Guide: Schrabidium Creation

Schrabidium is a highly radioactive and dangerous element that can be used for incredibly powerful nuclear fuels or for the production of powerful tools and weaponry. Because of this, it is quite difficult to obtain in large quantities, either requiring highly labor intensive and low yielding processes that take simple resources or incredibly expensive late game processes that require advanced and expensive machines and/or huge amounts of power to perform.

Nuclear Explosion

The most readily available mid game method for obtaining schrabidium is by detonating a nuclear explosive in the proximity of uranium ore. When exposed to a nuclear blast, any uranium ore that is not destroyed has a 10% chance to convert into a piece of schrabidium ore and a 90% chance to convert to scorched uranium ore which is the same as normal uranium ore but cannot be transmuted into schrabidium ore.

If only a small amount of schrabidium is needed, it is often sufficient to trigger a nuclear bomb such as little boy or the gadget anywhere near sea level on dry land due to the presence of uranium ore throughout the world. If a greater amount of ore conversion is desired, it is better to gather a large quantity of uranium ore and place it on the surface near a smaller nuclear device like a fat mine (but since the fat mine requires sour gas due to the shell requiring TATB, this may be out of reach for some players). In doing this, the uranium ore should be placed a large distance away (approximately 30 blocks) and behind a short blast resistant wall (concrete is sufficient) for optimal conversion.

Pros

High conversion rate (10% uranium ore to schrabidium)

Cons

Scars the landscape (large crater, permanent crater biome, sellafite).
Impossible to automate.
More costly in terms of circuitry and refined nuclear materials than a dirty bomb.

Cyclotron

Bombarding ionized particles in a cyclotron with plutonium dust results in the production of a single nugget of schrabidium with a small antimatter byproduct, as is the case for all cyclotron recipes. Requires at minimum for a fusion reactor to have ran once in the world in order for ionized particles to be obtained and requires a significant amount of power to run. No components necessary to this process require schrabidium, meaning that this in addition to nuclear explosions are the two primary methods of obtaining an initial quantity of schrabidium.

Pros

Contained within a single machine.
Useful for other purposes besides from schrabidium transmutation.

Cons

Requires expensive materials to craft.
Requires a large and expensive machine to be crafted in.
Requires a fusion reactor.
Consumes so much power that use of produced schrabidium as a fuel becomes net power negative in addition to processed plutonium being able to provide far more power by itself.

Higgs Boson Exposure

Exposing 8 uranium-238 ingots in an exposure chamber to the higgs boson creates 8 pure schrabidium ingots and consumes the higgs boson as a result. Despite the immense power consumption of most particle accelerators, this recipe can actually be one of the most power efficient and fast methods of schrabidium production possible with a bare minimum power particle accelerator consuming approximately 100 MHE per operation. A schrabidium transmutatation device producing enough schraranium to equal the amount of schrabidium produced by this operation will consume nearly exactly the same amount of power in addition to requiring multiple processing steps and producing extra products besides from schrabidium like plutonium. A higgs boson can also be used to turn uranium into schraranium in the exposure chamber, though there is little reason to do this due to the lower schrabidium yield.

Pros

1:1 conversion ratio between uranium and schrabidium.
Once the accelerator is set up, each higgs boson only requires power, hydrogen, lead powder, reusable capsules, and a single ionized particles item to produce.
Easily automated.

Cons

Even a small particle accelerator is incredibly expensive.
100 MHE per operation with operations occurring every few seconds can stress even late game power generation setups.

PUREX

Processing depleted LEP ZIRNOX, MEP PWR or MEN PWR fuel in the PUREX will grant 1 schrabidium dust, however this requires 250 mB schrabidic acid.

Pros

Can be automated easily
Provides Technetium

Cons

Requires schrabidic acid, meaning it is gated behind Fusion

Dirty Bomb

When a dirty bomb of is set off within a large radius around a piece of uranium ore, it will have a small chance to be converted into a piece of pure schrabidium ore with any not converted being scorched and rendered unusable for further conversion. In baby mode, scorched ore can be washed for reuse.

A "dirty bomb" can be achieved by destroying a nuclear waste barrel with any kind of explosive, though usually something like a time bomb is best due to its built in timer, small blast radius, and low cost. To make this process safer, the nuclear waste barrel and time bomb assembly can be fully enclosed inside of a shell of concrete which the blast will be unable to penetrate. Fallout will still fall around the area and it will still leak radiation, but it will not destroy any blocks and the nuclear waste that oozes out of the destroyed barrel will be fully contained.

A nuclear waste barrel and a time bomb in a small shell of concrete with one side removed so the interior is visible. Uranium is placed nearby for transmutation purposes.
The construction after detonation (with nuclear fallout dust layers cleared). Note the scorched ore texture, small amounts of schrabidium ore, and intact concrete shell.

Pros

Inexpensive/common materials.
Very little setup outside of placing the blocks.

Cons

Completely impossible to automate.
Obtaining large amounts of uranium ore takes either a high level of technology or a significant investment of manual labor.
Extremely low conversion rate (1% uranium ore to schrabidium ore)
Exposes surrounding area to radiation and drops fallout in a small radius.

Schrabidium Transmutation Device

The schrabidium transmutation device has had its recipe removed, making it unobtainable in survival as of version 1.0.27_X5397.

A single block machine that converts uranium into a schraranium ingot which can then be further processed to yield various nuclear materials, including a decent quantity of schrabidium. This output can be increased by crystallizing the schraranium ingots and then centrifuging them to yield one more nugget of schrabidium. Visible light SILEX can also be used to gain a larger yield of schrabidium from ingots or crystals of schraranium. Requires a capacitor to be placed in the upper left hand slot of the machine in order to operate which can either be redcoil capacitor (cheap but needs manual charging) or a euphemium capacitor (expensive, far into progression, but infinite) and will consume 5 MHE for each ingot of uranium that is consumed. Requires a single nugget of schrabidium in the form of a bar of magnetized tungsten to construct meaning that some other form of schrabidium production must be used before it can be constructed.

Pros

Completely contained within a single block.
Requires nothing but power some manual intervention, and uranium to operate.
Can be automated to a degree even soon after being obtained.

Cons

Slow.
Requires manual recharging to operate.
Needs schrabidium to be constructed in the first place.
Requires additional processing steps to go from schraranium to schrabidium.
Not a 1:1 ratio between uranium ingots to schrabidium ingots