Keep Drive Core or Give it to Morda

The key point in the give it to the Krogan/keep it for the nexus "debate," to me at least, is that without the materials to build the extra defenses people are claiming the reactor could power, they couldn't even BUILD said defenses for the power to be used. The current systems were designed for specific power requirements. Any shielding already present wouldn't benefit from more power.

Think of any electrical system, then increase the voltage/wattage by an obscene amount. The system fries itself, because it wasn't designed to handle that kind of electrical load. There's still a serious lack of materials even to build the mundane things the AI needs to build (as the leadership mentioned), and that tells me there just isn't anything available to go full militarization.

Use the turrets outside the outposts? What will the outposts use to defend themselves from any determined kett attack? Pull those guns out, and the colonies will be wiped out in short order. Without those outposts, we're back to the situation that was present before we founded them: the AI starving, and ultimately the loss of the entire Initiative.

Now, i didn't mull all this over when I made my decision. The power core would do more good in a colony, to power expansion. And since Eladaan is where the core was located to begin with, and powering the Krogan colony would benefit the AI colonists who settled along with them, yeah, I give it to the Krogan. Trying to bootstrap the power core onto systems that weren't designed for it is nonsensical, and with the overall derth of supplies, going full military just wasn't an option, not with basic survival needs still being unmet.