What was Nether reactor core in Minecraft Bedrock?

Minecraft has gone through tons of updates, and with the Wild update officially announced, the game is at least going to get to version 1.19.

Most updates bring new items, mobs, biomes, blocks, and so much more. However, not everything makes it to the next update. Sometimes, items, blocks, and more get left behind for bigger and better options.

Most recently, the ores (iron and gold primarily) were replaced with raw items. Iron ore doesn't drop anymore; raw iron does.

Many items were left behind long ago, just like the Nether reactor core, which is no longer in vanilla Minecraft. What was it, though?

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Minecraft Nether reactor core

It was added in the 0.5 update to Minecraft Pocket Edition Alpha and the 0.1 update to the New Nintendo 3DS Edition. The Nether reactor core has since been removed from all versions of the game.

When they were in the game, though, Nether reactor cores could be used to create Nether reactors, which would generate a tower of netherrack centered on the reactor. This tower was known as the Nether Spire.

Nether reactors were used to get netherrack, which can now be found in the Nether (Image via Mojang)

Nether reactor cores would drop six iron ingots and three diamonds, which was the exact crafting recipe. Obviously, these were expensive to make.

Due to the addition of the Nether, these items became obsolete. Minecraft players no longer needed to generate netherrack as they could just venture into the Nether.

Nether reactors were admittedly a safer way to get those items, but having a new dimension is undoubtedly better than just a generator. After the Nether was introduced, these cores and the reactors had no use and were subsequently removed.

They're not found in Creative and cannot be summoned, either. The only way to use them would be to access an older version of Minecraft or use a mod.

For those wondering, the cores and reactors were removed in version 0.12 of Minecraft Pocket Edition.