In preparation for building the new breeder I have been planning I wanted to test the explosive power of nuclear reactor cores.
The test beds were ReGlass and ReStone. I figure I want the result to be a solid outer shell of intact blocks as a safety margin.
The reactor core was placed in the center of the bounding box, 6 uranium in a 2x3 are left inside and it is then sealed in.
ReGlass: 6 uranium == Walls 4 thick; outer layer survives. (However lots of layers sacrificed)
ReStone: 6 uranium == Walls 3 thick; outer layer survives.
Very few inner blocks sacrificed (it seems that only a single lateral shot across 3 blocks managed to escape; the outer wall was unharmed; the reactor and 3 inner blocks were all that was empty, though I did not bother to check through corners (I did see some ReGlass kitty-corner to the core missing in that experiment)
As I understand it ReStone has a blast resistance value of something like 100-150 per block. Distribution of explosion being one thing, how powerful is the actual explosion? I remember seeing something like 45 in the config, but the uranium add more, and I'm also not sure of temperature over time is an issue (obviously temperature at terminal is merely terminal).
I could see a /very/ slow burning reactor convert a cone of material beneath it to simple moving lava; while a rapid heatup might have a few times the force of a slower heat up that did explode.