12 ms·

The article misses another important aspect: loss of nuclear competency. Between the 60s and 80s, there were many nuclear reactors projects which allowed an in

by lelag 4y ago

The article misses another important aspect: loss of nuclear competency. Between the 60s and 80s, there were many nuclear reactors projects which allowed an industry to develop and get better at it. But since the 80s, there was comparatively very few new reactors built for over 20-30 years. The workforce that had the skills and knowledge related to actually building nuclear plants had mostly retired and their replacement had only theoretical knowledge and no actual experience. This makes building new reactor much harder than it should be. The embattled EPR project at Flammanville is an exemple of that: the specialised company that was hired to forge the nuclear vessel were simply unable to build to spec and a defective critical piece was delivered, creating delays and cost increases. In the end, they even had to use it anyway as it was not economically feasible to simply have another one made.

epistasis 4y ago
The recent US nuclear construction projects have been plagued with similar incompetence, such as trying to build plans that were unconstructable, and then having to get regulatory approval for the changes. I would like to see comparisons to other large construction projects too. The US is really really bad at large construction projects, but European construction seems a lot better.
- stefanfisk 4y ago
  I'd love to read more about this! do you have any tip on where to start?
  - epistasis 4y ago
    The Pedestrian Observations blog is great for construction cost analysis: https://pedestrianobservations.com/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/
  - epistasis 4y ago
    Or if you were taking specifically about the nuclear construction incompetence, the loca newspapers in South Carolina and Georgia have been providing the best reporting. Here's South Carolina's archive: https://www.postandcourier.com/business/vc_summer_nuclear_project/ https://www.postandcourier.com/business/vc_summer_nuclear_pr... Search for "Georgia recorder vogtle" to get some of the reports from the Georgia construction delays.
- mandevil 4y ago
  Unfortunately, when it comes to nuclear Europe's (excluding Russia) basically in the same boat as the US. Consulting the current list of nuclear power plants under construction around the world by a pro-nuclear power group here: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... I see the following as the only ones still under construction in all of Europe (not counting Belarus and Russia): 1) Mochovce 3 in Slovakia. Construction started November 2008, originally scheduled to complete in 2012, now hopefully complete later this year, so 15 years total, 10 years late. 2) Flamenville 3 in France. Construction started in 2007, originally scheduled to complete in 2012. Hopefully complete in 2023, so 16 years later, 11 years late. 3) Mochovce 4 in Slovakia. Construction started November 2008, original scheduled to complete in 2013, now hopefully complete in 2023, so 16 years total, 10 years late. 4,5) Hinkley Point C1 and C2 in the UK. Construction started in roughly 2008, originally expected to be online 2022 or so ("early 2020s" is the best I can find with Google now, and that's for both C1 and C2 to be online). Now C1 is expected to be complete in 2027, and C2 in 2028. So 19-20 years total, 6 years late. (The US has two reactors on the list, Vogtle 3 and 4, started in 2009, originally expected to finish in 2016 and 2017, now expected to finish in 2023.) I suspect that Europe's success in building rapid transit, compared to America, is due to the fact that they were continuously building such systems, whereas the US largely hasn't, so there is no cohort of engineers and workers who learned-by-doing and get better over time. But in nuclear, those workers seem to have gone in Europe as well- you can see from this 2020 chart (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#/media/File:Histogramme_des_%C3%A2ges_des_r%C3%A9acteurs_nucl%C3%A9aires_fran%C3%A7ais_en_service_en_2020.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#/media...) that France built almost all of their reactors in a giant lump between 1970 and 1983, built a few reactors later in the 1980s (presumably late career work from the people who had built so many earlier), and has found building a new reactor to be really hard, e.g. Flamenville 3 is just as big a disaster as Vogtle.
  - thow-58d4e8b 4y ago
    To add one more data point - Olkiluoto 3, started 2005, was expected to finish in 2009. Completed late 2021, 12 years late Cherry on top - after producing electricity for about a week, it had to shut down for another 3 months. Then, after ramping up to about 30% of the capacity, it encountered another problem, delaying it for another 5 months. Here we are in June 2022, 17 years later, Olkiluoto 3 provides exactly 0 MW to the Finnish grid
- krylon 4y ago
  > European construction seems a lot better Unless the situation in the US is really, really REALLY horrible, I doubt that. I don't remember where, but one country is in the process of building a nuclear power plant, that is AFAIK unfinished, but already took way more time and money than originally planned. Doesn't even have to be nuclear - ask the Internet about Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie or Stuttgart's train station. Having public construction projects overrun their schedules and budgets is a well-honored tradition, at least in Germany, but I suspect our neighbors have similar customs.
