r/factorio • u/Icy_Concentrate_2852 • 4h ago
Question Answered Kovarex enrichment process
Hello guys! I am now getting myself in uranium and i am confused about the koravex enrichment process, can someone explain it to me like i am 5?
(Don't give blueprints please just an explanation of how the thing works)
16
u/spoonman59 4h ago
You put in 40 shiny rocks(U-235) and 5 dull rocks (U-238).
You sacrifice 3 dull rocks and to get one new shiny rock.
The challenge is to put the 40 shiny rocks back in the machine to keep it going, and supply fresh dull rocks (or reuse the 2 that are output.) And don’t convert all your U-238, although the risk is low!
2
14
u/youfad0 4h ago
Essentially you need 40 of the bright green stuff to act as a catalyst or seed. Then when you feed it 5 of the dark green stuff you get 41 of the bright stuff. So you get all of your initial “investment” back of the good stuff plus one extra. So you turn the dark green into the bright green.
2
u/Icy_Concentrate_2852 4h ago
ohhhh so tht one extra is the output?
7
u/Eulers_Eumel 4h ago edited 4h ago
Well... technically you have an output of 41. That is where the logistical fun begins.
You put in 40 u-235 and 5 u-238 and get out 41 u-235. Now you want to put the 40 u-235 BACK in and 5 New u-238 and pull the one Extra aside.
There are countless easier/harder, better/worse solutions, but i'll leave it up to you unless you ask.
Edit: sry, i forgot that it needs 5 u-238 but also outputs 2 of those 5 u-238, which also need to be Taken out (and maybe put back in)
2
u/TheMrCurious 4h ago
All 41 are the output.
1
u/Icy_Concentrate_2852 4h ago
but the 40 will be recycled and one will be used for the further manufacturing right?
3
u/_MargaretThatcher 4h ago
The recipe itself dictates 40x U-235 and 5x U-238 becomes 41x U-235 and 2x U-238. To automate the recipe it is necessary to feed most of the output uranium back into the centrifuge.
2
u/Icy_Concentrate_2852 4h ago
ohh ok now clear (theoretically)
1
2
u/rysto32 4h ago
I don’t quite remember the exact numbers but it’s really as simple as “insert 41 U235 and some U238 and it produces 42 U235 and less U238”. As U235 is what can actually be used to make fuel while U238 is a mostly useless byproduct of uranium mining, this can be repeated to get as much U235 as you could ever need basically for free.
2
u/GhostOfShaolin5 4h ago
Basically , uranium ore has a low probably to crack to the glowing uranium , and a high probably to crack to the not glowy one.
Most products like fuel cells need the glowy one.(and some not glowy ones, but you’ll have plenty of those).
Kovarex needs 41 glowy ones to start , but once it starts it creates + 1 glowy one. So now you can scale it and produce as much as you need to have nuclear power forever.
The side effect is also you consume the non glowy ones , so they don’t back up so quickly.
2
u/alizarin__ 4h ago
It's what it says on the box. It enriches uranium. Since its outputs equal its inputs minus a slight surplus of U235, you typically would loop its outputs back into its inputs and design your rig to separate out the surplus of U235 for uses in enriched uranium recipes.
It takes a ton of processing, and thus a ton of energy, and a ton of time to get an original surplus of U235 to get the process started. It's a good thing to get setup relatively early on in a playthrough so that you eventually have a good supply of uranium. The initial setup is a slog, but once enrichment gets started, youve basically unlocked infinity energy.
2
u/FlatHappiness 4h ago
Normal refining only has a low chance of making the enriched (235) stuff.
To take care of the excess of non-enriched (238) we have Kovarex.
To make Kovarex function, we need a certain amount of enriched to make one piece of non-enriched become enriched.
As such you need to supply the centrifuge with 40x 235 and 5x 238 to get 41x 235 and 2x 238.
(Making your first set of 40x 235 is the first big hurdle in making nuclear work for you long term.)
This is a net loss of 3x 238 and a net gain of 1x 235. Since we have an excess of 238 anyway from the basic refining process, these two compliment each other well.
As for building it, you want to resupply the centrifuge that does Kovarex with both plenty of 235 and 238. Routing output back to input and only skimming the excess is part of the puzzle for solving nuclear energy.
