17 ms·

> The decision to cancel the project followed an update from NuScale this year regarding the cost of building the reactors, which had soared to $9.3 billion fro

• cykros 3y ago
  OSHA was established in 1970. It didn't exist prior, and it took some time for rules to get more stringent, and for the risks and liabilities it represented to be realized as additional costs.
• seec 3y ago
  It's that we are bad per se. But there is no money for that anymore. Most of the money goes to bullshit jobs or secondary things that are mostly about enabling the mentioned bullshit jobs. If you look at most western countries almost half the economic output is directed to those things. You really can't build a future when most of the ressource goes to satisfy this and the relentless needs of the elderly who do not even contribute meaningfully. When a lot of your ressource goes to satisfy the ones who are dying, nothing forward looking gets done, it's pretty logical, they are dying they do not have to care. In many countries there is political fragmentation and a lot of unease related to this. Personally, I blame feminism, socialism, and boomers. I know it is not a politically correct opinion, but I think time will tell soon enough. Many recent events substantiate that. My opinion doesn't matter anyway, the reality is that even in France that was a leader and highly successful in nuclear technology; new reactors do not get built or/and take forever. It has nothing to do with skill, it is pretty much a systemic and political problem. Remove the political opinions, remove the feminist bullshit and things will get done. In the meantime, I suggest enjoying the fall, because nothing will happen until it gets so bad there will be no choice.
• Pat_Murph 3y ago
  We've gotten better at billing than building.
  • sumtechguy 3y ago
    One I can automate the other not so much
• hotpotamus 3y ago
  > How is it that we've become so bad at building? What industry would you prefer your children to go into? Construction or just about anything else?
  • theultdev 3y ago
    So you prefer other people's children to do your construction, got it. That's fine.. I guess, but the world needs construction workers, including in America. If my son wanted to build nuclear reactors I'd be A-Okay with that.
    • vinay427 3y ago
      Not the parent commenter, but I read their comment perhaps more charitably as describing a general societal attitude rather than their personal beliefs that they would instill on their children. No idea if I’m correct, but it’s maybe worth offering them the benefit of the doubt here.
      • theultdev 3y ago
        The general societal attitude is what influences their personal belief, and vice versa at scale. But their point remains the same, "let someone else do it" (the quiet part: "it's below us"). It's a very negative and elitist attitude that's prevalent in bubbles where people don't have to work normal jobs.
        • deleted 3y ago
          [deleted]
      • hotpotamus 3y ago
        I don't have and have never wanted children, so you are correct that it is not my personal belief. Yes, it's a question of the social status afforded to certain professions. The ones that actually build and maintain a functioning society seem low on that hierarchy. I'm willing to bet that the lawyers litigating whether or not a nuclear power plant will be built have have a higher income than the people who build it. This is my perception as someone from the working class who doesn't get one of those big FAANG salaries; they don't check that when you sign up here.
• Nickersf 3y ago
  It depends on what needs to be built. If the regulators 'like' what needs to be built it'll pop up fast, look at the wind turbine expansion in Europe and parts of the USA. In terms of material input that dwarves what building one nuclear power plant or blast furnace requires.
  • natmaka 3y ago
    > If the regulators 'like' what needs to be built it'll pop up fast The most dangerous and expensive accident happening to a wind turbine is way (way!!!) less daunting and way more easy to avoid and tackle than a major nuclear accident. > In terms of material input Given that most material needed for renewables can be recycled, has substitutes and that there is no need for a combustible there is quite a debate there. Even the underlying part (is there enough of this or that?) isn't fully cooked, lithium being an example: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/lithium-electric-vehicles https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/lithium-electric-v...
• mytailorisrich 3y ago
  Olkiluoto-3's budget also overran a lot to reach 11b. It's also an extra reactor at an existing nuclear plant so perhaps that somehow reduces costs, and it's built by a very established company. Now, on the other hand, as far as I know NuScale never built a commercial reactor before... so we'll see how many of their current projects actually come to life.
  • trenchgun 3y ago
    Olkiluoto 3 was a first of a kind project too. Was built by an established company, but one that had been on a decades long hiatus in building nuclear power plants.
