3 ms·

Not only the US. The Flamanville EPR has suffered increased costs because the welders that actually learned how to do nuclear-level welds had retired by the tim

Not only the US. The Flamanville EPR has suffered increased costs because the welders that actually learned how to do nuclear-level welds had retired by the time someone decided to build a new nuclear reactor after Chernobyl. Additionally, the foundries that build a key part of the nuclear core (I belive it’s called a chaudron in French, but it’s basically a big metal boiler) were not as good as they were, because they had to actually remake it twice. It is horrifying but we lost a technological capacity. Here’s a good source in French on that subject: https://www.economie.gouv.fr/rapport-epr-flamanville# https://www.economie.gouv.fr/rapport-epr-flamanville#

manfredo 6y ago
It's less that we've lost a technological capacity, and more than we are no longer leveraging economies of scale. France and the US built a lot of nuclear power plants in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s (well, mostly just France in the 1980s). Nuclear power plants often require specialized parts that aren't found in any other industry. That means when one-off plants are built an entire portion of the supply chain needs to be rebuilt, but when a serial run of plants are constructed (as was done in France) overhead costs of setting up the supply chain are spread out across all plants.
makomk 6y ago
I think you may have missed the punchline in the story of the defective castings for the Flamanville reactor pressure vessel: the foundry responsible were exactly as good as they used to be, their previous castings going back decades and in use at existing nuclear power plants had similar defects, and they'd just managed to cover it up for all that time. I suspect the same might be true of some of the welding on the existing nuclear fleet too; they've definitely discovered some welding defects.

3 ms·

Not only the US. The Flamanville EPR has suffered increased costs because the welders that actually learned how to do nuclear-level welds had retired by the tim

by vianneychevalie 6y ago

manfredo 6y ago
It's less that we've lost a technological capacity, and more than we are no longer leveraging economies of scale. France and the US built a lot of nuclear power plants in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s (well, mostly just France in the 1980s). Nuclear power plants often require specialized parts that aren't found in any other industry. That means when one-off plants are built an entire portion of the supply chain needs to be rebuilt, but when a serial run of plants are constructed (as was done in France) overhead costs of setting up the supply chain are spread out across all plants.
makomk 6y ago
I think you may have missed the punchline in the story of the defective castings for the Flamanville reactor pressure vessel: the foundry responsible were exactly as good as they used to be, their previous castings going back decades and in use at existing nuclear power plants had similar defects, and they'd just managed to cover it up for all that time. I suspect the same might be true of some of the welding on the existing nuclear fleet too; they've definitely discovered some welding defects.