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The first permit for the new units was applied for in August 2006: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant#Units_3_and_4 https://en.wikip

The first permit for the new units was applied for in August 2006: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant#Units_3_and_4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla... A mere sixteen years from NRC application to coming online.

elFarto 4y ago
The B1M Youtube channel did a video[1] featuring this plant the other day which goes into some of the delays they had. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyQMNVSxbNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyQMNVSxbNo
- samstave 4y ago
  - sct202 4y ago
    I can't find any mention of Pelosi being linked to Bechtel.
    - samstave 4y ago
      Her husband.
      - samstave 4y ago
aliqot 4y ago
I'd rather the process not be rushed. These things are supposed to run a very long time, let's get it right.
- seventytwo 4y ago
  True… but the world keeps moving regardless. The growing demand doesn’t stop once the permit is issued, so if we can’t build these fast enough to keep up, other potentially more polluting forms of energy will fill the void.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    Demand does not incur a debt to indulge. Consume less, make less people, and use less power. Ask yourself if those things are possible in your life and whether that means perfect should be the enemy of good when bringing in a responsible solution demands responsible care. Your needs for immediate satisfaction do not supersede the longterm welfare of your progeny. From the outside looking in, valuing current demand over the lives of our children is what got us in this mess.
    - hansel_der 4y ago
      > Your needs for immediate satisfaction do not supersede the longterm welfare of your progeny. not to put too fine a point on it, but 'need for immediate satisfaction' is just how it works imho. not really sure why you are beeing downvoted apart from 'less' always beeing a tough sale.
    - inetknght 4y ago
      > Consume less, make less people, and use less power. Yes, people should consume less oil (but big corporations don't). Yes, people should use less power (but big corporations just count power as a cost of doing business). Yes, people should make less people (but big corporations need manpower). > Ask yourself if those things are possible in your life and whether that means perfect should be the enemy of good when bringing in a responsible solution demands responsible care. Your needs for immediate satisfaction do not supersede the longterm welfare of your progeny. I have no intention of creating progeny in this fucked up world. Moreover, nuclear power is far safer, per watt produced, than coal or oil. > From the outside looking in, valuing current demand over the lives of our children is what got us in this mess. It's not individual people who've got us in this mess. Or rather, it is... individual people working for individual corporations who don't consider individual people anything other than feedstock for corporation profits.
DisjointedHunt 4y ago
Imagine waiting 16 years for a PR :/
- pengaru 4y ago
  > Imagine waiting 16 years for a PR :/ Imagine writing bug-free code put in continuous, mass population-critical use for the better part of a century.
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    That would be the analog of a fully autonomous power station. Plenty of people in current ones to watch and patch things!
  - tchaffee 4y ago
    > Imagine writing bug-free code Can't possibly go tits up. These new reactors are surely infallible, right?
    - Turing_Machine 4y ago
      Nuclear power has been in use in the United States for over 70 years without a single fatality to a member of the general public. Better than any other energy source. A few plant and supply chain workers have been killed, but again, fewer than with any other source (mining coal and climbing on roofs and towers to install wind and solar is dangerous, yo). Since I've been muzzled again: > Climbing on the roof of a two story house to install solar panels is considerably less dangerous than building a nuclear power plant. Yo. In terms of workers killed per watt-hour generated? No, it isn't. It's not even close. Yo.
      - tchaffee 4y ago
        The claim was not "relatively safe compared to other forms of energy". The claim was bug free. Which -- if you want to use past history -- is false. > climbing on roofs and towers to install wind and solar is dangerous, yo Climbing on the roof of a two story house to install solar panels is considerably less dangerous than building a nuclear power plant. Yo. > without a single fatality to a member of the general public. No immediate fatality is the only accurate claim you can make. Over 150,000 people were evacuated from the Three-Mile Island disaster. Due to the stress, there were some increases in consumption of alcohol, cigarettes, and tranquilizers immediately following the accident. The eventual long term effects of those behaviors surely resulted in shorter life spans for at least some of the people. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0038012184900181?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/003801... > for over 70 years That's a short time. Unless you can show the US is somehow exceptional in its quality controls compared to Japan, then a huge disaster like Fukushima is inevitable, and life will be lost. No one complains about the dangers of the neighbors who use solar energy. No one wants a reactor in their backyard. And it has fair reasoning behind it. You'll never have to evacuate 150,000 people due to your neighbors' solar panels failing.
