FBR Mega Station

Author

Calen

Downloads

2139

Votes Score

82%

Votes

Favorited

Updated

07/23/25

Created

09/22/24

Description

FBR Mega Station

Author: Calen
Built for Update 3
vU3.1.2
For Power, Water, Hydrogen, and Brine Production

Description

The FBR Mega Station Station is an end-game facility. It has a total of five reactors: one is used for the enrichment of blanket fuel (and also a little hydrogen production); three of them are dedicated to energy production, for a total output of 720 megawatts; and the final one is used to produce water, brine, & hydrogen. The last reactor also produces oxygen, but I'm just venting it because it's easier to make oxygen on location wherever I need it rather than transport it. If I come up (or someone presents me) with a great usecase for the oxygen, that could change.

This blueprint book is comprised of two core components: the Core Fuel Factory and the FBR Mega Station itself. The former is a temporary facility used to supply core fuel to the FBRs of the main complex so that they can start up and run until they are self-sufficient. Additionally, there is a blueprint for seawater pumps and two for liquid dumps that require an egregious amount of coastline. Lastly, there are a number of transport blueprints available for use.

Installation & Ignition Instructions

Follow these instructions to reach ignition. See https://imgur.com/a/fbr-mega-station-341192i for helpful images!

Prepare

Allot Enough Space : The Core Fuel Factory is 3x6 squares in area. Remember that this facility is temporary, so you will be able to reclaim this area once the FBR Mega Station is fully operational.
The FBR Mega Station is 7x15 squares in area, including transport.
The pump array blueprint takes 8 squares of coastline.
The excess dump arrays need 4.5 squares of coastline each.
All in all you will need about 17 squares of straight coastline.\
Provide Infrastructure : You will need a lot of resources, transport, workers, power, computer, & maintenance to support the FBR Mega Station. However, you'll get some back once you can decommission the Core Fuel Factory.

Build

Build a uranium mine and start crushing the ore into powder. Three large crushers will do it. I use my prefab Uranium Mine blueprint which includes crushers and a train station.
Build the Core Fuel Factory, supply it, connect it to the FBR Mega Station and get it producing Core Fuel.
Build the Core Fuel pipes in the FBR Mega Station, then build the Fast Breeder Reactors so that you can start filling the Core Fuel reservoirs. The Core Fuel Factory will take 400 game minutes to fill all five FBRs. With ramp up time, that's about 2h15m in real life at 3x speed. I know. I know.
Build the rest of the FBR Mega Station while you wait for the core fuel reservoirs to fill up.

Connect

In total, you need 2 temporary connections and 3 permanent connections. The rest are nice to have, but not critical.

The first temporary connection you already know about - core fuel. You only need a tier I pipe for this. See image 6.
The second temporary connection is for water ingress. You will need this until the FBR producing water is running. See image 7. You will need two pipes, one for each water balancer. You need to supply at least 480 water/60, but if you can swing it, supply 1632/60 for a fast FBR start. This can most easily be accomplished by filling 2 tier IV storage tanks with water.
Connect the Seawater Desalinization Pump Array to the FBR Mega Station with 4 tier IV pipes. See image 8.
For the last two connections, water & brine egress, each one needs 2 tier IV pipes leading away from the production transport, ideally from a balancer where they are they are not the prioritized connection, to their respective dump arrays. See images 9 & 10.

Note: The temporary water ingress will cause the egress water storage to fill or allow pass through. You might want to pause the storage or the pipes so it doesn't do that. Just remember to unpause them before you turn the FBRs on.

Check

Make sure the entire FBR Mega Station is built. Double check.
Make sure all ingress storage is filled.
Make sure all FBRs are full of water and core fuel.
Make sure the desalinators are full of seawater.
Save your game!

Ignite

You can ignite the FBR Mega Station in one of two ways.

Hold My Beer and Watch This - If you are confident you can supply water at a sustained throughput of 1632/60 for about 6 game minutes, then turn all the FBRs to power level IV at once and enjoy! As started above, this can easily be accomplished with 2 tier IV storage tanks full of water. Just let the tanks run completely dry. Once they're empty, the FBR Mega Station will be water-positive.
Slow and Steady - Turn the enrichment FBR and the water/brine/hydrogen FBR on first. Wait until the bottom right desalinator is consistently running (about 6 game minutes). Then turn on the three power FBRs.

Note: Watch the FBRs to ensure their core fuel reservoirs and cooling tanks remain full. If something goes wrong, that probably means that something got missed during build or the supply of resources ran out.

Clean

Once you're satisfied that everything is running smoothly, disconnect the temporary water & core fuel ingress and deconstruct the Core Fuel Factory.

Now the only thing left to do is figure out what to do with all this power, hydrogen, brine, and water!

