[Suicide Junkie]

Re: Hawking reactor
That was a partly-modded Quantum Reactor. The level 5000 tech requirement is to disable it until it is ready.

Re: Supply usage.
All the weapons' supply costs have been tweaked. Supply cost is meant to represent physical supplies, such as bullets, drive fuel, and other types of consumable matter.
The other side of the coin is energy costs. That gets represented by radioactives maintenance.

As such, Energy weapons tend to have little to no supply use. They cost dearly in radioactives, though.
Bullets and missiles, on the other hand, require only token radioactives for things such as the reloading mechanism. They bleed supplies like there is no tomorrow, though.

It should be fairly obvious that the energy weapons will be best for attack fleets in enemy territory, while physical weapons are best for defense fleets, who can sit on top of resupply depots, and save maintenance costs.