rootusrootus 4y ago
As a comparison point, the four AP1000s in China took ~9 years to become operational after construction began.
- kelnos 4y ago
  At least construction-wise, it seems Vogtle is in the same ballpark, as they began construction in 2013, after apparently waiting 7 years for permit approval.
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    So people always complain that nuclear is so expensive because of the regulations. However wind farms take almost as long (despite being significantly less complex) south fork wind took 4 years for the approval process, that is quite typical. So regulations really can't explain why nuclear is more expensive. https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-does-permitting-for-clean-energy-infrastructure-work/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-does-permitting-for-c...
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      I thought it was generally accepted that nuclear was expensive because every installation is bespoke?
tuukkah 4y ago
Olkiluoto 3 EPR in Finland (also considered Gen III+) is finally producing electricity in the grid after being shown green light in 2002: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...
- vesinisa 4y ago
  Interestingly both of these nuclear plants (Vogtle 3 and Olkiluoto 3) were built by companies (Westinghouse and Areva) that went bankrupt during the construction. We sorely need a safe, cost-effective and reproducible blueprint for manufacturing nuclear infrastructure at scale.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    What if it's not cost effective? Can we still do it for the environment?
    - epistasis 4y ago
      We could, and would have to, if we didn't have other options that were equally friendly to the environment. But given two options, one twice (or more) the cost of the other, and with the more expensive option being slower and less scalable, why choose the hard and expensive route versus the cheap and easy route?
      - concordDance 4y ago
        Wait, when did we solve power storage? I must have missed the memo...
        epistasis 4y ago
        In the past few years, lithium ion battery storage has plummeted in cost and is seeing massive deployment all around the grid. Most utilities use five-year resource plans, and even then they tend to use out of date publications for cost guidance, which themselves took several years to be written and get through peer review. So traditional utility deployment is done on 10-year old info. In more open markets, like Texas, storage is a huuuuge amount of the capital that's being deployed on the grid. And in places with more active residents that force the utility commissions to force the utilities to use realistic numbers, like California, storage is already deployed in GW range. For example, existing storage on the grid today was a bigger player than nuclear during California's recent and massive heat waves. And one dirty secret that they don't tell you about nuclear: it's also going to need storage. Nuclear is not dispatchable, it can't be turned down on demand, and can't be ramped up. But real power demand varies a huge amount throughout the day. The only reason France was able to get up to 70% nuclear energy on their grid was by using the continental grid to trade energy with other countries. France has a small number of super expensive nuclear "peakers" but they can only deal with very small fluctuations in demand. So if nuclear were ever going to be a really major power source, or the only power source, it would require lots of storage to balance load.
acchow 4y ago
Quicker than building a condo in SF
melling 4y ago
Yes, can anyone explain the problem in any detail? ie more than “regulations” Decades ago the United States didn’t get to 20% electricity from nuclear power by being so inefficient.
- runarberg 4y ago
  I’m not entirely sure about the history here, but I suspect the 3-mile island partial meltdown is a big reason why. Regulators realized that the current framework was too lax and too risky so they tightened it. They also retrofitted existing powerplants with newer and better standards which must have cost a lot, popular opinion shifted away from these plants so they weren’t politically popular any more, construction knowledge was lost, and has to be re-learned now in a stricter framework. The job market is also a lot more diverse now then in the 70s. There used to be a lot of highly skilled construction workers back then. Generally large infrastructure projects take longer and cost more, regardless of the project type.
kube-system 4y ago
Well, closer to 17 years, because it doesn't go online until next year.
elihu 4y ago
Now that the paperwork has been done once, does that mean it'll be a lot cheaper/easier/faster to build additional plants with the same design?

