New Reactor Components - UU 'cost', consumables and explosions.

The UUM cost is probably what it takes to build a the ores etc that the reactor is ultimately made out of from UUM instead of mining them.

The other consumable is copper. For neutron reflectors and dual/quad cells. I went through some pretty insane copper levels before I realized that uranium efficiency isn't everything.

There's a thread on automated SUC via component extraction, though it uses coolant cells and a second reactor to cool them, might want to check it out. But there are plenty of designs that will manage good power without anything fancy like that.

My experience with meltdowns is that a single thick wall of reinforced stone plus a reinforced door has not resulted in the destruction of stone separated by another 3 blocks of air make sure the containment chamber is not close enough to the reactor to melt. Disclaimer: I've only had one meltdown and I suspect that explosion size is variable, personally my containment chambers are underground for exactly this reason. You can shore up the weak spot where the wire comes out with more CF, a sprayer will cover wires.

Other running costs are copper, iron, tin, and coal for reflectors, copper is the only significant one though, dense copper plates are not cheap.

You don't have to spend UU. That's just an option for how to get the copper/redstone/lapis. I'm pretty sure its just there for the sake of quickly comparing the cost of different setups too.

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can you still achieve a better reactor (net EU output/ ) than a tradition passive cooled reactor that requires no input?

The max efficiency you can get is 7, that's doable with passive cooling only (and impossible with LZHs, as the uranium can't be surrounded on all 4 sides). At best you could scale up to a very large 8 quad cell setup at efficiency 6. Just be prepared to spend over ten stacks of copper a cycle scaling that high.