3 ms·

> currently only 1 or 2 new reactors are under construction and both late and way over budget. So in a few decades France has forgotten how to build reactors o

> currently only 1 or 2 new reactors are under construction and both late and way over budget. So in a few decades France has forgotten how to build reactors on time and in an affordable way?

michael1999 5y ago
Booms generate an educated cohort. A stalled boom freezes this now-oversized cohort in place, and leaves no job openings for the next generation. Then, a generation later, retirement can leave an industry incapable of past glories.
pydry 5y ago
It's never been cheap. It's previously been heavily subsidized, often as a means to maintaining a domestic nuclear economy as a means of maintaining nuclear arsenals.
_ph_ 5y ago
As have all western countries. Building a new nuclear power plant at the safety level one would expect today is hugely expensive.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  South Korea hasn't forgotten. They have gotten the costs down quite a bit.
  - _ph_ 5y ago
    How far?
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      https://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs-us-france-korea https://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs-u... This has some useful charts. It shows that nuclear still has economy of scale to improve, if we give it the chance. The big difficulty for nuclear is public pressure/fear of accidents. People are much more afraid of "big scary nuclear accident" vs. probabilistic deaths caused by air pollution, even if the deaths from the latter is in the tens of thousands and the former is in the dozens. That fear of public/policy backlash makes raising capital in order to actually benefit from those economics of scale very difficult.
pas 5y ago
It's not surprising at all. Everything has been debundled, privatized, consolidated, streamlined, modernized. This is not "bad" in itself, but doing big public projects this way is not efficient, because this way of organization needs big volume to become efficient. Basically we need to order 100+ reactors to get them cheap and fast. (And we need to have them use truly standardized interchangeable (modular) components. Naturally, modularity has an overhead, but it pays off if there's a long term for it to pay off. As long as we only build a few plants treating each of them as different allows for some local optimizations, but that is against large volume manufacturing, maintenance, etc.)
mijowi 5y ago
Projects taking significantly longer and costing significantly more seems to be a common theme these days. See any U.S. military project…
galvin 5y ago
Most reactors in France are 1st gen whereas the new one being built is 3rd gen and the first of its kind in France. The increased safety has made construction more complicated than previous reactors but a lot of those issues are being worked out so future reactors would probably be built more quickly and cost efficiently.

> currently only 1 or 2 new reactors are under construction and both late and way over budget. So in a few decades France has forgotten how to build reactors on time and in an affordable way?

michael1999 5y ago

Booms generate an educated cohort. A stalled boom freezes this now-oversized cohort in place, and leaves no job openings for the next generation. Then, a generation later, retirement can leave an industry incapable of past glories.

pydry 5y ago

It's never been cheap. It's previously been heavily subsidized, often as a means to maintaining a domestic nuclear economy as a means of maintaining nuclear arsenals.

_ph_ 5y ago

As have all western countries. Building a new nuclear power plant at the safety level one would expect today is hugely expensive.

whimsicalism 5y ago
South Korea hasn't forgotten. They have gotten the costs down quite a bit.
- _ph_ 5y ago
  How far?
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    https://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs-us-france-korea https://www.vox.com/2016/2/29/11132930/nuclear-power-costs-u... This has some useful charts. It shows that nuclear still has economy of scale to improve, if we give it the chance. The big difficulty for nuclear is public pressure/fear of accidents. People are much more afraid of "big scary nuclear accident" vs. probabilistic deaths caused by air pollution, even if the deaths from the latter is in the tens of thousands and the former is in the dozens. That fear of public/policy backlash makes raising capital in order to actually benefit from those economics of scale very difficult.

pas 5y ago

It's not surprising at all. Everything has been debundled, privatized, consolidated, streamlined, modernized. This is not "bad" in itself, but doing big public projects this way is not efficient, because this way of organization needs big volume to become efficient. Basically we need to order 100+ reactors to get them cheap and fast. (And we need to have them use truly standardized interchangeable (modular) components. Naturally, modularity has an overhead, but it pays off if there's a long term for it to pay off. As long as we only build a few plants treating each of them as different allows for some local optimizations, but that is against large volume manufacturing, maintenance, etc.)

mijowi 5y ago

Projects taking significantly longer and costing significantly more seems to be a common theme these days. See any U.S. military project…

galvin 5y ago

Most reactors in France are 1st gen whereas the new one being built is 3rd gen and the first of its kind in France. The increased safety has made construction more complicated than previous reactors but a lot of those issues are being worked out so future reactors would probably be built more quickly and cost efficiently.