    • c048 3y ago
      Not to go into too much detail, since my SO that worked on the project might otherwise get into trouble, but some of their cost saving measures simply turned out for the worse. Several core components of the reactor had to be entirely removed and rebuilt from scratch because they tried to cheapen out. Similar reactors built after this will not have these growing pains.
      • euroderf 3y ago
        Weren't there also issues with the training of the workforce ?
    • mytailorisrich 3y ago
      Ah yes, it's true that Olkiluot-3's construction started first, although Taishan (in China) finished first.
    • natmaka 3y ago
      No. The last reactor delivered by the French, before Olkiluoto-3, was Civaux-2 and it was delivered in 1999 (work started in 1991). Work on Olkiluoto-3 started in 2005.
• chris222 3y ago
  For that price you can build almost any combination of wind/solar plus storage. It will probably use less land when you factor in exclusion zones and require fewer operators and resources. It will also have no major calamity risk and an easy clean up and decommissioning. The Tesla megapack price is about 300 million dollars per 1GWh of storage these days.
  • audunw 3y ago
    Solar will certainly use more land unless you build on rooftops or do agrovoltaics. But that’s not the norm for large scale production yet. Wind depends on how you calculate area used. The zone that excludes other wind turbines and residential buildings will be much larger. But the area used by just the base is obviously quite small. When placed between farm plots the area usage is very effective. The risk of accidents in the US is probably extremely small. I wouldn’t personally be worried about. Especially with NuScKe which should be passively safe. Though I would have said the same about Japan before Fukushima so you never know (yes, I know the death toll was negligible, but the effect it had on nearby residents is still catastrophic)
    • bryanlarsen 3y ago
      Nuclear and solar also can dual-use most of their footprint. For nuclear, the keep-out zone becomes a de facto nature preserve. And a pretty good one at that, since the keep out is enforced well. Solar installations can be grazed. Alternatively, bifacial panels can be installed vertically east-west and the strips between can be farmed. Or the panels can be placed on rooftops. Or used to shade parking lots. Et cetera.
      • SlightlyLeftPad 3y ago
        Honestly the parking lots should be the absolute first stop on the search for places to put solar. Literally all parking lots can and should be filled with solar. Nature preserves should be the absolute last place to install it. Why on earth would we displace wildlife and thus rile up the nature conservationists when the parking lot real estate has already displaced the wildlife that was there? The benefits are two-fold, you get shade for cars which reduces our total combined fuel consumption for hvac, at least by an order of magnitude. Even in snowy places, you get covered parking which saves from idling cars to melt ice, in addition to the generation. All that needs to be done is that it needs to make financial sense to install. If we can find a way to make it so compelling financially, you’d be crazy not to fill your parking lot with solar.
• bilbo0s 3y ago
  This is a bit unfair. You're comparing untried and untested SMR design to slapping up an EPR next to two BWRs if I'm remembering the Finnish project correctly. While EPR is newer, we as mankind have a good understanding of how to build and operate one. Now of course Vogtie cost us 30 or 40 whatever billion for a couple of trifling PWRs, so your larger point still stands. I just think it was dumb of NuScale from the outset to go out marketing over-promises on the idea of SMR. If you took an educated look at the stats and numbers proponents of SMRs were out touting, it's doubtful that even China could have delivered on that. How they thought they could do it in the real world of Idaho is beyond me? They must have had an ace up their sleeves? Or perhaps they expected the government to play a much larger role? Not sure.
• nickpp 3y ago
  > How is it that we've become so bad at building? Regulation. No matter how you find it (a drag, useful or even life-saving), one thing is certain: it significantly increases costs and time to build. Do you know how Golden Gate or the Empire State Building were built on budget and fast? With risks and lost lives.
  • ceejayoz 3y ago
    Finland is hardly a low-regulation country, especially compared to Idaho.
    • theultdev 3y ago
      It is when it comes to nuclear regulation. The NRC effectively makes nuclear impossible in the US.
