I think that the IC2 bootstrap process always requires starting with a basic wood burning generator to get enough EU to power the machines needed to make the more complex power sources.
So, I start with 1 of those, and quickly replace it with a geothermal generator, as you can just throw a stack of universal fluid cells filled with lava and it stops consuming fuel when no power is being drawn. Positioning IC2 pumps is interesting - you need to dig under the lava lake to position it underneath the lava, but then a single RE battery will let you extract several stacks of filled universal cell's filled with lava.
Next stop - a reactor. If you have been digging you will have a stockpile of uranium ore that you will process into a lot of U238 and a bit of U235. Make uranium fuel rods to use up the U235, and as they are used up you re-process them to extract plutonium. A "simple" safe reactor can, with 6 quad fuel rods, output 360EU/t for 100,000 ticks. Once you are out of U235 / have enough plutonium you switch to a heated MOX reactor. 5 quad fuel rods in a (again, completely safe) heated reactor yields 1000+ EU/t for 50,000 ticks. You recover all the plutonium + a little extra from the spent MOX rods, so the fuel you are burning here is the U238. Once you are out of uranium, you can use the plutonium stockpile to make plutonium cakes, that - stacked in 6 - in a radiothermal generator will output 32EU/t without being consumed.