  - mandevil 4y ago
    An excellent (English language) podcast about Berlin's fiasco of an airport, BER: https://www.radiospaetkauf.com/ber/ https://www.radiospaetkauf.com/ber/ (29 years from planning to completion, 14 years from construction start to opening, 9 years late, budget from 1 billion Euro to almost 6). One of the points they made in the podcast was similar to TFA's: changes in construction are really expensive and blow things out in costs. A new mayor came in and demanded major changes once construction was underway in Berlin. And then, when people said "this will cause problems" his response was basically "we're Germany, we are the best at planning, building and constructing, of course we can handle this with no problems"...
    - tacocataco 4y ago
      I don't think being the best at planning means much when you change those plans mid project.
      - krylon 4y ago
        The story of BER's troubled birth confirms your view. German satire website Der Postillion (roughly equivalent to The Onion) ran a headline once that Berlin would get a new airport by moving the entire city to some place with an existing airport.
  - ajmurmann 4y ago
    US is absolutely terrible at large infrastructure projects. This article has some good details and statistics: https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/levy-infastructure.pdf https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/le... In general, Alon Levy's blog has great articles on this topic and he lives in Berlin https://pedestrianobservations.com/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/
bsedlm 4y ago
I think there's a larger point around the general notion of "spread of competency". the competency is not allowed to spread. there's a thick shroud of secrecy around how all this sophisticated technology comes about. This is also why semiconductors are so difficult. Back in the early 20th century the nuclear stuff was secret so the nazis and then the russians would not get it. Now semiconductors are also closely related to national security stuff (china and taiwan). I find it quite suggestive that most of the tech used to make the semiconductors is owned european companies. Finally, I have a sensation that in the 18-19th century it was the chemical sciences that were similarly shrouded in secrecy of this sort. There was a topic here on HN the other day about how there's so little popularization of chemistry... IMO, this is why, the legacy of secrecy so to guarantee competitive industrial advantages still casts its shadow.
- bumby 4y ago
  >I have a sensation that in the 18-19th century it was the chemical sciences that were similarly shrouded in secrecy. I'm not sure this is the case. Chemistry and geology were both popular with hobbyists (albeit, it seemed to often be aristocratic hobbyists) during that period.
- djtango 4y ago
  At least in the UK, I found that salaries for Chemists were depressingly low - PhD grads would earn around 30k GBP which made it hard for me to justify studying for so long. I really liked Chemistry but ended up moving into software instead.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  Link to the topic?
  - bsedlm 4y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31648981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31648981
- bsder 4y ago
  > the competency is not allowed to spread. there's a thick shroud of secrecy around how all this sophisticated technology comes about. > > This is also why semiconductors are so difficult. The dirty secret is that all factories are hard to build because nobody knows all the details to make them work. It's that simple. People bring operative knowledge to bear in the running of a factory. Over time, that knowledge becomes baked into the procedures, equipment, maintenance and people. This is, in my opinion, something that everybody overlooks about nuclear. Power plants and factories need to evolve and optimize over time to be successful. Nuclear plants get encased in amber and can't do that. I understand why people don't want to allow that. However, I really think that this inability to evolve will doom any large scale nuclear reactor design. Probably the only way that nuclear becomes successful is very small, semi-sealed power plants as the whole plant evolves at the manufacturing facility rather than at the site. > I find it quite suggestive that most of the tech used to make the semiconductors is owned european companies. This is hardly surprising. They're spinouts of the big conglomerates from the 1980s (ASML is from Philips, no?). These conglomerates didn't exist in Japan (maybe--MITI was funding the hell out of things in Japan in the early 1980s so my memory may be off), China, etc. back when this stuff was getting started and spun out. TSMC is actually the anomaly. It took a very determined effort with a lot of money being shoveled around by the government combined with a disgruntled TI executive of Chinese background and all of his knowledge and contacts to put it all together.
colinmhayes 4y ago
This is undoubtedly true, but south korea has now been building nuclear plants for decades, and their costs haven't really dropped at all.
- ImHereToVote 4y ago
  According to the article they have
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - alex_young 4y ago
    From the article: > The only country where the costs of nuclear plant construction seem to have steadily decreased is South Korea: > The fact that South Korea is the only country to exhibit this trend has led some experts to speculate that the cost data (which comes directly from the utility and hasn’t been independently audited) has been manipulated and we shouldn’t draw conclusions from it.
