4 ms·

https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-construction-time https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-constructi... > It takes around 6 to 8 ye

https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-construction-time https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-constructi... > It takes around 6 to 8 years to build a nuclear reactor. (Note: There is no data on planning part though; not so easy to methodically measure probably) Point still valid, but 20 years seems excessively pessimistic.

bryanlarsen 3y ago
Your link shows that China & Japan can build quickly now, and that the US and the UK could build quickly in the past. Also keep in mind that the limited amount of data for US/UK plants are for long planned expansions. Vogtle was built to accomodate 4 reactors from the start. So Vogtle 3 & 4 should have taken considerably less time than average. But let's be generous and say that a greenfield project takes less time to construct than Vogtle, or 10 years. Do you think planning & approvals can be done in less than 10 years? Even the touted "small modular reactor" projects take over a decade. For example, the INL small reactor project started in 2013, kept getting delayed until it had a start date of 2030, and then was cancelled a few months ago. And meeting demand with nuclear would require around ~200 full size reactors. 20 years to build 200 reactors sounds extremely optimistic to me.