Nuclear Waste (Generic)

Nuclear waste is a dangerous byproduct of nuclear fission in reactors. It is not a single material or element, rather, it is a miscellaneous collection of useless fission, decay, and neutron capture elements (e.g. caesium, palladium, americium, radium, etc. isotopes) products produced from fission reactions a nuclear reactor. It is highly radioactive and hazardous, even in small amounts.

Production

Tiny piles of waste can be extracted from spent/depleted nuclear fuel via PUREX.

This particular type of nuclear waste can be extracted from the RBMK waste variants of: long-lived and short-lived nuclear waste with the SILEX.

Waste can be extracted from the waste barrels found in the desert atom structure.

Nuclear waste can be bred from reactor-grade plutonium. Requires 200 flux for a single rod.

Uses

As a waste product, it has little uses. However, it does have a few specialized uses. Normal-sized pieces can be used to make radioactive barbed wire and vegan schnitzels.

It can be used in a custom nuke to "salt" it. Normal-sized pieces contribute to a 1.025 multiplier and blocks contribute 1.25, making pieces better than blocks.

Schrabidium can also be made with it by detonating barrels of waste near uranium ore as it can create a dirty explosion when in a steel tank.

Disposal Methods

It can be made into radioactive blocks for storage and as a quick, cheap, but unsafe means of disposal. They are very radioactive and inflict the contaminated 3 status effect for 30 seconds when walked on. Even a single block can easily contaminate a chunk. Nuclear waste blocks also produce fallout continuously, which can be farmed for tiny amounts of cobalt-60, radium-226, and even gold-198. Keep note that: nuclear waste blocks also produce a lot of radon gas, which is the source of the fallout and cannot be blocked by gas masks.

The cheapest method of disposal other than straight-up blocks of waste is to simply paint said blocks. It is basically the same as the regular waste block but with a yellow radiation hazard sign painted on it. Crude, but more visually noticeable than a plain black block.

Another method is to put it into a barrel. It is identifiable (yellow), deconstructable, cheap, and is less hazardous than regular blocks. It only becomes especially hazardous when in large numbers. However, they can easily kill anything or anyone that gets too close to a dump site with these. They are useful in schrabidium production as they can explode in a dirty fashion. It can also be used in the custom nuke to salt it, contributing a 1.2 multiplier to that stage. Barrels also do not produce extra fallout and radon. However, they will release a lot of radon if they explode.

The safest way to dispose of them is to put them in a crate, since they do not irradiate the environment when in one.