    - DennisP 4y ago
      In absolute terms, Japan and India have costs similar to South Korea's. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516300106 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151... See figure 12 for a quick overview. And from the introduction: "In contrast to the rapid cost escalation that characterized nuclear construction in the United States, we find evidence of much milder cost escalation in many countries, including absolute cost declines in some countries and specific eras. Our new findings suggest that there is no inherent cost escalation trend associated with nuclear technology."
      - danans 4y ago
        > In absolute terms, Japan and India have costs similar to South Korea That countries like Japan and Korea have similar absolute costs as India which has a 4-5x lower PPP adjusted GDP per capita suggests that the price for labor for nuclear power plant construction is globally set (relatively few qualified engineers who can demand a high price), or India uses a lot more labor, or a combination of both.
samstave 4y ago
My grandfather was a Nuclear Engineer for General Electric his whole life (worked like 60 years at GE - he was one of the designers of Hanford. He died of cancer, thyroid cancer of exenguination (bleeding out of your mouth) My grandmother received a fairly large settlement from the class action lawsuit against GE for exposing engineers to radiation for decades without proper safety...
- ratsmack 4y ago
  My uncle worked at Hanford his entire life but his last few years of life were not good. He he retired with numerous health issues and was essentially a mental vegetable the last few years of his life. He was at Hanford from it's inception up to around the seventies when he retired.
  - samstave 4y ago
    My grandfather was Kenneth Victor Stave. If that name means anything to your family. Also, I dont know if your uncle was part of that suit against GE - but it may be something you want to look up. I don't have any further info to provide on the subject, my grandfather passed in 1996. My grandmother last year. So I cant ask anyone...
  - cco 4y ago
    Son of a Hanford man here. I believe my father started work at Hanford _after_ the bulk of their issues were wrapped up but I'm sure there was some increased exposure relative to background. Sorry to hear about your uncle's experience, a lot of pain came out of that facility.
jacquesm 4y ago
I find it disconcerting that a defective critical piece ended up being used anyway, regardless of the economies involved. That might mean you have no reactor, but you can't just go an substitute broken or out of spec parts for good ones.
- curiousllama 4y ago
  I mean depends how it's broken, right? Broken could just mean anything from "will blow up momentarily" to "more inefficient than spec, but totally safe"
  - sveme 4y ago
    But with that position any spec is useless.
  - immmmmm 4y ago
    Carbon migration problems during forging if i recall correctly. So steel is out of specs. How badly will certainly remain secret, like most things in this industry.
- otter-rock 4y ago
  Out-of-spec doesn't mean it can't work. It just means you have to redo the design using what's effectively a different part than you originally planned on.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    Yes, but the idea here was to construct a nuclear power plant, not to build a large pot for boiling soup in. You can't take a critical component like that, spec it and then suddenly pretend the spec never mattered in the first place, then you have to admit that you're just winging it. Changing the spec of the reactor vessel essentially translates into a complete redesign of the reactor itself unless you are willing to compromise on other aspects, such as safety, longevity and so on. We're not talking about a bracket here. Or an O-ring. When was the last time something as stupid as an O-ring decided the fate of... oh, never mind.
nomel 4y ago
> The article misses another important aspect I don't think that's a fair claim, considering "Part I" is in the title.
rob_c 4y ago
yes, well said. It's a shame the idiotic "green" movement after chernobyl is rather annoying that it has set energy production in developed nations back ~50 years and caused so much climate damage in the mean time... but hey 'radioactive waste is corporate greed maaannnn'.....
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  But the green movement was ultimately correct. They didn't know why and had nonsense arguments, but the fact is that "old nuclear" was developed with insufficient long-term safety. Fukushima showed that. What also seems true is that you can't trust a company to run them properly, no matter the regulations and audits. TEPCO showed that. From people I know who've dealt with the nuclear industry, there is a strong contempt of regulation in sentiment/culture, likely due to the annoyances and perceived costs. This contempt however breeds a long term apathy towards safety and maintenance. It's human nature. There are reactor designs that are inherently meltdown proof (LFTR) and use almost all their nuclear fuel (LFTR) and can, I believe, breed old nuclear waste into usable fuel (LFTR). They scale down to small closet sizes (LFTR) and so can be more economically flexible. I believe pebble bed and others can do similar things. LFTR allegedly can be designed to be proliferation resistant, although I've seen opposing views from much better educated people. But the LFTR goals should be the standard of the nuclear industry for next-gen. Not these massive solid rod huge dome boondoggle-prone eyesores.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    > the fact is that "old nuclear" was developed with insufficient long-term safety. Fukushima showed that. How many people died again? We can do a lot better, but I think we'd be worse off if we hadn't built any of those plants at all.
