Reactors

[Kingmal]

Trade ships currently sell Uranium (I think it's Uranium) and describe it as fuel for reactors. Since this is basically saying that new energy sources will be added, I came up with an idea for how they could work - and how researchers could be made more valuable.

The Nuclear Reactor would be a rather expensive but efficient reactor. It would require a reasonable amount of space (think Geothermal Reactor but a bit larger) and 1 Uranium per day (maybe more or less depending on balancing).

Every day you'd have to maintenance it or have it catch fire. The basic time spent working on it would be rather high, but this would be lowered by whoever is working on it's Research skill. This way, Level 11 researchers wouldn't be useless, and trading ships would have more importance.

[Semmy]

ow my the boom it will cause because of those angry boomrats.

and hencefort you are known as the glowy goon

[Grimreaper1704]

ow my the boom it will cause because of those angry boomrats.

and hencefort you are known as the glowy goon

HAHA

[NephilimNexus]

And when your reactor is done you can start making Depleted Uranium Ammunition from it's waste.

[Kingmal]

ow my the boom it will cause because of those angry boomrats.

and hencefort you are known as the glowy goon

All the more reason to keep it inside.

[Cologan]

hmmmmmm, nuclear fueled bunkers... me like

[Semmy]

this so reminds me of the ghouls in fallout.
Destroying that reactor was fun

[todofwar]

If it goes critical it should generate a fallout zone where colonists take damage for being there. Render a whole underground complex useless in one fell swoop

[Semmy]

owww than you won't need to build lights anymore.
Saves alot of power thus alot of metal.

Goony lamps

[Clint]

Yeah I've been waiting for a better power source, right now my main game has a huge colony (26 colonists and growing...) and keeping all of them fed and happy requires a lot of power.

Best I can manage is a solar array nearby my bunker and a LOT of batteries inside the bunker in case of raid/eclipse.

The reactors should require a well balanced amount of Uranium, In late-game the traders seem to give about 100-120 per ship and I'd say it's probably 4-5 days between industrial ships on average so the reactors would probably want to be using up 1 Uranium every hour.
This way you can't really run them continually as you'll run out (just) before the new shipment arrives, but it's enough to have the base run on purely reactors for a while if you stockpile.

Allowing you to lockdown your bunker in response to a particularily strong raid or a prolonged series of bad events.
But not allowing you to simply spam reactors and hydroponics inside your base and lock yourself indoors Fallout style.

[majesty]

it would add a new status ailment: radiation poisoning, giving doctors the new task of curing them with rad-x or radaway or whatever ty wants to call it.

[YetAnotherTroper]

Aha, lightbulb: With the new temperature system, a reactor could simply generate a lot of heat, which some kind of heat-based generator (a steam turbine or thermocouple) could use to generate power.

[RemingtonRyder]

Building a nuclear reactor was a highlight in modded Minecraft. Wouldn't mind seeing one in vanilla Rimworld, but if not you can count on the modders to make them interesting.

[UMK]

Is there any way to increase the threshold of self-ignition temperature (it's 473K)? No nuclear reactors then.
Find the way to raise that temp and there will be even supermatter from SS13.

[Argon]

Perhaps this could lead the way to modularizing the power system. 
For example:
there would be no more "geothermal generator", there would just be a wellhead with a steam pipe outlet, steam pipes would then plug into reciprocating engines or turbines, those engines  would be connected to generators by shafts and shaftcouples.  Multiple tiers of every power system would be researchable.