Comment by rootsofallevil
5 months ago
Nuclear doesn't have a great record in other countries either. I might have the wrong figures but Hinkley Points C is over 2 times over budget and likely to be 5+ years late.
The exemption being France and maybe China?
France did a programme of nuclear power stations rather than the 1 or 2 offs that seem to be the norm elsewhere and that seems to have worked pretty well.
I'd be surprised if HPC is competitive with solar + wind + BESS when it comes online but I could well be wrong
No, the exceptions are builds like HPC.
The average build time is currently 6.5 years. The median is lower at 5.8. The variations across both time and space of those average are neither large nor particularly systematic.
There have always been outliers, so if you focus on those you can "prove" anything you like.
https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/nuclear-constructi...
Which for western construction creates a dataset weighted around ~1980. Not sure why that is relevant half a century later?
Instead taking the average of all modern western construction and we get close to 15 years.
With the recent insanely subsidies european projects being proposed even the initial timeline calls for a ~10 years build time. Assuming everything goes to plan.
In France, the last construction is Flamanville EPR. It is at least 5 times over budget and 15 years late
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Pl...
We’ve had our share of anti-nuclear activists in France. The project got endlessly stalled, with shifting legislative grounds, and general opposition. Also, the general inefficiency and incompetence from Areva meant this was a match made in heaven (or hell, depends) to get nearly infinite delay.
Flamanville 3 failed because of screwups in the design and construction. What you're blaming the opposition for is exposing that and holding the nuclear people responsible. How dare they, right? /s
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At least 5 times, indeed: it was due to cost 3.3 billion euros, its cost to date is 23.7, it it not running at full power and a major update (reactor cover) is already planned.
https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2025/01/14/epr-de-fl...
And even that absolutely catastrophic nuclear construction project has a better ROI than any German intermittent renewables. After almost 25 years of renewable subsidies.
Note: catastrophic nuclear is still better than best renewables.
Source please. That truly does not make sense given that renewable subsidies are being phased out around the world and renewables are the fastest growing energy source in human history.
In contrast nuclear power is backsliding, and the few projects which get green lit have insanely large subsidies attached.
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It won’t be competitive with anything.
But that’s OK, Theresa May signed a guarantee that they’d get paid an uncompetitive price by the taxpayer, regardless.
But that expensive guaranteed price still wasn't enough to cover the actual costs and the EdF CFO resigned in protest.
Once that became too obvious to deny, after the French government had renationalised EdF, they were begging the UK government to give them more money, possibly buried in the contract for the second plant build.
For that build they stopped using CFD, a financial instrument designed for nuclear but which has massively helped renewables, be ause it couldn't hide the nuclear cost overruns. They're now charging electricity users in advance for the nuclear they are going to build with no guarantee of eventual costs.
South Korean company build a NPP in 7 years in Saudi Arabia.
United Arab Emirates.
Fastest build times are Japan with under 4 years.
Germany built its Konvois in just shy of 6 years.
Just before we stopped building altogether.
France built 50+ reactors in 15 years.
We know how to build nuclear quickly, reliably and (relatively) cheaply. We also know how to do it slowly, eratically and expensively.
Fortunately the former comes almost but not entirely automatically with building lots of them.
During the past 25 years there were projects aiming at building industrial nuclear reactors. They all ended badly (canceled, way over budget or delay...).
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> South Korean company build a NPP in 7 years in Saudi Arabia.
Barakah (delivered March 2024) was late (by about 3 years?), undersold (KEPCO hadn't any other ongoing project and the Korean government at the time wanted a nuclear phase-out) and various tricks are now known: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Korean_nuclear_scandal