Appendices

Note: The FBR Station includes values for the pump & dump array blueprints as they are required to make the FBR Mega Station to be fully operational.

Infrastructure Input

Name	Core Fuel Factory	FBR Mega Station
Workers	218	1797
Power (MW)	48.92	57.275
Compute (TFlops)	0	72
Maintenance	12	277
Maintenance II	52	228
Maintenance III	0	300

Resource Input

Name	Core Fuel Factory	FBR Mega Station
Acid	66	79.5
Graphite		0.75
Limestone		1.5
Rock	12
Salt	2	15.75
Sand		6
Steel		3
Uranium Ore Powder	180	216

Product Output

Name	Core Fuel Factory	FBR Mega Station
Brine		1344
Core Fuel	2
Hydrogen		768
Power (MW)		720
Water		1368

Byproduct Output

Name	Core Fuel Factory	FBR Mega Station
Depleted Uranium	29
Exhaust		1.5
Fission Product		6
Slag	3	3
Toxic Slurry	180	216

Change Log

vU3.1.2 - Added Blanket Fuel balancer to handle Blanket Fuel input from Spent MOX reprocessing.
Updated the name on all storages to be 'FBR Mega Station'.
Added Temporary Spent MOX Processing blueprint.
vU3.1.1 - Minor transport blueprint fixes. No functional changes, just reoriented some blueprints.
vU3.1.0 - Original design.

Earlier Versions (6)

Version	Release Date	Downloads
6 (Current)	07/23/2025	452
5	07/23/2025	4
4	07/10/2025	199
3	04/05/2025	874
2	09/22/2024	609
1	09/22/2024	1

Comments (22)

LeoC

Wow, this is really impressive and I am grateful as an end game player. Thanks

Fabien2prem

Very nice ! Works amazingly well, 1 Gw power is nice, and Hydrogen and water production is genius for late game with all trucks and cargos swapped to hydrogen. Gave me a new breath on my game ! Thanks very much

Calen

@LeoC and @Fabien2prem - Thank you! I'm glad it is useful for you.

YuS (edited)

Why not use depleted uranium to supply the station instead of importing uranium ore? I think many players have large amounts of it stored from a previous nuclear facility. For example, that’s what I did when I saw in the recipe that it could be reused. 20,000 — I think that should be enough to supply the reactors until the game gets completely boring for me))

Calen (edited)

@YuS - I do have an ingress for depleted uranium, and the chemical plants prefer it. The uranium ore storage ingress is for when the depleted uranium runs out. That storage is for any leftover uranium ore from previous nuclear reactors. Then finally, once all that runs out, you revert to importing uranium ore. I actually finally got to the use of uranium ore backup paths during the most recent game I played because I was building a platform in the middle of the Armageddon crater before I flooded it, and that took 1500 years.

Imsikruwi (edited)

Hi @Calen, can you expain: "Move Power Level slider to 4X on one FBR in the pair", there is 5 of them, should i turn it one by one? I turn on 2 from 5 the FBR, and still it will got "not enough fuel" and around 49%-50% after some while, a pic tutorial would be nice!

juenger1701

great blueprint soo I will be free of my problem children coal plants

StrikerMack

I don't think this build has enough support buildings to keep all reactors running at full power. According to my calculations, each reactor needs its own nuclear reprocessing plant for the spent fuel, if you're running the reactor at full power. The reactor consumes 25 percent of the fuel each cycle (16 core fuel to 16 spent fuel will be reprocessed to 12 core fuel equals 25 percent consumed). That means, at full power, you need to add 4 new core fuel each cycle. Which means you need to add 4 blanket fuel to convert per cycle. This means you need 2 enrichment plants to make the 4 core fuel per cycle. Each chemical plant can produce 4 blanket fuel per cycle, so you only need one for each reactor. The 2 enrichment plants take the 16 enriched blanket fuel and return 12 blanket fuel and the 4 required core fuel per cycle. This is where it gets a bit confusing, the chemical plant consumes 2 enriched blanket fuel to make 4 blanket fuel, but all the enriched fuel has been consumed to make the core fuel. Also, this process consumes 2 of the enriched fuel, and by extension, 2 blanket fuel. This nets us 2 blanket fuel so we actually need 2 chemical plants to net us the required 4 blanket fuel. At this point, my head hurts from trying to figure this out so this is where I'm stuck. Someone who's smarter than me, please explain what I'm missing here, because I can't quite make it make sense.

