It consumes plutonium, but does not generate energy or heat. This pretty well breaks the game, I don't have the patience to bypass this building.
I believe I also noticed some other issues along the way, it seemed like things would temporarily not work, and then suddenly start working. Maybe I just wasn't keeping good track of things, but I felt like I was doing a pretty good job. It happened multiple times, literally one moment I'm doing completely fine, 0% heat, then the next moment I'm on the meltdown screen. I'm pretty sure I didn't run out of water or hit max power capacity or anything like that. Sorry I can't be any more specific.