lot of those expense are unnecessary self inflicted burocracy
What do you mean?
Hinkley Point C in the UK is way over budget and time at an estimated cost of £49B and an estimated build time of 13 years. It’s still not operational, so the final numbers may be a lot higher still.
Flamanville 3 in France was also way over budget and time, at somewhere between €13B and €24B (latter includes financing costs) and a build time of 17 years.
Yes, both were built during COVID, so ideally things would go a little smoother just due to a lack of a pandemic.
But - those are 2 different countries, both taking ages and ridiculous amounts of money to build a single nuclear power plant. What exactly is self-inflicted in these 2 instances?
The entire certification process of the components used in nuclear is a mess in Europe.
Parts needs to be certified multiple times for multiple entities, and the same is true for each component used in building those parts. Each country in Europe has different regulations, so the same design needs to be adapted and recertified so it is always the first of a kind. The process is done multiple times during construction as the criteria changes with continuous renegotiating and amendments to the contracts.
That makes the costs explode. Nuclear in China is as safe and costs 3 to 7 times less. The difference is know how (they never stopped building), standardization and scale.
What do you mean?
Hinkley Point C in the UK is way over budget and time at an estimated cost of £49B and an estimated build time of 13 years. It’s still not operational, so the final numbers may be a lot higher still.
Flamanville 3 in France was also way over budget and time, at somewhere between €13B and €24B (latter includes financing costs) and a build time of 17 years. Yes, both were built during COVID, so ideally things would go a little smoother just due to a lack of a pandemic.
But - those are 2 different countries, both taking ages and ridiculous amounts of money to build a single nuclear power plant. What exactly is self-inflicted in these 2 instances?
The entire certification process of the components used in nuclear is a mess in Europe.
Parts needs to be certified multiple times for multiple entities, and the same is true for each component used in building those parts. Each country in Europe has different regulations, so the same design needs to be adapted and recertified so it is always the first of a kind. The process is done multiple times during construction as the criteria changes with continuous renegotiating and amendments to the contracts.
That makes the costs explode. Nuclear in China is as safe and costs 3 to 7 times less. The difference is know how (they never stopped building), standardization and scale.