Plutonium-positive recipe loop

[EigensheepLambda]

It seems like there's a positive plutonium oxide loop via hexafluoride and mox cells (pu oxide -> pu239 -> uf6 -> u238 -> mox -> pu oxide). Just void the purified uf6 and unwanted pu isotopes. The only inputs are the niobium and molybdenum for the mox cells. Zero uranium ore processing, zero nuclear power, zero waste/purex to deal with. A ton of free power from the mox-generated heat if you can take the UPS hit on the weak vanilla turbines. Unless you're avoiding nuclear waste voiding, this seems like the "correct" way to source this stuff, in terms of footprint/UPS/reliability. But it also seems pretty contrary to intent/spirit/whatever, especially with the recent changes to uranium processing.

From YAFC, 1 pu oxide costs 3.4 niobium and 2.13 molybdenum, and generates about 46 GJ of net power if you use the heat (assuming 2x2 breeder reactors).

Nuclear processing in late prod in general feels pretty wonky in a few ways right now as someone trying to avoid voiding there. Upconverting all the junk isotopes takes a tremendous amount of neutrons, which means a huge nuclear plant (plus generating deposits of currently useless curium to supplement), which means a purex processing block set to dwarf any other single project in the factory once I finally get it finished and fed. Even with all that, americium (-> super steel -> small parts -> milfe) remains the factory's primary bottleneck by a mile on the final push to py4. Maybe this is all intentional suffering, but I may as well point it out just in case the suffering is only accidental this time.

The uranium output on uf6 refinement now makes the process unusable without voiding past simply filling the total u238 demand, which doesn't take much (36.1 uf6-242 is produced in generating the uranium for 1 plutonium oxide, if producing the initial uf6 from pu239). The extra yellowcake production I set up in preparation for the patch has not run since patching, for the same reason.

(Also, a minor extra problem just from mapping out the future raffinate portion of the purex reprocessing chain- it looks like it'll be producing substantially more niobium ore than the factory will be consuming, unless there's a big extra demand for it in py4+. The antimony and molybdenum ore outputs are much more manageable.)

I've been faffing about in plutoniumland trying to build a robust global solution for a major portion of my factorio time since the last update, and the biggest conclusion I've drawn is that I would have been much better off just duct taping everything together and sprinting for super steel II. But I'm sure there's a moral victory in here somewhere...