6 ms·

2025 is a pipedream -- they'd be lucky to break ground by 2025. > Median construction time required for nuclear reactors worldwide oscillated from around 84 mo

2025 is a pipedream -- they'd be lucky to break ground by 2025. > Median construction time required for nuclear reactors worldwide oscillated from around 84 months to 117 months, from 1981 to 2019 respectively. https://www.statista.com/statistics/712841/median-construction-time-for-reactors-since-1981/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/712841/median-constructi...

ethbr0 5y ago
We need a law that for megaprojects, local governments and/or federal agencies must respond to requests within X days, or be fined an escalating per-day rate. And if their responses are incomplete, same. The timeline ballooning as all external parties take their time weighing in and covering their asses, and costs associated with idling construction waiting for same, are getting ridiculous. Either it's a priority (in which case everyone should treat it as such), or it's not (in which case we should accept we just can't build non-priority projects over a certain scale).
- bduerst 5y ago
  You'd never get megaprojects built then, because no-one would reasonably commit to them given the risk that they undergo scope creep and the steepness of that punishment.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    Yeah, that would simply put more obstacles in place. We need less ass covering and bureaucracy and more action. You don't solve that by creating more risk and the need for more ass covering.
- themitigating 5y ago
  Sometimes a five year delay could be a community that sues over a new reactor, then appeals, appeals, etc. Then if that lawsuit was posted here the title might be "US government tries to rush reactor, threatens small town life".
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > We need a law that for megaprojects, local governments and/or federal agencies must respond to requests within X days, or be fined an escalating per-day rate. Other than the fact that the federal government fining the federal government has no actual effect, all that making a high-legal stakes response timeline with impossible to concretely define completeness requirements would do is increase litigation and litigation costs around such projects.
  - xyzzyz 5y ago
    The fine proceeds would go to applicant, of course.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  IIRC one of the big problems is that the construction standards a nuclear plant has to meet are the ones in effect when it comes online, not the ones in effect when construction begins, and then costs balloon because the requirements change multiple times in the middle of construction. If the construction requirements of 1980 are sufficient for a plant operating ten years from now that came online in 1980 then the construction requirements of this year should be sufficient for a plant operating ten years from now even if it hasn't come online yet. So the obvious fix for this is to use the requirements as of the day construction begins rather than the day it ends.
  - dividedbyzero 5y ago
    The Maas river at the Tihange plant in Belgium beat its projected 1000-year maximum by a sizable percentage this year, using up about half of the plant's safety margin. Climate change makes such events harder to predict and if such a thing were to happen during construction, you'd absolutely have to reconsider flooding defenses while you still can, anything else would be irresponsible. This sort of cutting corners to essentially make these plants more profitable is (in part) what gives nuclear such a bad rep. Given that several of our supposedly invulnerable plants had serious incidents, I'd say we're still pretty bad at designing and running these things, and in no position to skimp on safety.
    - nickff 5y ago
      >"Given that several of our supposedly invulnerable plants had serious incidents, I'd say we're still pretty bad at designing and running these things, and in no position to skimp on safety." The plants that have had issues were known to be the oldest and most vulnerable ones.
    - tremon 5y ago
      Also, re: Tihange: the reactors at Tihange were designed for 40 years of operation, so Tihange 1 should have been shut down in 2015 (and Tihange 2 should be a year from now). If the operator and the Belgian government had adequate planning skills, a replacement reactor (or other power generator) should have been completed by then, and the new reactor could have been built using updated safety margins. Tihange is a good example of the same political inaction that gave us this climate crisis. It has nothing to do with cutting corners, nor about "designing and running these things". It is (political) complacency, not mismanagement of the plant that's the main problem.
- belorn 5y ago
  It would be easier to just make a law against continued consumption of energy produced from fossil fuels, with the fines focused on when the government eventually breaks the law in order to prevent blackouts. If you forbid fossil fuels at a point in time (say 2030), the energy market will know ahead when demand will exceed supply. There aren't better incentives avilable if you want the mega projects built on time
asdff 5y ago
7-10 years is not bad at all. New coal plants take 8 years to build (1). Seems for energy projects this is par for the course. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/a-new-coal-fired-power-plant-would-cost-3-billion-drive-up-energy-prices-and-take-eight-years-to-build-20180403-p4z7jg.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/a-new-coal-fired-pow...