    - AtlasBarfed 4y ago
      2000 people died in the evacuation.
      - 4y ago
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
I think this is actually a good thing. The old designs are dangerous, expensive, and wasteful. The regulatory, economic, and political environment that resulted in their design ultimately resulted in reactors run without proper controls, supervision, or long term safety. The resulting waste was not properly considered from a life cycle perspective. Disclaimer: I'm not a nuclear expert, but man I loved those LFTR presentations. What really appeals to me about LFTR is the inherent safety, the near-full use of fuel, and the scalability. I understand there are challenges for the materials and containment, but I believe the smaller size of the reactor can lend itself to replacement and manufacturing. So a "clean slate" with new people, regulations, standards, expectations, computer simulation, and lifecycle planning would do nuclear a huge bonus. But ultimately it doesn't matter. It won't be price competitive with wind/solar and can't even target a 10-year price point with the wind/solar improvement curves. Same issue the fusion story on the front page faces. Let's continue active research, but commercialization is a waste of time and money right now. When wind/solar stabilize their cost curves, then nuclear (or fusion) will have something to target commercially. IF they can get there.
masklinn 4y ago
TBF Flamanville 3 was a shitshow from top to bottom, starting from anyone actually taking Areva's completely unrealistic timeframes seriously: the claim was something like 3 years for the build, EDF assumed production within 4.5 years. For a novel build of a barely finished design. 4.5 years is probably the shortest time it took to build a CP (900MW) reactor at the height of France's reactor-building frenzy (St-Laurent-B-1 construction started in May 1976 and ended in January 1981, 4 years and 8 months). The next generation (P4) I don't think any took less than 6 years to build, and the embattled N4 generation immediately preceding the EPR the first reactor (Chooz 1, of only 4) had a build time of 12 years (and 7 months), the last (and fastest), Civaux 2, being completed in a "mere" 8 ( and 8 months). And the N4 had and still has significant teething issues: soon after they were put into production they suffered from leaks in cooling pipes leading to all 4 being stopped for 10 months, and at the 10 years revision in 2021 extensive stress corrosion cracking of the primary circuit was discovered, all the N4s have been stopped and the last news are they won't be restarted until 2023.
brandmeyer 4y ago
This is one of the reasons for continuing to incrementally design and build new submarine and aircraft carrier reactors. If the expertise is to re-emerge in the US commercial sector, it may require another cross-pollination effort from the military. The difficulty is that both military reactors and commercial power reactors have evolved considerably since their initial branch point. Commercial power reactors provide base load (run at full power) for a year or two and then get refueled. Military reactors now last the life of the ship without refueling at all, but are optimized for propulsion's variable demands.
- nixonpjoshua1 4y ago
  Perhaps military style reactors designed for propulsion loads would be a good match for balancing renewables on the grid as an alternative to natural gas peaker plants
  - jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
    Military style reactors use highly enriched fuel, often near weapons grade. That's an acceptable thing for a carrier or submarine that's also full of things that have to be continuously secured, like nuclear weapons, but is a big challenge for a small modular reactor scheme. Most of the stuff proposed in recent years for small non military reactors has focused on a middle ground of partial enrichment that's more approachable.
rndmind 4y ago
Consider how new the industry is, this comment is an hilarious load of logical fallacies
intrasight 4y ago
My first job was doing software in the nuclear industry. Was the late 80s. Probably the best job I ever had in terms of working with extremely competent engineers. But they were all in their 50s and 60s. After TMI, a generation of engineers said "no" to nuclear careers. We can only imagine the alternate history where that accident hadn't occurred.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  It would have happened somewhere else, instead, maybe worse. The same flaws were everywhere. Even that did not prevent Fukushima. Never mind Chernobyl.
sky-kedge0749 4y ago
I'm just riffing here but this doesn't seem like an insurmountable problem if you're willing to spend. Open up a training school, put the old guard in as instructors, get some good students, pay everyone big money. Build a lab reactor for hands-on practice, and pay to put students as glorified interns into under-construction and operating plants across the world. A few years later, you've got your people. I don't mean to say it would be trivial but it seems like you could do the whole thing for a couple billion USD a year.

