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It's not the litigiousness that makes it expensive. France was producing nuclear power plants at a cost per watt that nearly matches modern China. In fact, the
by culi 1y ago
It's not the litigiousness that makes it expensive. France was producing nuclear power plants at a cost per watt that nearly matches modern China. In fact, the mind-numbing cost overruns seem unique to the US.
Here's a Nature article about it:
https://archive.ph/Tpe0j https://archive.ph/Tpe0j
Seems to me like it's more of a story of corruption than of over-regulation
- dalyons 1y agofrance cant do it any more either. Flamanville was 12 years late and [1] 400% over budget. EPR2 is already delayed and over budget and they havent even started building yet! UK cant do it either, see hinkley point c [2] [1] https://www.nucnet.org/news/long-delayed-nuclear-plant-connected-to-national-grid-edf-announces-12-1-2024 https://www.nucnet.org/news/long-delayed-nuclear-plant-conne... [2] https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/edf-announces-hinkley-point-c-delay-and-big-rise-i https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/edf-announces-hi...
- culi 1y agoThat might be somewhat true but Flamanville was still about $4/watt while Vogtle 3 and 4 (which were built around the same time) were about $15/watt. It's still hard to place France and the US in the same bucket. The US really is uniquely inept at nuclear costs
- pfdietz 1y agoFlammanville 3 was about €14/W, or about $16/W. https://mastodon.energy/@Sustainable2050/113695635521714572 https://mastodon.energy/@Sustainable2050/113695635521714572
- hunterpayne 1y agoThe UK does the same thing. In fact, its across the entire west. Its almost as if absurd over-regulation is expensive. The Vogtle plant construction for example had to deal with 3 different tranches of changes to the design caused by regulators. Its not corruption, its over-regulation. If it is corruption, it is corrupt politicians intentionally over-regulating because their backers make lots of money extracting FFs.