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  Large coal plants. At least one of the reasons why solar and wind really got off the ground is because the marginal cost of one more installation is not very high. Panels on the roof may not be the most efficient, but they are actually feasible for a homeowner to purchase and install.
- epistasis 5y ago
  7-10 years is a death sentence if we need to transition in the next 15 years, by 2035. Especially since we don't know which design to build, and our current nuclear fleet is rapidly aging out. The nuclear industry will be lucky if its able to pull off enough construction to replace reactors that age out. There's no chance of nuclear becoming a backbone of our new grid, when we would need to produce 400GW of new nuclear. The napkin math does not work out. However, renewables and storage are scaling their production at just barely a high enough rate, if we continue on the same exponential growth curves we have been on for the next decade. Hopefully production will scale even faster, now that solar is the cheapest form of new energy.
  - asdff 5y ago
    I thought the whole issue with wind and solar is that the storage issue isn't yet solved. Nuclear on the other hand is 70 year old technology that is proven to be capable of being the majority energy source of a nation.
    - epistasis 5y ago
      France is at 75% nuclear; we can get to 75% renewables without storage. And storage is quickly getting solved. California has gone from almost nothing to more than a GW of storage in a year, and is adding more GW at the moment. Even the "free market" in Texas is choosing to add many GW of storage, even more GW of solar and wind, and almost no new natural gas. And in the US, the majority of new solar projects include storage now, because for a long time there has been more DC production power than ability to convert it to AC, and a few hours of storage makes financial sense because storage has gotten so cheap. As it gets cheaper, there will be bigger an bigger amounts of storage added to every renewables project, on site. Meanwhile we can't build nuclear in Western countries anymore. France can't, the US can't, the UK is likely going to fail. The problem in the nuclear industry is that they are stuck on getting even first of a kind plants out. The idea of scaling up to hundreds of GW in the next few years is a pipe dream for the us and Europe. Maybe China will be able to build their 150 planned reactors, but even if they do they will be building far far more renewables than that. The production capacity of modern Western economies is very well suited to wind, solar, and storage. It is absolutely awful at massive construction projects, like nuclear. Construction productivity has barely changed at all since the 1970s, while other fields' productivity has soared. We should take advantage of that. And this ain't even talking about the new types of super cheap long duration storage that have high energy/power ratios. There's iron batteries in both traditional solid forms and in flow forms. Noe that the market need is becoming apparent, there are new chemistries being developed all the time that are suitable for stationary storage but not as well suited for cars and other mobile applications. Which is fantastic, as we can then reserve all that quickly growing production capacity for transport.
jdavis703 5y ago
The French have a streamlined regulatory framework including standardized reactor designs and limited public comment that helps to reduces their costs and timelines. Source: chapter 6 of “Nuclear Power: A Brief Introduction.”
- tobessebot 5y ago
  In theory yes, in practice... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Flamanville_3_(France) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Flamanvi...
  - epistasis 5y ago
    I think what this points out is that the problem isn't government regulation, it's incompetent design, engineering, procurement, and construction. The stories in the US about VC Summer and Vogtle construction failures do not point to government regulation being the problem, they point to basic flaws throughout the construction process. Design of the AP1000 that is "unconstructable" according to the EPC contractor, who then goes on to build their own unproven design, which then requires an external check. The problem wasn't that the design had to be certified by the government, the problem was that design wasn't in touch with construction.
rsj_hn 5y ago
It is really all the lawsuits, environmental impact reports, and bureaucracy that slows infrastructure down. We used to be able to build things quite quickly. E.g. The Bay Bridge was built in 5 years for $77 million (~$1.5 Billion today) in 1931-1936. This is not ground breaking, but law passed to bridge opening. Just replacing the Eastern span cost $6.5 Billion and took ~18 years to build (1995-2013) from law passed to section opening.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Its not about laws, its lack of skills - we hollowed out manufacturing, have outsource-mania, and we are surprised we can't build? Decisions have consequences.
Xixi 5y ago
EDF has been quietly acquiring land around existing nuclear power plants for many years (like Cattenom, near Luxembourg), with the unstated but likely goal of expanding them rather than going for brand new sites. In some cases EDF even planned building more reactors from the very beginning, for example at the nuclear power plant of Belleville-sur-Loire: everything was planned for 4 reactors, but only 2 were built. So they can build two extra right there, no need to find a new site. The current not so small problem is that EDF needs to learn how to build nuclear reactors again. That's what they are currently doing, at great cost and great delays... But if the political will is there, they can start to break ground quite literally tomorrow.
raxxorrax 5y ago
Make that 2050 until it affects emissions positively.

