Radiation management and cleanup

[Luingar]

Describe the feature you'd like

Once radiation exists, it's kinda... there. There's no way to deal with it, other than allowing it to naturally decay, and that's kinda... bad. My suggestion has 2 parts

Part 1: Management
Once you have radiation, it just kills you. Makes it rather hard to live in this post-nuclear wasteland. Instead, there should be ways to mitigate the hazard (besides the hazmat suit). basically it needs ways to heal the damage you take from it.

Part 2: Cleanup
Once an area is afflicted, it takes a while to recover. Avoiding it tends to make the issue worse, due to chunk loading. There needs to be some way to actively reduce radiation in an area.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Iodine pills/radx/radaway (also milk, since it's already a sort of panacea): Buffs to remove radiation, instantly and/or over time, or just to not take damage from that radiation for a limited time so you can survive long enough to seek other options (or make it to the source of the radiation and survive long enough to fix the problem)

Clean Room generator: If the room this block is in is sealed, reduces the amount of radiation they're considered to be exposed to by a certain amount (potentially to zero). Alternatively can just affect a radius around it. Lets you have a base/outpost in an irradiated area.

Radiation shower: Directly reduces the radiation on a player, creates irradiated water, which needs to be treated to make clean water and spent nuclear waste, which can be treated as normal. Works better with foam below

Radiation Foam: solid block like sponge/concrete powder, but can be entered like cobweb. Absorbs Radiation in an area. When Saturated irradiated foam, which must be dealt with. Simplest use is with a nozzle like a bucket. Easier and safer way, as irradiated foam only creates radiation when destroyed from environmental decay or burning

Atmospheric filter: Uses energy to reduce radiation in an area. Creates nuclear waste, which must be dealt with using established processed. Lower maintenance and potentially faster than foam, but requires more complex infrastructure on site.

Additional context

Radiation in real life is a long term hazard that renders an area unlivable for extended periods of time. However this is a game, and in this game you can go to hell, and create a pocket Eden, in direct opposition to all that might try to prevent it. Radiation should also be solvable, assuming you're willing to invest enough time and resources.

[4censord]

Also, maybe a more endgame radiation cleaner:

Using high energy plasma from its integrated fusion reactor, the $NAME
is able to effectively annihilate any radioactive contamination.

It would be a multiblock, looking like someone bolted a laser cannon
onto a fusion reactor. The fusion reactor would be made from the normal
fusion reactor parts, the laser cannon would use SPS parts.
There would be a new block, $NAME Controller crafted from:

• A fusion controller
• A Laser
• Some SPS parts
• a Geiger counter?

Startup would be like with the fusion reactor, a hohlraum with dt-fuel and a laser pulse
During operation it would consume deuterium and tritium, working faster at higher consumption rates, and use some loads of power.

Maybe it needed to be cooled, then it would be the same principle as the fusion reactor

While running it would:

• Cleanse radiation in the surrounding chunks, the radius being in the 10s of chunks
• Remove radiation from players, eventually giving some temporary negative effect in the process
• Destroy all Uranium ore in the affected chunks, turning them to stone, cobble or gravel, or maybe to lead?

It might also destroy all machinery and pipes containing radioactive material.

[Cacalotlcoatl]

One thing I find annoying is that in real-life we regularly containerize AND TRANSPORT radioactive waste. Having the waste barrels immobile is a bit ridiculous. At least be able to either box them in cardboard boxes or pick them up. Also the punishment for placing a solar neutron activator in the wrong spot should not be that you must irradiate the entire area for months of game time because you still have 1 mb of polonium left in it that you can't get out. Seems a bit over the top. I get not breaking pipes that have waste in them or equipment with waste in it, but you should be able to empty the equipment and move the device without having an EPA catastrophe. The suggestion for a containment area device I think is a good one.

[pddshk]

There's an interesting workaround: having CarryOn mod installed you can carry radioactive parts safely.

Another one is to use spatial storage from AE2.

The option is to add lead shields, or lead containers, or shielding properties to lead blocks, allowing to manage radiation in special lead coated rooms (with lead doors as well).

[pddshk]

It would be also nice to see such things as radiation warning signs to place around dangerous zones