elFarto 4y ago

The B1M Youtube channel did a video[1] featuring this plant the other day which goes into some of the delays they had. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyQMNVSxbNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyQMNVSxbNo

samstave 4y ago
- sct202 4y ago
  I can't find any mention of Pelosi being linked to Bechtel.
  - samstave 4y ago
    Her husband.
    - samstave 4y ago

aliqot 4y ago

I'd rather the process not be rushed. These things are supposed to run a very long time, let's get it right.

seventytwo 4y ago
True… but the world keeps moving regardless. The growing demand doesn’t stop once the permit is issued, so if we can’t build these fast enough to keep up, other potentially more polluting forms of energy will fill the void.
- aliqot 4y ago
  Demand does not incur a debt to indulge. Consume less, make less people, and use less power. Ask yourself if those things are possible in your life and whether that means perfect should be the enemy of good when bringing in a responsible solution demands responsible care. Your needs for immediate satisfaction do not supersede the longterm welfare of your progeny. From the outside looking in, valuing current demand over the lives of our children is what got us in this mess.
  - hansel_der 4y ago
    > Your needs for immediate satisfaction do not supersede the longterm welfare of your progeny. not to put too fine a point on it, but 'need for immediate satisfaction' is just how it works imho. not really sure why you are beeing downvoted apart from 'less' always beeing a tough sale.
  - inetknght 4y ago
    > Consume less, make less people, and use less power. Yes, people should consume less oil (but big corporations don't). Yes, people should use less power (but big corporations just count power as a cost of doing business). Yes, people should make less people (but big corporations need manpower). > Ask yourself if those things are possible in your life and whether that means perfect should be the enemy of good when bringing in a responsible solution demands responsible care. Your needs for immediate satisfaction do not supersede the longterm welfare of your progeny. I have no intention of creating progeny in this fucked up world. Moreover, nuclear power is far safer, per watt produced, than coal or oil. > From the outside looking in, valuing current demand over the lives of our children is what got us in this mess. It's not individual people who've got us in this mess. Or rather, it is... individual people working for individual corporations who don't consider individual people anything other than feedstock for corporation profits.

DisjointedHunt 4y ago

Imagine waiting 16 years for a PR :/

pengaru 4y ago
> Imagine waiting 16 years for a PR :/ Imagine writing bug-free code put in continuous, mass population-critical use for the better part of a century.
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  That would be the analog of a fully autonomous power station. Plenty of people in current ones to watch and patch things!
- tchaffee 4y ago
  > Imagine writing bug-free code Can't possibly go tits up. These new reactors are surely infallible, right?
  - Turing_Machine 4y ago
    Nuclear power has been in use in the United States for over 70 years without a single fatality to a member of the general public. Better than any other energy source. A few plant and supply chain workers have been killed, but again, fewer than with any other source (mining coal and climbing on roofs and towers to install wind and solar is dangerous, yo). Since I've been muzzled again: > Climbing on the roof of a two story house to install solar panels is considerably less dangerous than building a nuclear power plant. Yo. In terms of workers killed per watt-hour generated? No, it isn't. It's not even close. Yo.
    - tchaffee 4y ago
      The claim was not "relatively safe compared to other forms of energy". The claim was bug free. Which -- if you want to use past history -- is false. > climbing on roofs and towers to install wind and solar is dangerous, yo Climbing on the roof of a two story house to install solar panels is considerably less dangerous than building a nuclear power plant. Yo. > without a single fatality to a member of the general public. No immediate fatality is the only accurate claim you can make. Over 150,000 people were evacuated from the Three-Mile Island disaster. Due to the stress, there were some increases in consumption of alcohol, cigarettes, and tranquilizers immediately following the accident. The eventual long term effects of those behaviors surely resulted in shorter life spans for at least some of the people. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0038012184900181?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/003801... > for over 70 years That's a short time. Unless you can show the US is somehow exceptional in its quality controls compared to Japan, then a huge disaster like Fukushima is inevitable, and life will be lost. No one complains about the dangers of the neighbors who use solar energy. No one wants a reactor in their backyard. And it has fair reasoning behind it. You'll never have to evacuate 150,000 people due to your neighbors' solar panels failing.

