Trying to do NuclearCraft, pretty new to it. Seems like doing anything beyond Thorium requires me to have Plutonium...which doesn't seem to have an ore, despite it's own Wiki saying it should generate in the Nether...anyone know how to obtain plutonium and the other stuff in this modpack? Thanks!
Revelations & Nuclearcraft
- Thread starter GrimmSpector
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I actually thought it had an ore by default, in the Nether if nothing else.
That said, its usually way more fun to get Plutonium as a byproduct of another reactor. If you look at the recycle-recipes for depleted uranium isotopes you should be able to find a plutonium output.
The resulting setup, with multiple types of reactors, is badass
Plutonium is generally gotten from reprocessing spent fuel (Uranium or Neptunium usually).
Fun fact about NC, all isotopes used for fuel rods can be gotten starting with Thorium Fuel rods (TBU)
Yeah, once upon a time you could definitely mine plutonium, but I always removed that option because reprocessing was more interesting.
I still feel like you can mine it in either the End or the Nether by default though. Don't quote me on it however
I still feel like you can mine it in either the End or the Nether by default though. Don't quote me on it however
Plutonium isn't artificial; you can find it naturally in the earth. Its just rare. And obviously fuel-grade plutonium is definitely artificial for the most part, but that's true for uranium too.
K
Khift
Guest
Plutonium is 100% artificial. There are no naturally occurring elements heavier than uranium on Earth; Earth is too old of a planet to have anything less stable than uranium on it. Every ounce of plutonium ever used has been man made. You are technically correct that extremely minute traces of plutonium can occasionally be found inside uranium ore due to micro-scale nuclear reactions producing it, but the amounts are extremely tiny and not useful for any process. There is no star-produced plutonium present on Earth.
Uranium has a different story. U-238 is stable, lasts indefinitely, and isn't radioactive (although as a heavy metal it is still very unhealthy). U-235 is radioactive, but has a half life that is long enough such that star-produced U-235 does still exist on Earth in meaningful quantities. If Earth were a million times older than it is, then U-235 would be gone just like plutonium is.
Greetings and welcome to the forum Khift.
Plutonium is 100% not 100% artificial. You can find trace amounts of it in nature (I said so for a reason). Sometimes weird things happen in nature. For instance, there's some place in Africa where a u235 chain reaction actually occurs in nature. Wacky, huh?
I'm not concerned with how pitifully minute those quantities are. I just don't want to see people "corrected" incorrectly. 100% artificial is not correct. (Although I'd be curious to know how many digits we'd need to say its "99.99999...% artificial")
"Technically"
Sure. That's why I said "rare" and why I never implied "star-produced." If you like, I can extend that further and say "virtually nonexistent". Satisfied?
K
Khift
Guest
No, I am not satisfied. You ignore the actual point being made. Every single atom of plutonium that has ever been used by man has been produced by man - and additionally, every single atom of plutonium on Earth has been produced by a nuclear reaction. There are no naturally occurring, pre-existing veins of plutonium ore, anywhere.Greetings and welcome to the forum Khift.
Plutonium is 100% not 100% artificial. You can find trace amounts of it in nature (I said so for a reason). Sometimes weird things happen in nature. For instance, there's some place in Africa where a u235 chain reaction actually occurs in nature. Wacky, huh?
I'm not concerned with how pitifully minute those quantities are. I just don't want to see people "corrected" incorrectly. 100% artificial is not correct. (Although I'd be curious to know how many digits we'd need to say its "99.99999...% artificial")
"Technically"
You were corrected because you were incorrect. Plutonium does not naturally occur on Earth. It is only ever produced by nuclear reactions. All of Earth's plutonium deposits - yes, 100% of them, atoms are not infinitely divisible so half lives do eventually reach a population of 0 - have completely decayed into other elements since the planet was formed.
The natural reactor at Oklo only proves this point. The Oklo mine contained extremely small trace amounts of plutonium because a nuclear reaction created it - not because there are plutonium reserves in that part of Africa. Saying that that is naturally occurring plutonium is like saying that plastic occurs naturally because it's made by humans and humans are part of nature. It's just twisting the meanings of words to make whatever point you want to make. The fact is that there is no such thing as plutonium ore. There is nowhere on Earth where someone can go and mine rocks and do something to them to get plutonium.
Just to help with the original question quickly - don't use the old wikia wiki anymore - it's very outdated. The best place to go is the NuclearCraft section of the official FTB wiki
As for which element is the heaviest which naturally occurs, uranium is usually quoted because it is rather abundant, but given the randomness of the details of events such as neutron star-merger nucleosynthesis (which now are thought to generate most of the heavy elements) and the reasonably long half lives of various neptunium and plutonium isotopes it is almost certain that there are at least absolutely miniscule amounts of both sprinkled here and there in the Earth's crust - for example, roughly one part per one hundred billion of uranium ore is actually plutonium. After all, there's no law of nucleosynthesis that says natural processes must produce no heavier elements than uranium.
As for which element is the heaviest which naturally occurs, uranium is usually quoted because it is rather abundant, but given the randomness of the details of events such as neutron star-merger nucleosynthesis (which now are thought to generate most of the heavy elements) and the reasonably long half lives of various neptunium and plutonium isotopes it is almost certain that there are at least absolutely miniscule amounts of both sprinkled here and there in the Earth's crust - for example, roughly one part per one hundred billion of uranium ore is actually plutonium. After all, there's no law of nucleosynthesis that says natural processes must produce no heavier elements than uranium.
Thanks for your response Khift
This is unfair, friend. I'm not ignoring that point; it simply wasn't your original proposition. As far as I know (and I've done no research on this), what you're claiming here is true (except for "naturally occurring...plutonium.)
What I'm disputing is this:
Trillions of atoms of various elements are created on the planet every day and they have nothing to do with humans. Put another way: plutonium is currently being generated (naturally, not artificially) on the planet, and would continue to do so if we all packed up and moved to Mars.
I think I understand what you were trying to say, and I agree with that. I'm just clarifying the one statement so its not misleading.
Thanks for understanding, dude. You seem like a pretty clever guy.
This is unfair, friend. I'm not ignoring that point; it simply wasn't your original proposition. As far as I know (and I've done no research on this), what you're claiming here is true (except for "naturally occurring...plutonium.)
What I'm disputing is this:
I corrected you on this point because its already provably, empirically invalid. You seem to be suggesting that an element is only "natural" if its part of an old "reserve" (or fell from the sky?). You're excluding those elements that arise constantly from natural nuclear reactions.
Trillions of atoms of various elements are created on the planet every day and they have nothing to do with humans. Put another way: plutonium is currently being generated (naturally, not artificially) on the planet, and would continue to do so if we all packed up and moved to Mars.
I think I understand what you were trying to say, and I agree with that. I'm just clarifying the one statement so its not misleading.
Thanks for understanding, dude. You seem like a pretty clever guy.
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