Comment by OhMeadhbh
2 days ago
Nuclear power plants usually only cost about twice as much as projected in phase II planning. IT projects are sort of open-ended. Interestingly, the simulator I was involved with (many decades ago) at a nuclear power plant came within about 10% of initial projections. The last "scan uploads for viruses" project I worked on was about 20x - 40x more expensive than projected. (Unfortunately the person who suggested we just pay a third party for this service was fired.) The bit with projecting cost and schedules for nuke plants is to ignore any initial costing and multiply the phase II planning estimate by 2 or 4.
>20x - 40x more expensive than projected
That is an impressive cost overrun!
I guess the issue with nuclear is that they are so expensive that even a x2 overrun is disastrous.
It's not as disasterous as you think. Most people paying for power plants expect large overruns. If you're the type of company that can sell bonds to get 5.5 billion dollars to build a nuclear power plant, you can sell bonds to get 11 billion dollars to build a nuclear power plant.