rootusrootus 4y ago

As a comparison point, the four AP1000s in China took ~9 years to become operational after construction began.

kelnos 4y ago
At least construction-wise, it seems Vogtle is in the same ballpark, as they began construction in 2013, after apparently waiting 7 years for permit approval.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  So people always complain that nuclear is so expensive because of the regulations. However wind farms take almost as long (despite being significantly less complex) south fork wind took 4 years for the approval process, that is quite typical. So regulations really can't explain why nuclear is more expensive. https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-does-permitting-for-clean-energy-infrastructure-work/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-does-permitting-for-c...
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    I thought it was generally accepted that nuclear was expensive because every installation is bespoke?

tuukkah 4y ago

Olkiluoto 3 EPR in Finland (also considered Gen III+) is finally producing electricity in the grid after being shown green light in 2002: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...

vesinisa 4y ago
Interestingly both of these nuclear plants (Vogtle 3 and Olkiluoto 3) were built by companies (Westinghouse and Areva) that went bankrupt during the construction. We sorely need a safe, cost-effective and reproducible blueprint for manufacturing nuclear infrastructure at scale.
- themitigating 4y ago
  What if it's not cost effective? Can we still do it for the environment?
  - epistasis 4y ago
    We could, and would have to, if we didn't have other options that were equally friendly to the environment. But given two options, one twice (or more) the cost of the other, and with the more expensive option being slower and less scalable, why choose the hard and expensive route versus the cheap and easy route?
    - concordDance 4y ago
      Wait, when did we solve power storage? I must have missed the memo...
      - epistasis 4y ago
        In the past few years, lithium ion battery storage has plummeted in cost and is seeing massive deployment all around the grid. Most utilities use five-year resource plans, and even then they tend to use out of date publications for cost guidance, which themselves took several years to be written and get through peer review. So traditional utility deployment is done on 10-year old info. In more open markets, like Texas, storage is a huuuuge amount of the capital that's being deployed on the grid. And in places with more active residents that force the utility commissions to force the utilities to use realistic numbers, like California, storage is already deployed in GW range. For example, existing storage on the grid today was a bigger player than nuclear during California's recent and massive heat waves. And one dirty secret that they don't tell you about nuclear: it's also going to need storage. Nuclear is not dispatchable, it can't be turned down on demand, and can't be ramped up. But real power demand varies a huge amount throughout the day. The only reason France was able to get up to 70% nuclear energy on their grid was by using the continental grid to trade energy with other countries. France has a small number of super expensive nuclear "peakers" but they can only deal with very small fluctuations in demand. So if nuclear were ever going to be a really major power source, or the only power source, it would require lots of storage to balance load.

acchow 4y ago

Quicker than building a condo in SF

melling 4y ago

Yes, can anyone explain the problem in any detail? ie more than “regulations” Decades ago the United States didn’t get to 20% electricity from nuclear power by being so inefficient.

runarberg 4y ago
I’m not entirely sure about the history here, but I suspect the 3-mile island partial meltdown is a big reason why. Regulators realized that the current framework was too lax and too risky so they tightened it. They also retrofitted existing powerplants with newer and better standards which must have cost a lot, popular opinion shifted away from these plants so they weren’t politically popular any more, construction knowledge was lost, and has to be re-learned now in a stricter framework. The job market is also a lot more diverse now then in the 70s. There used to be a lot of highly skilled construction workers back then. Generally large infrastructure projects take longer and cost more, regardless of the project type.

kube-system 4y ago

Well, closer to 17 years, because it doesn't go online until next year.

elihu 4y ago

Now that the paperwork has been done once, does that mean it'll be a lot cheaper/easier/faster to build additional plants with the same design?