by lelag 4y ago

epistasis 4y ago

The recent US nuclear construction projects have been plagued with similar incompetence, such as trying to build plans that were unconstructable, and then having to get regulatory approval for the changes. I would like to see comparisons to other large construction projects too. The US is really really bad at large construction projects, but European construction seems a lot better.

stefanfisk 4y ago
I'd love to read more about this! do you have any tip on where to start?
- epistasis 4y ago
  The Pedestrian Observations blog is great for construction cost analysis: https://pedestrianobservations.com/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/
- epistasis 4y ago
  Or if you were taking specifically about the nuclear construction incompetence, the loca newspapers in South Carolina and Georgia have been providing the best reporting. Here's South Carolina's archive: https://www.postandcourier.com/business/vc_summer_nuclear_project/ https://www.postandcourier.com/business/vc_summer_nuclear_pr... Search for "Georgia recorder vogtle" to get some of the reports from the Georgia construction delays.
mandevil 4y ago
Unfortunately, when it comes to nuclear Europe's (excluding Russia) basically in the same boat as the US. Consulting the current list of nuclear power plants under construction around the world by a pro-nuclear power group here: https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... I see the following as the only ones still under construction in all of Europe (not counting Belarus and Russia): 1) Mochovce 3 in Slovakia. Construction started November 2008, originally scheduled to complete in 2012, now hopefully complete later this year, so 15 years total, 10 years late. 2) Flamenville 3 in France. Construction started in 2007, originally scheduled to complete in 2012. Hopefully complete in 2023, so 16 years later, 11 years late. 3) Mochovce 4 in Slovakia. Construction started November 2008, original scheduled to complete in 2013, now hopefully complete in 2023, so 16 years total, 10 years late. 4,5) Hinkley Point C1 and C2 in the UK. Construction started in roughly 2008, originally expected to be online 2022 or so ("early 2020s" is the best I can find with Google now, and that's for both C1 and C2 to be online). Now C1 is expected to be complete in 2027, and C2 in 2028. So 19-20 years total, 6 years late. (The US has two reactors on the list, Vogtle 3 and 4, started in 2009, originally expected to finish in 2016 and 2017, now expected to finish in 2023.) I suspect that Europe's success in building rapid transit, compared to America, is due to the fact that they were continuously building such systems, whereas the US largely hasn't, so there is no cohort of engineers and workers who learned-by-doing and get better over time. But in nuclear, those workers seem to have gone in Europe as well- you can see from this 2020 chart (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#/media/File:Histogramme_des_%C3%A2ges_des_r%C3%A9acteurs_nucl%C3%A9aires_fran%C3%A7ais_en_service_en_2020.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France#/media...) that France built almost all of their reactors in a giant lump between 1970 and 1983, built a few reactors later in the 1980s (presumably late career work from the people who had built so many earlier), and has found building a new reactor to be really hard, e.g. Flamenville 3 is just as big a disaster as Vogtle.
- thow-58d4e8b 4y ago
  To add one more data point - Olkiluoto 3, started 2005, was expected to finish in 2009. Completed late 2021, 12 years late Cherry on top - after producing electricity for about a week, it had to shut down for another 3 months. Then, after ramping up to about 30% of the capacity, it encountered another problem, delaying it for another 5 months. Here we are in June 2022, 17 years later, Olkiluoto 3 provides exactly 0 MW to the Finnish grid
krylon 4y ago
> European construction seems a lot better Unless the situation in the US is really, really REALLY horrible, I doubt that. I don't remember where, but one country is in the process of building a nuclear power plant, that is AFAIK unfinished, but already took way more time and money than originally planned. Doesn't even have to be nuclear - ask the Internet about Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie or Stuttgart's train station. Having public construction projects overrun their schedules and budgets is a well-honored tradition, at least in Germany, but I suspect our neighbors have similar customs.
- mandevil 4y ago
  An excellent (English language) podcast about Berlin's fiasco of an airport, BER: https://www.radiospaetkauf.com/ber/ https://www.radiospaetkauf.com/ber/ (29 years from planning to completion, 14 years from construction start to opening, 9 years late, budget from 1 billion Euro to almost 6). One of the points they made in the podcast was similar to TFA's: changes in construction are really expensive and blow things out in costs. A new mayor came in and demanded major changes once construction was underway in Berlin. And then, when people said "this will cause problems" his response was basically "we're Germany, we are the best at planning, building and constructing, of course we can handle this with no problems"...
  - tacocataco 4y ago
    I don't think being the best at planning means much when you change those plans mid project.
    - krylon 4y ago
      The story of BER's troubled birth confirms your view. German satire website Der Postillion (roughly equivalent to The Onion) ran a headline once that Berlin would get a new airport by moving the entire city to some place with an existing airport.
- ajmurmann 4y ago
  US is absolutely terrible at large infrastructure projects. This article has some good details and statistics: https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/levy-infastructure.pdf https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/le... In general, Alon Levy's blog has great articles on this topic and he lives in Berlin https://pedestrianobservations.com/ https://pedestrianobservations.com/