      • effie 3y ago
        Commercial nuclear should be very hard, almost impossible. This seems to be the correct conclusion after all the accidents and the reasons for them - incompetent, self-serving management pushing dangerous commands on the personnel (Chernobyl,Three Mile Island) or normalizing bad architecture and security plans (Fukushima). Better expensive energy than another major nuclear accident. Nuclear energy can be done safely as long as it is run by competent nuclear energy physicists/technicians with real authority, so they can and will shut down stupid ideas such as operating outside parameters because economy/boss said so. This seems to rule out commercial organizations. NRC is more benevolent than that, maybe they should actually be even tougher. We should allow only competent states to build and operate nuclear plants, so science and rules take precedence to money and boss boot-licking. This may push nuclear energy into unprofitable territory, depending on the market conditions, infrastructure, water and people resources. Which is fine by me - nuclear energy in some areas is so important for grid stability we should have it even if it is unprofitable.
        • theultdev 3y ago
• Reason077 3y ago
  > "Even $5.3B seems very expensive. For reference, (the new Finnish) Olkiluoto-3 was €11 billion, for 1600 MW. The article says 6 77 MW = 539 MW!"* Olkiluoto-3's materials and labour costs were locked in well before the current inflationary cycle. If they started out today the cost would likely be much higher. Also, NuScale is a novel new design. SMRs haven't been commercially deployed anywhere yet, so there's a lot of extra risk and cost associated with building and certifying the very first ones. After all, it cost Boeing an awful lot more to produce the first 777 aircraft than it did to knock out the 1000th.
• danbruc 3y ago
  And why six? Why not build one and then see?
  • petre 3y ago
    One still needs to build the structures with the water pools and everything else. If one bothers to buy the land, contract construction workers, lease heavy machinery, they could as well build 6x as big and spread the fixed costs over that. NuScale was designed to work with up to 12 modules. It's too bad it didn't work out commercially. Their other projects will probably get cancelled as well if they face the same price increases.
    • danbruc 3y ago
      But would the cost of that structures not be pretty insignificant compared to the cost of the reactors? Or build the support structure for six reactors but initially only one reactor, sell five more when the first one works. In relative terms it makes no difference whether a cost overrun of 100 percent is for one or six reactors, in absolute term it of course makes a difference and it seems you might have a better chance of not getting your project cancelled if the absolute overrun in smaller. But this might of course, as you mentioned, also be a matter of scale, hard to tell without knowing where exactly the additional costs come from.
      • petre 3y ago
        16.5% for the buildings and roughly 50% for construction services, engineerig services, owner's costs, structures and improvement according to the aricle I linked in my other post. I suspect that specifically those costs are the ones that cause most of the of overruns and delays. Also, the whole process is certified by the NRC and you can't get creative with it. There are 4, 6 and 12 reactor configurations for a given plant. https://www.nuscalepower.com/en/products/voygr-smr-plants https://www.nuscalepower.com/en/products/voygr-smr-plants
• fulafel 3y ago
  For additional data, a just announced start in Poland [1] is planned for $40B for 6 AP1000 reactors (6000 GW? maybe more), which sclaed down by 10x would make $4B for 600+ MW. [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/poland-ap-polish-mateusz-morawiecki-warsaw-b2419663.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/poland-ap-polish-mateusz-...
  • KptMarchewa 3y ago
    Second power plant is going to be Korean APR1400, so even better price/performance.
    • natmaka 3y ago
      Not sure about this. For the Koreans (KEPCO) selling (even at a loss) their most recent nuclear plant (at Barakah) was vital because the Korean government then paused nuclear in Korea. Some shortcuts may have been useful ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korean_nuclear_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korean_nuclear_scandal ), and "various technical, organizational and management issues" were found ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant ).
  • Tade0 3y ago
    That was before the elections. The most recent news about it that I read said that they're reconsidering the location, which is going to introduce more delay and costs (even though it's justified, considering how the current location was chosen).
• lamontcg 3y ago
  > How is it that we've become so bad at building? MBAs. Same ones infecting the company that you most likely work for. Something smaller like stamping out PV panels or windmills for farms of them is much more manageable. Anything big and complex invites too much graft. And while you can complain about expensive regulations, that's just another graft called regulatory capture. And they let you blame it on the hippies, while they rake in the dollars.
  • smt88 3y ago
    As a software developer, I can tell you that MBAs aren't necessary for massive cost overruns. People are bad as estimating the cost of technical work when unknown-unknowns are involved, and the problem becomes worse when there's a massive incentive to underestimate to win the contract when you know the government will pay for all of your overruns.
