> Areva (the French state) took a 5.5 billion euro loss building Olkiluotu. That is Arevas problem not the buyer/operator of the reactor (TVO). If you sell som

> Areva (the French state) took a 5.5 billion euro loss building Olkiluotu. That is Arevas problem not the buyer/operator of the reactor (TVO). If you sell something at fixed cost then you sell something at fixed cost. Sometimes contracts go bad (and TVO has come to the help of Areva to the tune of extra ~2.5 billion euros) It was Areva who bid really low to win the contract. So low that Atomstroyexport, Siemens, Westinghouse, Framatome and GE never bothered to put their final bid in (Areva was the only one to put a bid on in the final round). If you intentionally underbid then be ready to eat some losses. And TVO made sure during the bidding process that there were enough insurances to ensure that the project would be finished even if it went overbudged/got delayed. Basically TVO made a really good deal. If I made solar panels and sold a project to build a solar park at 100 million and it ended up costing 200 million to build due to MY (the builder/contractor) fuck ups how actually is it the fault of the buyer? You eat the loss as the builder and try to learn something from it. > Pretty much all nuclear power is an offshoot of the military, but the Soviet Union's civilian nuclear power industry was a little more obviously an offshoot of its military. And microchips are an offshoot of military weapon projects (getting small/light enough computers to fit fighter planes). Just because something started with military use/funding/backing does not mean we should not use it.