bsedlm 4y ago

I think there's a larger point around the general notion of "spread of competency". the competency is not allowed to spread. there's a thick shroud of secrecy around how all this sophisticated technology comes about. This is also why semiconductors are so difficult. Back in the early 20th century the nuclear stuff was secret so the nazis and then the russians would not get it. Now semiconductors are also closely related to national security stuff (china and taiwan). I find it quite suggestive that most of the tech used to make the semiconductors is owned european companies. Finally, I have a sensation that in the 18-19th century it was the chemical sciences that were similarly shrouded in secrecy of this sort. There was a topic here on HN the other day about how there's so little popularization of chemistry... IMO, this is why, the legacy of secrecy so to guarantee competitive industrial advantages still casts its shadow.

bumby 4y ago
>I have a sensation that in the 18-19th century it was the chemical sciences that were similarly shrouded in secrecy. I'm not sure this is the case. Chemistry and geology were both popular with hobbyists (albeit, it seemed to often be aristocratic hobbyists) during that period.
djtango 4y ago
At least in the UK, I found that salaries for Chemists were depressingly low - PhD grads would earn around 30k GBP which made it hard for me to justify studying for so long. I really liked Chemistry but ended up moving into software instead.
selimthegrim 4y ago
Link to the topic?
- bsedlm 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31648981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31648981
bsder 4y ago
> the competency is not allowed to spread. there's a thick shroud of secrecy around how all this sophisticated technology comes about. > > This is also why semiconductors are so difficult. The dirty secret is that all factories are hard to build because nobody knows all the details to make them work. It's that simple. People bring operative knowledge to bear in the running of a factory. Over time, that knowledge becomes baked into the procedures, equipment, maintenance and people. This is, in my opinion, something that everybody overlooks about nuclear. Power plants and factories need to evolve and optimize over time to be successful. Nuclear plants get encased in amber and can't do that. I understand why people don't want to allow that. However, I really think that this inability to evolve will doom any large scale nuclear reactor design. Probably the only way that nuclear becomes successful is very small, semi-sealed power plants as the whole plant evolves at the manufacturing facility rather than at the site. > I find it quite suggestive that most of the tech used to make the semiconductors is owned european companies. This is hardly surprising. They're spinouts of the big conglomerates from the 1980s (ASML is from Philips, no?). These conglomerates didn't exist in Japan (maybe--MITI was funding the hell out of things in Japan in the early 1980s so my memory may be off), China, etc. back when this stuff was getting started and spun out. TSMC is actually the anomaly. It took a very determined effort with a lot of money being shoveled around by the government combined with a disgruntled TI executive of Chinese background and all of his knowledge and contacts to put it all together.

colinmhayes 4y ago

This is undoubtedly true, but south korea has now been building nuclear plants for decades, and their costs haven't really dropped at all.

