Comment by jjk166
15 hours ago
> I have yet to find any concrete defense of the idea that costs are coming from regulation, rather than the costs of construction in advanced economies.
One of the main drivers of excessive costs of construction in advanced economies are from excessive regulations, so it's really one in the same. Nuclear is obviously more regulated than other industries, and it routinely faces more frequent, longer delays and higher cost overruns than projects of comparable scale and complexity. This study [1] goes into a lot more detail.
Digging more into the details, it's all linked. The lack of regulatory clarity means that designs have to be changed more after construction starts, requirements for redundancy increase complexity, changing regulations prevents standardization, etc. Prescriptive regulations which were created decades ago limit the cost savings possible with newer technologies, like improved reinforced concrete. This study [1] goes into a lot more detail.
> Our retrospective and prospective analyses together provide insights on the past shortcomings of engineering cost models and possible solutions for the future. Nuclear reactor costs exceeded estimates in engineering models because cost variables related to labor productivity and safety regulations were underestimated. These discrepancies between estimated and realized costs increased with time, with changing regulations and variable construction site-specific characteristics.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243512...
> The lack of regulatory clarity
Oddly enough, that sounds like a request for more regulation. And I have heard many people say that if the regulators had made sure that if approval had gone beyond mere safety, into constructibility and other areas, that Vogtle would have been closer to the initial budget, and that Summer might have completed.
Thank you for the link, and I will read it in detail later, but at a high level, I think it's great support for my point that it's construction productivity that's the key driver of cost, not regulation (emphasis mine):
> Relatedly, containment building costs more than doubled from 1976 to 2017, due only in part to safety regulations. Costs of the reactor containment building more than doubled, primarily due to declining on-site labor productivity. Productivity in recent US plants is up to 13 times lower than industry expectations. A prospective analysis of the containment building suggests that improved materials and automation could increase the resilience of nuclear construction costs to variable conditions.