Remember that wind power has 2 severe drawbacks:
*Horrible space requirement
*Can only be built high up for good effect, and combined with previous points it ruins the landscape
Though if you're building a skyscrape you can probably build them into your design, for awesome free non-obscurating power 
with 1.8 eff and a ton of materials to even make a reactor with 6 chambers and all its components. Iam pretty sure you can make a load of windgens for that. They dont need any refueling too :).
Actually I would agree that nuclear power is a bit meh, the system should be reworked with more risk but also more reward (eu)...
Edit: It still beats wind by far in compactness and and the fact that you can build it IN your base. Don't suppose anyone got a skybase?
Nuclear needs more components maybe a 2th tier of more powerfull and expensive components. I like that iridium plate that converts heat to eu.
But back to topic watermills are kinda useless compared to the alternatives.
Back offtopic, converting heat (Unwanted side product) to eu (the thing you WANT) is a bit silly IMO.
You wanted more risk reward? With that you need heat (risk) to make more eu (reward) :).
lets try to get back on topic and talk about watermills instead of pumping and nukes
I would be happy if every waterblock just granted 0.045 EU
This would give 0.945 EU per water mill and 11.34 in a tower of 12 (do you know how much friggin space that takes, and what a hazel it is to build).
It would place 
at the level of a Geothermal but but a lot more bulky. I would be free energy, but have to work hard for little (but not such ridiculously small amount as now).
I don't know if the op is still looking for a solution, but i'll leave my 2 cents anyway.
Since we all agree watermills are good for nothing, I sugest a simple Mark II reactor like this one:
http://test.vendaria.net/index.php?reac…XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX +1h/t
http://test.vendaria.net/index.php?reac…XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX +2h/t
No additional chambers, quite simple, cheap and safe. If all you need is power a few machines, It should be more than enough. 20eu/t for a total of 4M EU per 2 uran/cycle.
It needs to be water cooled and will heat just a tiny bit, because you will need to hook it with a cable- thus removing 1 block of water, but its negligible. Its so little heat that it will dissipate between cycles. ( Thats the 1ts one - 2nd one will need a bit of downtime if used constantly - 6+ full cycles )
If you keep in mind that 1 full cycle ( completely use all uran in the reactor ) is about 2h 30m. Theres hardly any babysitting involved.
Yeah, I was afraid of that.
I WISH there was a better way to fill lava cells, because I have some massive lava lakes near my base. Neither buildcraft nor IC2 pumps do much with lava, unfortunately. You can move a few bucketfuls at a time, not nearly enough.
aroo? the three lava likes i've drained with BC (v2.2.2) pumps disagree with you. Sure they missed a some source blocks here and there but i've got quite the tower of lava in a tank now. Haven't gotten around to it yet but I was going to try a ravine w/ lava floor I found next. (need to expand the tank)
Haven't actually built one for real yet (just in a test world with water) but the bucket filler addon works a treat for taking lava from a tank to fill buckets and then make cells out of.
Incidentally you can use that to dump buckets into a water mill but even then a water mill is quite pointless.
I don't know if the op is still looking for a solution, but i'll leave my 2 cents anyway.
Since we all agree watermills are good for nothing, I sugest a simple Mark II reactor like this one:
http://test.vendaria.net/index.php?reac…XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX +1h/t
http://test.vendaria.net/index.php?reac…XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX +2h/tNo additional chambers, quite simple, cheap and safe. If all you need is power a few machines, It should be more than enough. 20eu/t for a total of 4M EU per 2 uran/cycle.
It needs to be water cooled and will heat just a tiny bit, because you will need to hook it with a cable- thus removing 1 block of water, but its negligible. Its so little heat that it will dissipate between cycles. ( Thats the 1ts one - 2nd one will need a bit of downtime if used constantly - 6+ full cycles )If you keep in mind that 1 full cycle ( completely use all uran in the reactor ) is about 2h 30m. Theres hardly any babysitting involved.
http://test.vendaria.net/index.php?reactor=0XXXCHXXCUUCXXHCXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX</a>
Simpler and cheaper, still 1 heat 
Edit: Anyone tried making BC fill watermills with water? 2eu/t is quite neat...
Also @ the person wanting almost 1 eu/t: That would be twice as much as solars (works at night) with a much cheaper recipe, that works anywhere (A perk no other no-fuel reactor has). Thus, OP 
Edit: Anyone tried making BC fill watermills with water? 2eu/t is quite neat...Also @ the person wanting almost 1 eu/t: That would be twice as much as solars (works at night) with a much cheaper recipe, that works anywhere (A perk no other no-fuel reactor has). Thus, OP
You do need a bunch of other mods to do this automated. Yes you can set it up easily, it does create 2eu/t day and night. But it does require a lot of maintenance day and night. If you automate the water mill with other mods you choose for the OP (debatable if indeed OP). (Though the amount of effort and space it takes to make it automated is still high in my opinion). Would not mind seeing the watermill accept cells but create less eu/t then bucket (0.5 or 1.0 eu/t?).