ethbr0 5y ago

We need a law that for megaprojects, local governments and/or federal agencies must respond to requests within X days, or be fined an escalating per-day rate. And if their responses are incomplete, same. The timeline ballooning as all external parties take their time weighing in and covering their asses, and costs associated with idling construction waiting for same, are getting ridiculous. Either it's a priority (in which case everyone should treat it as such), or it's not (in which case we should accept we just can't build non-priority projects over a certain scale).

bduerst 5y ago
You'd never get megaprojects built then, because no-one would reasonably commit to them given the risk that they undergo scope creep and the steepness of that punishment.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  Yeah, that would simply put more obstacles in place. We need less ass covering and bureaucracy and more action. You don't solve that by creating more risk and the need for more ass covering.
themitigating 5y ago
Sometimes a five year delay could be a community that sues over a new reactor, then appeals, appeals, etc. Then if that lawsuit was posted here the title might be "US government tries to rush reactor, threatens small town life".
dragonwriter 5y ago
> We need a law that for megaprojects, local governments and/or federal agencies must respond to requests within X days, or be fined an escalating per-day rate. Other than the fact that the federal government fining the federal government has no actual effect, all that making a high-legal stakes response timeline with impossible to concretely define completeness requirements would do is increase litigation and litigation costs around such projects.
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  The fine proceeds would go to applicant, of course.
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
IIRC one of the big problems is that the construction standards a nuclear plant has to meet are the ones in effect when it comes online, not the ones in effect when construction begins, and then costs balloon because the requirements change multiple times in the middle of construction. If the construction requirements of 1980 are sufficient for a plant operating ten years from now that came online in 1980 then the construction requirements of this year should be sufficient for a plant operating ten years from now even if it hasn't come online yet. So the obvious fix for this is to use the requirements as of the day construction begins rather than the day it ends.
- dividedbyzero 5y ago
  The Maas river at the Tihange plant in Belgium beat its projected 1000-year maximum by a sizable percentage this year, using up about half of the plant's safety margin. Climate change makes such events harder to predict and if such a thing were to happen during construction, you'd absolutely have to reconsider flooding defenses while you still can, anything else would be irresponsible. This sort of cutting corners to essentially make these plants more profitable is (in part) what gives nuclear such a bad rep. Given that several of our supposedly invulnerable plants had serious incidents, I'd say we're still pretty bad at designing and running these things, and in no position to skimp on safety.
  - nickff 5y ago
    >"Given that several of our supposedly invulnerable plants had serious incidents, I'd say we're still pretty bad at designing and running these things, and in no position to skimp on safety." The plants that have had issues were known to be the oldest and most vulnerable ones.
  - tremon 5y ago
    Also, re: Tihange: the reactors at Tihange were designed for 40 years of operation, so Tihange 1 should have been shut down in 2015 (and Tihange 2 should be a year from now). If the operator and the Belgian government had adequate planning skills, a replacement reactor (or other power generator) should have been completed by then, and the new reactor could have been built using updated safety margins. Tihange is a good example of the same political inaction that gave us this climate crisis. It has nothing to do with cutting corners, nor about "designing and running these things". It is (political) complacency, not mismanagement of the plant that's the main problem.
belorn 5y ago
It would be easier to just make a law against continued consumption of energy produced from fossil fuels, with the fines focused on when the government eventually breaks the law in order to prevent blackouts. If you forbid fossil fuels at a point in time (say 2030), the energy market will know ahead when demand will exceed supply. There aren't better incentives avilable if you want the mega projects built on time

asdff 5y ago

7-10 years is not bad at all. New coal plants take 8 years to build (1). Seems for energy projects this is par for the course. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/a-new-coal-fired-power-plant-would-cost-3-billion-drive-up-energy-prices-and-take-eight-years-to-build-20180403-p4z7jg.html https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/a-new-coal-fired-pow...

