my reactor it looks like I will have to enforce eminate domain on my unsuspecting sims or consider placing it in another city entirely?

 

As for disasters, I can live with tornado's, earthquakes, even the occasional meteor strike but the big lizard, aliens and especially the zombies definately have to go!!!!

[TheCrazyHeadGamer 3]

The problem with that is that you need education + the nuclear power plant in the same city...

As it is right now, region playing don't allow you to have those in separate cities since student commuters are so few !

I don't see the problem, having education in a city isn't a bad thing at all. Educated sims cause less fires, commit less crime, don't get sick / injured as much. I'm running a 100k population city with only 3 of each emergency service vehicles. And they do a fine job.

Yes but I don't see the point having a university or community college in every city since, normally, region gameplay make students commute to other cities to study. It doesn't work quite well right now...

[endorken 13]

I really don’t want to poop on the OP’s lengthy first post – it’s a fun read and his enthusiasm is contagious, but it's mostly wrong.

 

Education level really has nothing to do with nuclear plants – that’s a different game mechanic entirely and it affects crime, sickness, garbage production, etc.  

 

A nuclear plant essentially functions like an industrial building that needs tech to operate safely.  Open up your industrial tech data layer and look at the pink lines that emanates from your college or uni – that’s all that your nuclear plant needs. Someone on the official forums called it the ‘knowledge network’ – sounds about right to me. Plop a college or a uni, make sure there’s sufficient student attendance, make sure those pink lines reach your nuclear power plant and all its modules (road adjacency is important here) and you should see a green tech bar over your reactor module(s) – you’re all set for safe operation.

 

The water thing is a bit of a red herring – most ploppables need water to operate, including your college or uni – no water, no ‘knowledge network.’ 

[AlexMBrennan 11]

Yes, and if you get unlucky and a lizard spawns near your power plant your region is toast - which makes it too big a risk in my opinion for negligible benefit (less pollution than oil but any industry will turn the ground black anyway so you'll hardly notice).

A possible solution I can think of is to donate money to a new city, build all utilities buildings you might want (water pumps, sewage treatments plants and nuclear power stations) and then switch back to the main city - no time passes, thus no disasters.

As for water, nuclear power plants do use substantially more water than any single other building.

[Bibor 3]

Dont know about nuclear but the improved solar seems to be pretty efficient terrain-wise, and quite powerful to run one big city by itself.

[UntCaptain 6]

A possible solution I can think of is to donate money to a new city, build all utilities buildings you might want (water pumps, sewage treatments plants and nuclear power stations) and then switch back to the main city - no time passes, thus no disasters.

As for water, nuclear power plants do use substantially more water than any single other building.

Check the very start of my post, the Nuclear Reactor was up for a few minuets and then blew up.

[AlexMBrennan 11]

My interpretation ("his city was totally uneducated") was that you built the power plant which blew up in an actively running city due to a lack of education, not disaster. My proposed plan to protect nuclear power plants from disasters was to build the power plant in a new city and never visit that city again.

[UntCaptain 6]

My interpretation ("his city was totally uneducated") was that you built the power plant which blew up in an actively running city due to a lack of education, not disaster. My proposed plan to protect nuclear power plants from disasters was to build the power plant in a new city and never visit that city again.

Well that's no risk

[Cob92 360]

 

The problem with that is that you need education + the nuclear power plant in the same city...

As it is right now, region playing don't allow you to have those in separate cities since student commuters are so few !

I don't see the problem, having education in a city isn't a bad thing at all. Educated sims cause less fires, commit less crime, don't get sick / injured as much. I'm running a 100k population city with only 3 of each emergency service vehicles. And they do a fine job.

Yes but I don't see the point having a university or community college in every city since, normally, region gameplay make students commute to other cities to study. It doesn't work quite well right now...

 

 

The traffic from having a single regional college would be horrendous. Sucks that it doesn't work, but it's probably a better idea to have a college in every city (not too unrealistic either; most towns have a CC, and most major cities have a CC in each neighborhood).

[Vaikin 10]

A CC in every city would be fine, but that won't max out tech level. Having a city with a relatively low population and a university that serviced the whole region would be ideal...but apparently just doesn't work right now :s

[Griffon 19]

I don't see how the nuclear plant blew up in 10mins, it took me almost 2 game years to get it to blow up on it's own, when I was trying to do everything possible to make it blow up sooner, I didn't place any education in my city, I blew up 1 reactor with a meteor to get radiation around the nuclear plant and the worker education was unsafe for a whole game year, the game also gave me 5 warning messages in the news feed at the top of my screen that it was going to blow up before it actually did, not to mention I didn't have sufficient water going to the nuclear plant

(getting the nuclear plant to have a nuclear meltdown on it's own is a secret achievement)

 

btw when I say that the nuclear plant blows up on it's own I mean no disasters involved in destroying it (meteor, monster, ect...)

 

without the random disasters, nuclear power plants are very safe in my opinion, but...add random disasters that normally target the most expensive/most important buildings, it's not worth the risk in the game (I usually use oil, it's small and fully upgraded it supplies 600MW/h also the university can research low pollution generators for it)

[TheCrazyHeadGamer 3]

 

The problem with that is that you need education + the nuclear power plant in the same city...

As it is right now, region playing don't allow you to have those in separate cities since student commuters are so few !

I don't see the problem, having education in a city isn't a bad thing at all. Educated sims cause less fires, commit less crime, don't get sick / injured as much. I'm running a 100k population city with only 3 of each emergency service vehicles. And they do a fine job.

Yes but I don't see the point having a university or community college in every city since, normally, region gameplay make students commute to other cities to study. It doesn't work quite well right now...  