ImHereToVote 4y ago
According to the article they have
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- alex_young 4y ago
  From the article: > The only country where the costs of nuclear plant construction seem to have steadily decreased is South Korea: > The fact that South Korea is the only country to exhibit this trend has led some experts to speculate that the cost data (which comes directly from the utility and hasn’t been independently audited) has been manipulated and we shouldn’t draw conclusions from it.
  - DennisP 4y ago
    In absolute terms, Japan and India have costs similar to South Korea's. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516300106 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151... See figure 12 for a quick overview. And from the introduction: "In contrast to the rapid cost escalation that characterized nuclear construction in the United States, we find evidence of much milder cost escalation in many countries, including absolute cost declines in some countries and specific eras. Our new findings suggest that there is no inherent cost escalation trend associated with nuclear technology."
    - danans 4y ago
      > In absolute terms, Japan and India have costs similar to South Korea That countries like Japan and Korea have similar absolute costs as India which has a 4-5x lower PPP adjusted GDP per capita suggests that the price for labor for nuclear power plant construction is globally set (relatively few qualified engineers who can demand a high price), or India uses a lot more labor, or a combination of both.

samstave 4y ago

My grandfather was a Nuclear Engineer for General Electric his whole life (worked like 60 years at GE - he was one of the designers of Hanford. He died of cancer, thyroid cancer of exenguination (bleeding out of your mouth) My grandmother received a fairly large settlement from the class action lawsuit against GE for exposing engineers to radiation for decades without proper safety...

ratsmack 4y ago
My uncle worked at Hanford his entire life but his last few years of life were not good. He he retired with numerous health issues and was essentially a mental vegetable the last few years of his life. He was at Hanford from it's inception up to around the seventies when he retired.
- samstave 4y ago
  My grandfather was Kenneth Victor Stave. If that name means anything to your family. Also, I dont know if your uncle was part of that suit against GE - but it may be something you want to look up. I don't have any further info to provide on the subject, my grandfather passed in 1996. My grandmother last year. So I cant ask anyone...
- cco 4y ago
  Son of a Hanford man here. I believe my father started work at Hanford _after_ the bulk of their issues were wrapped up but I'm sure there was some increased exposure relative to background. Sorry to hear about your uncle's experience, a lot of pain came out of that facility.

jacquesm 4y ago

I find it disconcerting that a defective critical piece ended up being used anyway, regardless of the economies involved. That might mean you have no reactor, but you can't just go an substitute broken or out of spec parts for good ones.

curiousllama 4y ago
I mean depends how it's broken, right? Broken could just mean anything from "will blow up momentarily" to "more inefficient than spec, but totally safe"
- sveme 4y ago
  But with that position any spec is useless.
- immmmmm 4y ago
  Carbon migration problems during forging if i recall correctly. So steel is out of specs. How badly will certainly remain secret, like most things in this industry.
otter-rock 4y ago
Out-of-spec doesn't mean it can't work. It just means you have to redo the design using what's effectively a different part than you originally planned on.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Yes, but the idea here was to construct a nuclear power plant, not to build a large pot for boiling soup in. You can't take a critical component like that, spec it and then suddenly pretend the spec never mattered in the first place, then you have to admit that you're just winging it. Changing the spec of the reactor vessel essentially translates into a complete redesign of the reactor itself unless you are willing to compromise on other aspects, such as safety, longevity and so on. We're not talking about a bracket here. Or an O-ring. When was the last time something as stupid as an O-ring decided the fate of... oh, never mind.

nomel 4y ago

> The article misses another important aspect I don't think that's a fair claim, considering "Part I" is in the title.

rob_c 4y ago

yes, well said. It's a shame the idiotic "green" movement after chernobyl is rather annoying that it has set energy production in developed nations back ~50 years and caused so much climate damage in the mean time... but hey 'radioactive waste is corporate greed maaannnn'.....

AtlasBarfed 4y ago
But the green movement was ultimately correct. They didn't know why and had nonsense arguments, but the fact is that "old nuclear" was developed with insufficient long-term safety. Fukushima showed that. What also seems true is that you can't trust a company to run them properly, no matter the regulations and audits. TEPCO showed that. From people I know who've dealt with the nuclear industry, there is a strong contempt of regulation in sentiment/culture, likely due to the annoyances and perceived costs. This contempt however breeds a long term apathy towards safety and maintenance. It's human nature. There are reactor designs that are inherently meltdown proof (LFTR) and use almost all their nuclear fuel (LFTR) and can, I believe, breed old nuclear waste into usable fuel (LFTR). They scale down to small closet sizes (LFTR) and so can be more economically flexible. I believe pebble bed and others can do similar things. LFTR allegedly can be designed to be proliferation resistant, although I've seen opposing views from much better educated people. But the LFTR goals should be the standard of the nuclear industry for next-gen. Not these massive solid rod huge dome boondoggle-prone eyesores.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  > the fact is that "old nuclear" was developed with insufficient long-term safety. Fukushima showed that. How many people died again? We can do a lot better, but I think we'd be worse off if we hadn't built any of those plants at all.
  - AtlasBarfed 4y ago
    2000 people died in the evacuation.
    - 4y ago