bobthepanda 5y ago
Large coal plants. At least one of the reasons why solar and wind really got off the ground is because the marginal cost of one more installation is not very high. Panels on the roof may not be the most efficient, but they are actually feasible for a homeowner to purchase and install.
epistasis 5y ago
7-10 years is a death sentence if we need to transition in the next 15 years, by 2035. Especially since we don't know which design to build, and our current nuclear fleet is rapidly aging out. The nuclear industry will be lucky if its able to pull off enough construction to replace reactors that age out. There's no chance of nuclear becoming a backbone of our new grid, when we would need to produce 400GW of new nuclear. The napkin math does not work out. However, renewables and storage are scaling their production at just barely a high enough rate, if we continue on the same exponential growth curves we have been on for the next decade. Hopefully production will scale even faster, now that solar is the cheapest form of new energy.
- asdff 5y ago
  I thought the whole issue with wind and solar is that the storage issue isn't yet solved. Nuclear on the other hand is 70 year old technology that is proven to be capable of being the majority energy source of a nation.
  - epistasis 5y ago
    France is at 75% nuclear; we can get to 75% renewables without storage. And storage is quickly getting solved. California has gone from almost nothing to more than a GW of storage in a year, and is adding more GW at the moment. Even the "free market" in Texas is choosing to add many GW of storage, even more GW of solar and wind, and almost no new natural gas. And in the US, the majority of new solar projects include storage now, because for a long time there has been more DC production power than ability to convert it to AC, and a few hours of storage makes financial sense because storage has gotten so cheap. As it gets cheaper, there will be bigger an bigger amounts of storage added to every renewables project, on site. Meanwhile we can't build nuclear in Western countries anymore. France can't, the US can't, the UK is likely going to fail. The problem in the nuclear industry is that they are stuck on getting even first of a kind plants out. The idea of scaling up to hundreds of GW in the next few years is a pipe dream for the us and Europe. Maybe China will be able to build their 150 planned reactors, but even if they do they will be building far far more renewables than that. The production capacity of modern Western economies is very well suited to wind, solar, and storage. It is absolutely awful at massive construction projects, like nuclear. Construction productivity has barely changed at all since the 1970s, while other fields' productivity has soared. We should take advantage of that. And this ain't even talking about the new types of super cheap long duration storage that have high energy/power ratios. There's iron batteries in both traditional solid forms and in flow forms. Noe that the market need is becoming apparent, there are new chemistries being developed all the time that are suitable for stationary storage but not as well suited for cars and other mobile applications. Which is fantastic, as we can then reserve all that quickly growing production capacity for transport.

jdavis703 5y ago

The French have a streamlined regulatory framework including standardized reactor designs and limited public comment that helps to reduces their costs and timelines. Source: chapter 6 of “Nuclear Power: A Brief Introduction.”

tobessebot 5y ago
In theory yes, in practice... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Flamanville_3_(France) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Flamanvi...
- epistasis 5y ago
  I think what this points out is that the problem isn't government regulation, it's incompetent design, engineering, procurement, and construction. The stories in the US about VC Summer and Vogtle construction failures do not point to government regulation being the problem, they point to basic flaws throughout the construction process. Design of the AP1000 that is "unconstructable" according to the EPC contractor, who then goes on to build their own unproven design, which then requires an external check. The problem wasn't that the design had to be certified by the government, the problem was that design wasn't in touch with construction.

rsj_hn 5y ago

It is really all the lawsuits, environmental impact reports, and bureaucracy that slows infrastructure down. We used to be able to build things quite quickly. E.g. The Bay Bridge was built in 5 years for $77 million (~$1.5 Billion today) in 1931-1936. This is not ground breaking, but law passed to bridge opening. Just replacing the Eastern span cost $6.5 Billion and took ~18 years to build (1995-2013) from law passed to section opening.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
Its not about laws, its lack of skills - we hollowed out manufacturing, have outsource-mania, and we are surprised we can't build? Decisions have consequences.

Xixi 5y ago

EDF has been quietly acquiring land around existing nuclear power plants for many years (like Cattenom, near Luxembourg), with the unstated but likely goal of expanding them rather than going for brand new sites. In some cases EDF even planned building more reactors from the very beginning, for example at the nuclear power plant of Belleville-sur-Loire: everything was planned for 4 reactors, but only 2 were built. So they can build two extra right there, no need to find a new site. The current not so small problem is that EDF needs to learn how to build nuclear reactors again. That's what they are currently doing, at great cost and great delays... But if the political will is there, they can start to break ground quite literally tomorrow.

raxxorrax 5y ago

Make that 2050 until it affects emissions positively.