• Sir_Osis_of_Liver@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Just like assuming a perfectly spherical cow, or a frictionless surface, you can completely ignore the economics, the massive cost and schedule overages to make nuclear work.

    Flamanville-3 in France started construction in 2007, was supposed to be operational in 2012 with a project budget of €3.3B. Construction is still ongoing, the in-service date is now sometime in 2024, and the budget has ballooned to €20B.

    Olkiluoto-3 is a similar EPR. Construction started in 2005, was supposed to be in-service in 2010, but finally came online late last year. Costs bloated from €3 to €11B.

    Hinkley Point C project is two EPRs. Construction started in 2017, it’s already running behind schedule, and the project costs have increased from £16B to somewhere approaching £30B. Start up has been pushed back to 2028 the last I’ve heard.

    It’s no different in the US, where the V.C. Summer (2 x AP1000) reactor project was cancelled while under construction after projections put the completed project at somewhere around $23B, up from an estimate of $9B.

    A similar set of AP1000s was built at Vogtle in Georgia. Unit 3 only recently came online, with unit 4 expected at the end of the year. Costs went from an initial estimate of $12B to somewhere over $30B.

    Note that design, site selection, regulatory approvals, and tendering aren’t included in the above. Those add between 5-10 years to the above schedules.

    • Ertebolle@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Gee, I wonder if the cost might go down if we built more of them, as is the case with, y’know, basically every other complicated thing that humans build.

      • Quacksalber@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        So even if I follow your logic, that nuclear plants will get cheaper and faster to build, wich I’m not, you still have to build the first generation of plants slow and expensive. So we either wait 15 years to get better at building those plants, or we just build renewables right now.

        • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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          1 year ago

          So we either wait 15 years to get better at building those plants, or we just build renewables right now.

          We do both. This isn’t a binary choice.

          • gmtom@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Money and manpower are not infinite. Any money spent on one is a choice not to spend it on the other.

            • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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              1 year ago

              Money and manpower are not infinite.

              Functionally they are because different Capital Groups will chase different projects. For instance Bill Gates / TerraPower is heavily backing both Fusion and SMR Fission technology.

              Meanwhile other Capital Groups like Anschutz are piling money into Wind Farms then there’s yet other groups like Silicon Ranch pouring money into Solar Farms.

              It seems to have escaped the notice of most Netizens but the big money Capitalists have finally come out to play in the Green / Renewable Energy space. Sure there’s an absolute limit on the money and manpower that even they can afford but practically speaking those limits are so high that we’re unlikely to reach them.