For some cool (and usefull) watermills, check out Better then Wolves. Theres even an addon to use it with IC2.
I do realize however that they are a tech from a past era, IC needs a moddern version. One thing that comes to mind are turbines from hydroeletric powerplants.
Simpler and cheaper, still 1 heat
Just cheaper if you don`t count babbysit time. You forgot to mention that it is at least a Mark II capable of running only 1 cycle before cooling, it also might melt the coolants making it a Mark III and possibly blowing up his mine and his machines if left unnatended. But I won`t test that far, as you should have done instead of just trying to beat my design without putting any effort or thought in it.
Also @ the person wanting almost 1 eu/t: That would be twice as much as solars (works at night) with a much cheaper recipe, that works anywhere (A perk no other no-fuel reactor has). Thus, OP
You can always sleep. (wow, suddenly solars work 24/7... if you want it. I think being able to double the energy produced by something as easy as having a bed is super OP!)
The water mill has an effective space requirement which is 18 to 26 times larger than the solar panel, and because of its special setup (21 water blocks) is thus much less mobile (and is harder to expand on).
Do you think a design which is 259 times larger than a 
but yields almost the same is OP? k...
Well I think a design (at the present output) which is 987 times larger than a but only yields 11.5 EU/t is UP...
If every water tower (12 ) granted the same as maybe ½ a which would be ~=0.020 EU per water block. (Note: that is more than double the amount of 
than for a setup with equal output using solars)
TL;DR: To be balanced to both the Solar Panel and the Geothermal, the Water mill needs its output doubled (here space is a factor to be reckoned with).
Make a high platform, make some wind generators and a power line back (be sure to use a transformer to boost your already nice eu output) and voila you got a easy expandable farm that produces a ton of energy (makes alot more than nuclear reactor in cost/eu output). Way cheaper and requires no babysitting at all than a nuclear reactor. When properly placed windgens make between 2-4 eu/tick.
I had a picture somewhere of my 16 windgen farm setup on this forum.
http://test.vendaria.net/index.php?reactor=0XXXCHXXCUUCXXHCXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX</a>Simpler and cheaper, still 1 heat
Edit: Anyone tried making BC fill watermills with water? 2eu/t is quite neat...
I tried, the design is not so hard, I can't show it right now because I'm using vanilla minecraft right now (I have a backup of the modded minecraft folder if I have to show it).
You can always sleep. (wow, suddenly solars work 24/7... if you want it. I think being able to double the energy produced by something as easy as having a bed is super OP!)
The water mill has an effective space requirement which is 18 to 26 times larger than the solar panel, and because of its special setup (21 water blocks) is thus much less mobile (and is harder to expand on).
Do you think a design which is 259 times larger than a
Well I think a design (at the present
If every water tower (12TL;DR: To be balanced to both the Solar Panel and the Geothermal, the Water mill needs its output doubled (here space is a factor to be reckoned with).
Water Mill output doubled? Well, at one point in IC1 the water mill recipe made 2 water mills instead of one, so maybe that needs to be brought back.
Edit: Anyone tried making BC fill watermills with water? 2eu/t is quite neat...
I've seen a vid where someone did this running 8 water mills with 2 pumps. Tested for myself last night with 1 pump and 1 water mill. Was easily able to set it up with just 2 wooden pipes and a gold pipe (to make it faster) along with 2 redstone engines, a batbox, few bits of cable and an IC Pump + chest. Now I just need to figure out how many water mills 1 pump can service. I plan on making an array with 8 water mills (which would only output 16 EU/t so 1/2 of a 32 solar panel array, or 100% day/night runtime on the solars) I expect it'll take up more space then a 32 panel array though, but require far less resources to produce. Might expand it to 16 water mills. [Though I'm going to cheat and use Zeldo's AdditionalPipes to make things easier on myself]
Edit: Additional Notes: Even though the wiki says the pump is Teir 2 technology, MV does cause it to explode [as expected, blew one up before testing, just to prove a point] so maybe someone should fix that in the wiki. Also, it appears pumps use ~200 EU / cycle (so that amount would need to be reduced from the water mills output in my calculations, making them 1.8 1.6 EU/t instead of 2 EU/t). Also, unusual fact about the pump it still uses random amounts of energy when it's just sitting there sending a water fountain out above it [when there's no buckets/cells for it to fill], making the actual EU/cycle cost harder to calculate.
If you have the mats i suggest making this:
https://forum.industrial-craft.net/index.php?page…d&threadID=2060
Yes thats right 295 eu/tick with 3.93 eff with no downtime and no meltdowns. You do need redpower 2 for it.
Same system could be used to put water buckets in watermills i think only you will get a much lower output but still usefull early on.
I would say, they are. I have yet to see any pratical way to use them, and their output is simply weak.