    • pie_flavor 3y ago
      Those describe the discrepancy between an incorrectly low bid and a reasonable-but-higher cost. They do not describe how the cost gets astronomically high.
• Tanoc 3y ago
  Investment has become a fast guaranteed returns at all costs kind of thing. That means that while it would cost nine years to build a nuclear reactor and twenty five to break even, the reactor could operate for a century because they're required to maintain it due to how dangerous it is. Meanwhile a gas plant can be built in two, break even in five, and operates for twenty years before falling apart from neglect because a gas explosion doesn't create nuclear fallout. This is also why coal fired plants are still running despite external pressures to render them extinct; the owners know the ROI and like the short term projections.
• jvanderbot 3y ago
  Yeah, we landed a van sized nuclear powered rover - lowered from an autonomous hover rocket! - on Mars for 3 billion. But I guess there's no permitting process on Mars.
  • extraduder_ire 3y ago
    There's already RTGs in loads of places on earth. (a few from the USSR are still missing, IIRC) They're not super efficient either, and ones on the last two american rovers use plutonium that still has to be made in a reactor. Still, I'd love an RTG for powering or heating my home. Even if I needed batteries to even out the demand on the couple thousand watts one can make.
• _aavaa_ 3y ago
  Because of either ignoring, willfully or otherwise, scaling laws. The relationship between price and size of most plants takes the form of: Price(size) = fixed + K*size^b Where b is almost always less than 1, can go as low as 0.6. So building 6 small reactors will be more expensive than building a single reactor 6 times the size. This is the difference between vertically scaling (bigger thing) vs horizontal scaling (multiple smaller things). Horizontal scaling will almost always cost you more.
  • DanielVZ 3y ago
    But at the same time horizontal scaling is more elastic; and depending on how demand behaves, elasticity can result in less cost.
  • fulafel 3y ago
    The EPR seems to disprove this.
    • raphaelj 3y ago
      Actually quite the opposite. The EPR cost less per GW than what was announced for these.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • fulafel 3y ago
        EPR disproves it because it costs same or more per GW than smaller (eg AP1000) plants, comparing actual finished plants.
  • thesnide 3y ago
    yet, microservices are all the rage now. It makes sense when the monolith is very complex to certify, so having discrete parts that are individually certified is more expensive only in theory when you dont factor in the exponential certification complexity. which i guess is high for nuclear related parts.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• ohyes 3y ago
  Like, imagine something maybe 1000x as complicated as your car, that has to work reliably 100% of the time for 50+ years . Now imagine that we don’t have any practice building one of these things because people have been scared of building them for approximately 40 years, so the last person to make one is 70-90. Now imagine that the failure case for this thing is a disaster that causes an expensive cleanup in the surrounding area, so no one will insure the project against that unless you pay an astronomical amount. Now add in that you’re using a “new” design that’s never been tested, and you have to follow a bunch of government regulations that didn’t even exist when the last comparable reactor was built. Stack up all these things and you get a lot of uncertainty about project scope, uncertainty about financing, and uncertainty about whether it will work. This means that to ballpark what it was cost, it will necessarily be expensive because of the risk everyone is taking in producing it.
  • pembrook 3y ago
    You're right, however nearly every single point was also true 50 years ago, when we built many of these things around the globe (and many are still going, pumping out the cleanest energy the world has ever seen). The real difference between then and now, is willingness to take on risk. Developed countries of today are essentially victims of the innovators dilemma. We're fat and happy and complacent, and that's why we will never have anything new or better. People in developed countries don't even want the inconvenience of having children anymore. Why take risk to make things better for the next generation when we're not even willing to create them?
    • ohyes 3y ago
      Not really, the original set had “defense” backing because of the Cold War, because nukes are useful for making, well, nukes. (As well as being an alternative to fossil fuels in the situation where that supply chain broke down). Which means we’d spend any amount of money on them and they’re a strategic asset. Many safer designs are (basically) useless for enrichment, (pebble bed, molten salt thorium, w/e), which means the military might use one on an aircraft carrier or remote outpost, if they had any reason to (which they don’t as there’s no NIMBYism far out at sea). But safer designs are likely cheaper to run long term as the failure modes are significantly less catastrophic. (Not that the current gen ones are particularly dangerous).