Balefire

Balefire is a very special "material" in NTM. In layman's terms, it is a powerful energy lattice (aka Gold-198) imbued with antimatter. It comes in shards and "eggs" which can be put into rods.

It is obscenely radioactive and pyrophoric (until put into rods). Curiously, shards only stack to 16 and eggs cannot stack at all. It is notably green.

Production
The easiest way to obtain a Balefire shard is to defuse and deconstruct a Dud.

Alternatively, you can "milk" a dud using the magnetic extractor. This produces antimatter and gasesous balefire cells (you need empty cells beforehand obv) with antimatter cells being more likely than it. Gaseous balefire cells act like ingots and need you to fuse them in a crafting table to create a shard. These have 50 RAD/s each. Doing this may explode the dud sooner or later.

The main way is to produce Thermonuclear ashes (which is also a major Balefire byproduct) acquired from spent Flashgold RBMK fuel.

Uses
Due to its incredible energy potential, it has a variety of uses.

When put into rods, it makes an incredibly long-lasting Breeding Reactor fuel. Though it only provides 2 HEAT, if bred with 4 HEAT, it becomes Blazing and at the loss of some operations, it becomes even more radioactive and can provide 4 HEAT.

BF Rocket fuel.

Balefire artillery shells.

Its own specialized bomb, presumably a modern version of a Dud.

Shards provide 15 to the Custom Nuke's antimatter stage with Eggs providing 150.

Eggs can even be put into a bowl and scrambled for consumption. Add some "ham" while you're at it. "I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam-I-Am."

Trivia
A literal fire also simply called "Balefire" is created in the wake of Balefire or antimatter detonations. It is green, cannot be put out easily, and gives the Contaminated status effect. The easiest way to control the spread of balefire is to use a foam fire extinguisher, as it cannot be extinguished using water.