Nuclear Furnace

The Nuclear Furnace is created by arranging eight Nuclear Furnace Components into a 2x2 cube.

Once created, the Nuclear Furnace can smelt only ores at extreme speeds, but it requires Uranium Rods as fuel. Each rod smelts 60 items.

However, each uranium rod will build up nuclear waste, which needs to be purged by putting a Metal Barrel in the left slot, which will make the toxic waste meter go down by one, and turn that barrel into a Waste Drum. But if you allow it to overheat, the Nuclear Furnace will slowly turn yellow, shake violently and cause fires in the vicinity until, eventually, it explodes in a blast not dissimilar to a Nucleeper (a blast radius of about 12 blocks in all directions). When it explodes, Unrefined Waste will be scattered in every direction.

As a small bonus, when overheating, the smelting process does get faster, but it does not increase the amount smelted.

Notes

The maximum number of items that can be smelted before needing to be purged are 540 items, which is 9 Uranium Rods worth. On the tenth, it will explode.

When past the halfway point in overheating, the furnace will activate any Nuclear Sirens within a 128 block radius.

Rusty Barrels can not be used as a way to purge toxic waste.

There is an opening on top of the Nuclear Furnace, and when you drop down into it while it's running, you get a free Irradiated V.