 

The traffic from having a single regional college would be horrendous. Sucks that it doesn't work, but it's probably a better idea to have a college in every city (not too unrealistic either; most towns have a CC, and most major cities have a CC in each neighborhood).

Not the same for a university though...

Anyway, for me it breaks the whole "specialize your city" idea. For example if I want to have a high tech city with chip factories, I also need to specialize in education and have a university or a community college.

[sumusiko 0]

I use nuclear reactors with 1 tech and 1 education and it runs perfectly no warnings no nothing for days and days and the energy it gives is amazing. 2 reactors (1+ upgrade) is enough for a 125-150k city 

[endorken 13]

OK, so the thread moved on and I feel like I’m going off on a tangent, but:

 

I just want to re-iterate one more time that the OP’s info concerning education and plant safety is wrong (unless I misunderstood the OP).  And again, I totally am on board with the OP’s enthusiasm for the game, but education level has nothing to do with plant safety. Education level is correlated with crime, health, garbage, etc. Plant safety has to do with the tech/knowledge network (pink lines that you see when you switch to the industry tech data layer). A college, a uni or a vu tower is all you need to operate a nuclear plant safely. When using a college or a uni, student attendance is something to worry about since it determines the strength of the tech network; when using the vu tower, there’s really nothing to worry about because the vu tower is phenomenally unbalanced in terms of cost/benefit.

 

The stuff about sewage plants and the water table is correct. The stuff about nuclear power plants affecting the water table underneath them (other than indirectly, because of high water consumption), I have not experienced personally and cannot verify. And just in case there’s any confusion – water also has nothing to do with nuclear plant safety. In fact, a nuclear power plant

doesn’t even need water to operate.

 

Here’s a screenshot to demonstrate what I’m talking about. The water tower is only here to insure the vu tower doesn’t shut down.

 

[Cob92 360]

 

 

 

The problem with that is that you need education + the nuclear power plant in the same city...

As it is right now, region playing don't allow you to have those in separate cities since student commuters are so few !

I don't see the problem, having education in a city isn't a bad thing at all. Educated sims cause less fires, commit less crime, don't get sick / injured as much. I'm running a 100k population city with only 3 of each emergency service vehicles. And they do a fine job.

Yes but I don't see the point having a university or community college in every city since, normally, region gameplay make students commute to other cities to study. It doesn't work quite well right now...  

 

The traffic from having a single regional college would be horrendous. Sucks that it doesn't work, but it's probably a better idea to have a college in every city (not too unrealistic either; most towns have a CC, and most major cities have a CC in each neighborhood).

Not the same for a university though...

Anyway, for me it breaks the whole "specialize your city" idea. For example if I want to have a high tech city with chip factories, I also need to specialize in education and have a university or a community college.

 

My approach is to provide basic services in every city: have at least a small police station, fire station, clinic, school system, etc. I put colleges in all cities that have industry so that the industry isn't crappy low-end stuff; it also helps because a lot of the better industries demand college graduates only, so if everyone goes to college they can work those jobs in other cities. Plus if you're going to put a nuclear reactor anywhere in the region, it's probably a good idea to make sure that somebody isn't going to cross over from Hicksville and wreck the plant.

[PTS21 0]

My main issue with this game is the amount of space you need to devote to utility buildings.

What world do the Maxis devs live in?

One nuclear reactor should power an entire region. Hell, one fully upgraded coal or oil plant should power a region with five cities.

Same goes with the most of the other utilities. If you force us into small tiles, then these buildings should service far more people.

I have a four reactor plant in Whitewater Valley and it's not enough to power four cities totaling about 300k in population.

200 MW from 1 reactor is also half the amount of energy produced from the smallest reactor in the USA.

[w0lfalot 18]

Just a tip:

 

If you ever see an unsafe nuclear reactor - Delete it

(The reactor only, not the building), and only bring one back when your education level is stable again.

 

I meltdowned two nuclear reactors on the only city I ever used the Nuclear Reactors on. This was because it at some point required a rollback, and then my two nuclear reactors was suddenly "Unsafe" ...

[UntCaptain 6]

Yea I did that last night on an unsafe nuclear plant. I shut it down before the meltdown occurred then figured ill demolish the lot of it and go back to my 5 coal power plants (yes because 5 power plants are really required in the real world to run 13 of a city and 2/3 heavy mining and smelting operations) BUT demolishing the unsafe nuclear plant gave my radioactive fall out, raping my entire city (it was in the centre). It was next to the ONLY water on the tile and polluted that fully. My whole city is covered in ground pollution, nothing is clean and I have 200 deaths a day even with 4 maxed hospitals.

But I still turn over $2m a month with all that

[Griffon 19]

Yea I did that last night on an unsafe nuclear plant. I shut it down before the meltdown occurred then figured ill demolish the lot of it and go back to my 5 coal power plants (yes because 5 power plants are really required in the real world to run 13 of a city and 2/3 heavy mining and smelting operations) BUT demolishing the unsafe nuclear plant gave my radioactive fall out, raping my entire city (it was in the centre). It was next to the ONLY water on the tile and polluted that fully. My whole city is covered in ground pollution, nothing is clean and I have 200 deaths a day even with 4 maxed hospitals.

But I still turn over $2m a month with all that

don't bulldoze unsafe reactors, turn the power plant off first or do something to make it safe first (usually when you turn it off it fires everone working there and when you turn it back on it hires skilled workers that would make it safe again), but the only time you can safely remove them is when it says they are safe too, that was bad advice for you bulldoze unsafe reactors

btw I prefer oil over coal, unless I'm doing a mining city like you were, oil produces 150MW/h per generator, basically it produces double the energy output of coal, although it costs more to import it than coal, it take up less space in your city

[cheeseman1 5]

YOU FORGOT THE BIT ABOUT IT NEEDING LOADS OF WORKERS