AtlasBarfed 4y ago

I think this is actually a good thing. The old designs are dangerous, expensive, and wasteful. The regulatory, economic, and political environment that resulted in their design ultimately resulted in reactors run without proper controls, supervision, or long term safety. The resulting waste was not properly considered from a life cycle perspective. Disclaimer: I'm not a nuclear expert, but man I loved those LFTR presentations. What really appeals to me about LFTR is the inherent safety, the near-full use of fuel, and the scalability. I understand there are challenges for the materials and containment, but I believe the smaller size of the reactor can lend itself to replacement and manufacturing. So a "clean slate" with new people, regulations, standards, expectations, computer simulation, and lifecycle planning would do nuclear a huge bonus. But ultimately it doesn't matter. It won't be price competitive with wind/solar and can't even target a 10-year price point with the wind/solar improvement curves. Same issue the fusion story on the front page faces. Let's continue active research, but commercialization is a waste of time and money right now. When wind/solar stabilize their cost curves, then nuclear (or fusion) will have something to target commercially. IF they can get there.

masklinn 4y ago

TBF Flamanville 3 was a shitshow from top to bottom, starting from anyone actually taking Areva's completely unrealistic timeframes seriously: the claim was something like 3 years for the build, EDF assumed production within 4.5 years. For a novel build of a barely finished design. 4.5 years is probably the shortest time it took to build a CP (900MW) reactor at the height of France's reactor-building frenzy (St-Laurent-B-1 construction started in May 1976 and ended in January 1981, 4 years and 8 months). The next generation (P4) I don't think any took less than 6 years to build, and the embattled N4 generation immediately preceding the EPR the first reactor (Chooz 1, of only 4) had a build time of 12 years (and 7 months), the last (and fastest), Civaux 2, being completed in a "mere" 8 ( and 8 months). And the N4 had and still has significant teething issues: soon after they were put into production they suffered from leaks in cooling pipes leading to all 4 being stopped for 10 months, and at the 10 years revision in 2021 extensive stress corrosion cracking of the primary circuit was discovered, all the N4s have been stopped and the last news are they won't be restarted until 2023.

brandmeyer 4y ago

This is one of the reasons for continuing to incrementally design and build new submarine and aircraft carrier reactors. If the expertise is to re-emerge in the US commercial sector, it may require another cross-pollination effort from the military. The difficulty is that both military reactors and commercial power reactors have evolved considerably since their initial branch point. Commercial power reactors provide base load (run at full power) for a year or two and then get refueled. Military reactors now last the life of the ship without refueling at all, but are optimized for propulsion's variable demands.

nixonpjoshua1 4y ago
Perhaps military style reactors designed for propulsion loads would be a good match for balancing renewables on the grid as an alternative to natural gas peaker plants
- jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  Military style reactors use highly enriched fuel, often near weapons grade. That's an acceptable thing for a carrier or submarine that's also full of things that have to be continuously secured, like nuclear weapons, but is a big challenge for a small modular reactor scheme. Most of the stuff proposed in recent years for small non military reactors has focused on a middle ground of partial enrichment that's more approachable.

rndmind 4y ago

Consider how new the industry is, this comment is an hilarious load of logical fallacies

intrasight 4y ago

My first job was doing software in the nuclear industry. Was the late 80s. Probably the best job I ever had in terms of working with extremely competent engineers. But they were all in their 50s and 60s. After TMI, a generation of engineers said "no" to nuclear careers. We can only imagine the alternate history where that accident hadn't occurred.

ncmncm 4y ago
It would have happened somewhere else, instead, maybe worse. The same flaws were everywhere. Even that did not prevent Fukushima. Never mind Chernobyl.

sky-kedge0749 4y ago

I'm just riffing here but this doesn't seem like an insurmountable problem if you're willing to spend. Open up a training school, put the old guard in as instructors, get some good students, pay everyone big money. Build a lab reactor for hands-on practice, and pay to put students as glorified interns into under-construction and operating plants across the world. A few years later, you've got your people. I don't mean to say it would be trivial but it seems like you could do the whole thing for a couple billion USD a year.