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If you look at the cost overruns in GA quite a number of people have come out and said that no one wants to criticize the NRC, seemingly because they can make y

If you look at the cost overruns in GA quite a number of people have come out and said that no one wants to criticize the NRC, seemingly because they can make your life hell. And change orders, and the like were listed as one of the reasons for the overruns, how much of that do you think is some engineer who designed the plant waking up one day and deciding something needs to be changed, or is it a case of the NRC nitpicking everything, and just loading the whole process up with so much paperwork that everyone is frozen, and any little mistake in the paperwork ends up costing the project. Sure blame the plant mgmt for not having the correct paperwork and delaying the start by 6 months, but who is asking for that paperwork to begin with? A lot of it sounds like a game of gocha, create a problem so complex that its nearly unsolvable and most of the work isn't even welding pipes but putting a thousand people in the chain, everyone of which can stop the line at any time, largely with no repercussions. Sure, contractors mess up, but most contracts are written so that its the contractor who pays for it, not the organization hiring the contractor. So, again, contractor messes up, comes up with a workable mitigation/rework plan, but you sit there for 6+ months arguing about whether its allowed. I've seen first hand the mess of regulation related paperwork it takes to run a normal NG/etc plant, it takes teams to of people to review it every year and assure compliance. Layering the NRC/etc into this is how you end up spending insane amount of capital and producing nothing but paperwork (see nuscale) on a design that isn't particularly ground breaking in the face of existing plants. I can't even imagine how much it would take to certify something like a navy reactor in that kind of environment.

epistasis 3y ago
None of the exposed I have seen mention anything about NRC specific regulations. It's just bad management processes dictating sloppy first attempts at design, leading to literally unconstructable designs, followed by even worse management processes for getting feedback and changes, or any sort of streamlining to allow agile response. Imagine a huge waterfall design, with the architects being part of a completely different company than the implementers, and months long turn around to get clarification on any aspect or to get the designers to sign off on the necessary changes for anything to happen. People are not afraid to criticize the NRC, it falls out of people's mouth so easily. But if they are actually afraid of the NRC, why are they so willing to provide critique, but unwilling to suggest the exact things that are the problem? More likely you have a bunch of substandard folks unwilling to take any sort of responsibility for their actions or for management and instead blame a third party. Suppose that any one of these companies spent a tiny tiny fraction of their money of proposing changes to regulations that would allow them to build effectively? Why don't we see any sort of proposals like that? As for nuscale, this is a perfect example of using the NRC as a scapegoat and being unwilling to look at the true source of their problems: https://www.power-eng.com/nuclear/report-claims-serious-problems-with-proposed-nuscale-smr/ https://www.power-eng.com/nuclear/report-claims-serious-prob... I am still waiting for some sort of example of the NRC layering on something unnecessary, after six years of begging people making the claim to produce one shred of evidence.

epistasis 3y ago

None of the exposed I have seen mention anything about NRC specific regulations. It's just bad management processes dictating sloppy first attempts at design, leading to literally unconstructable designs, followed by even worse management processes for getting feedback and changes, or any sort of streamlining to allow agile response. Imagine a huge waterfall design, with the architects being part of a completely different company than the implementers, and months long turn around to get clarification on any aspect or to get the designers to sign off on the necessary changes for anything to happen. People are not afraid to criticize the NRC, it falls out of people's mouth so easily. But if they are actually afraid of the NRC, why are they so willing to provide critique, but unwilling to suggest the exact things that are the problem? More likely you have a bunch of substandard folks unwilling to take any sort of responsibility for their actions or for management and instead blame a third party. Suppose that any one of these companies spent a tiny tiny fraction of their money of proposing changes to regulations that would allow them to build effectively? Why don't we see any sort of proposals like that? As for nuscale, this is a perfect example of using the NRC as a scapegoat and being unwilling to look at the true source of their problems: https://www.power-eng.com/nuclear/report-claims-serious-problems-with-proposed-nuscale-smr/ https://www.power-eng.com/nuclear/report-claims-serious-prob... I am still waiting for some sort of example of the NRC layering on something unnecessary, after six years of begging people making the claim to produce one shred of evidence.