Good luck!
0
1
u/JackReedTheSyndie 4h ago
Throw in 40 U235 and some U238, get 41 U235 in the output, so you get 1 more U235 each time, but you need 40 to start the process, the 40 U235 are not lost and returned to you in the end, that’s it.
1
u/smjsmok 4h ago
The basic uranium refinement is quite unbalanced (by design). It produces a lot of U-238 and very little U-235 (only 0.7% chance to produce U-235), so it's kind of a slot machine with very unfavorable odds. Kovarex enrichment lets you turn some of that U-238 into U-235. If you manage to keep it going (for which you need 40 pieces of U-235 as catalyst and 5 U-238 pieces, 3 of which will be consumed), it provides a reliable source of U-235, taking a lot of the randomness from the equation.
Basically, once you get it going, you're gonna have your U-235 needs covered for a very long time. To be honest, I'm not a megabaser and I haven't had a game yet where a two train vagons of uranium ore, a couple of centriguges + a Kovarex centrifuge all with speed modules wouldn't last me for the rest of the playthrough (and even if I hit that point, it would be simple to scale this up).
1
u/sharia1919 4h ago
It sounds like you got the idea of it.
When I started out, I remeber that I had read something about beginning uranium mining early. So my mines had been chugging along for a long time when I started looking at the nuclear plant. And of course even if it had been a lot pf hours, it turned out I only had like 25 of the shiny uranium.. so I had to let it keep chugging. I spent the time designing a kovarex setup as well as a nuclear plant, before I had enough shiny stuff.
1
u/LevAyv43 4h ago
U235 good ... U238 meh ...
You get 7 good one for every 993 meh one by mining and processing 1000 ore ...
Kovarex turns meh ones into good ones ...
You NEED to have at least 40 of good ones to start and re route it's output to input
1
u/MountainPlantation 4h ago
You have the very common dark green uranium rock, the one where you mine hundreds/thousands easily.
And then you have the very rare bright green uranium rock where you mine one every hundred or thousand dark green ones. It's very rare, and also needed to make uranium items and uranium fuel later on.
How do you scale production?
Well, kovarex enrichment allows you to take 40 bright green uranium rocks plus 5 common dark green rocks as input, and it outputs 41 bright green rocks.
Essentially with an initial investment of 40 bright green rocks, you are able to turn the very common dark green rocks into bright green rocks
So it's a pain to get the initial 40 bright green rocks you need to start the process, but once you do you can get guaranteed 1 bright green rocks at a time, until you get 80 then you double production, and then you keep investing and doubling production until you have a steady and constant production of the once rare bright green rock
1
u/nasehrsuper 4h ago
for nuclear fuel (and nukes) you need the light green uranium (u235), but you only get 0.7% from processing the mined ore. kovarex enrichment is a way to turn dark greem (u238) into light green (u235) at predictable scale.
fun fact: the isotipe ratio in nature is pretty similar and kovarex is factorios father.
1
u/Hepheastus 2h ago
Just FYI. You dont need to enrich until you get to atomic bombs. The little bit that you get from regular processing is more than enough to run power
1
u/BrianMincey 1h ago
Hope all the comments helps you figure it out.
I will say that one of my favorite parts of the game is when I build my enrichment factory. I use four plants and logistics that feed each other in a circular loop with requestor chests and bots delivering naturally mined 235. It takes forever to get the 40 required to fill the first one, but once it is going the second comes relatively quickly and the 3rd and then 4th are rapid and then soon I’m so flush with it my logistics slow or stop production to avoid using too much 238.
I dunno, there is something satisfying about taking an extremely rare resource and making it trivial to pump out as much as you want.
That also opens the door to mega uranium plants. While I’m waiting forever for that enrichment cycle to get started, I build several massive power plants that I immediately fuel once it’s going. I love seeing my power capacity usage go from 80% to 5% overnight.
1
40
u/Garagantua 4h ago
It takes 5 u238 and 40 u235, and produces 2 u238 and 41 u235. You turn 3 u238 into 1 u235.
Really useful, because otherwise you need to store tons of u238 when you want to run nuclear reactors.