StrikerMack

Okay, so, the yellow cake recipe for blanket fuel doesn't need enriched blanket fuel, only the depleted uranium recipe needs it. That means, we only need one chemical plant for each reactor running at full power to provide the necessary blanket fuel per cycle. However, that recipe requires 12 yellowcake per cycle. Doing the math, we need 72 uranium to make 12 yellowcake. That means, for each reactor running at full power, you need 72 uranium per cycle (and enough buildings to process that amount for each reactor) or the reactor will eventually run out of fuel. 5 reactors running at full power therefore need (72*5=360) 360 uranium per cycle (that's 360 per "60" in-game). That's a lot more than the 18 mentioned in the description. I'm honestly not sure where you get that number from. If I'm missing something, please let me know because I would much prefer only needing 18 uranium per cycle to run 5 FBRs instead of 360.

StrikerMack (edited)

You also need 5 storages for the fission product to support 5 reactors at full power. Here's the math, 2 FP get produced every "60" per reactor. "60" is 1 in-game month. FP turns into retired waste in 100 years (that's 1200 months). By the time the first 10 (2 from each reactor) FP decays into retired waste, 5 reactors will have created 12000 fission product (1200 months * 10 FP per month = 12000 FP). Each storage can hold 2400 fission product. 12000 divided by 2400 is 5. Therefore, you need 5 storages for 5 reactors.

jessefjxm

I just test this blueprint today, and i'm pretty sure it requires update to match fuel need, like StrikerMack said.

AcidLaktik (edited)

It seems like it sunstains itselfs with automatic regulation @80 fuel

Mordret

you need a cooling water backup pipe from water tank to Cooling inc Reaktors or they will overheat

jason.schmer

Great blueprint and just getting it set up. Two thoughts...at this point in the game I would think almost all players will have plenty of spent MOX which can be converted to blanket fuel. I took the slow and easy ramp approach and think you can get running faster if you slowly ramp the reactor that is enriching blanket fuel. Also, I'm playing with replacing the hydrogen generators attached to this reactor with thermal desalinators so the plant becomes self sufficient on water supply first before generating exports.

Calen

@StrikerMack - I was confused at first until I realized your comments were for my U2 build in a U3 game. I totally redesigned it two weeks ago for U3. @Mordret - As far as I can tell, all appropriate pipes are present.

Calen (edited)

@jason.schmer - Have fun with it. I would recommend building a fourth reprocessing plant then to just handle the Spent MOX conversion and prioritize its blanket fuel over that of the chemical plants by adding a balancer above the core fuel balancer. As far as the water supply goes, mine already prioritizes self-sufficiency before generating water exports, but you're welcome to make any changes that work for you.

Calen

@jason.schmer - I liked the Spent MOX processing idea so much I went ahead and added a blueprint for it in vU3.1.2.

cy-one

Hey Calen! Maybe as a variant, or maybe even as a small single-running-on-1x-FBR-build, but could you make a BP that can run sustainably while "random amounts" of Plutonium/Enriched is taken out for reactors/probes? As in, could be 100% of what is generated, could be 0% of what is generated, but the FBR keeps on running nonetheless, just using some different processes to make up for "the loss"?

jason.schmer

@Calen - Glad I could contribute!

GenRichards77

cant start up the ractor noting happens

schplat (edited)

Okay, so I think I found the issue that some people have had with fuel falling off from the enrichment reactor. It comes down to the core fuel balancing. The way it's setup in the BP, the central power generator reactor receives 1/3rd of the supply, and the other 4 receive 1/6th each. Until the central reactor maxes out its fuel supply, then it takes 8 from the supply, and the remaining 8 is split across the other 4 (so 2 per reactor). This means the other 2 power generators receive 10, the desalinator plant receives 10, and the enrichment reactor receives 10. The latter being the problem as it requires 16 to operate. So unless you use the core fuel factory to also saturate the entire pipe network, in addition to ensuring each reactor has 160 fuel to start, you will likely start imbalancing the fuel, and the enrichment reactor will eventually fall over, causing the whole plant to shut down. The solution: Take the balancer that splits the 2-ins to the 3 outs, and move it 2 spaces towards the power generation side (you need additional space so you can split the middle reactor with the desalinization reactor). Run a line from that straight back to the enrichment reactor, and remove the part where it splits to the desalinization plant. Then run another line back to connect to the desalinization and split that one into the middle reactor (this is tricky to do, and it's easier to fight with pipe snapping off). Don't forget to reconnect the 6x enrichment plants back into the moved balancer also. Now your split with have 16 going to the enrichment reactor, then 16 being split to 8/8 for the desalinization plant and the middle reactor, and the other two power generation reactors split 16 as well. And all is perfectly balanced, as it should be. /thanos

gamer1337

Problem: Core fuel is distributed unevenly. I did something similar to @schplat. In the balancer where core fuel comes in, I connected two FBRs to each output. However, since it's an odd number, the third output was split and routed back to the balancer. (For this, I had to insert another balancer somewhere where there was space to ensure I had enough inputs and outputs.) This way, core fuel is distributed evenly among all. I haven't had any problems since.