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Comment by mercurial | Hacker News Reader

> EPR on time or on budget

Sure, on one hand, this kind of project is likely to get into cost overruns. On the other hand, Areva looks like a fairly dysfunctional company following the tenure of Anne Lauvergeon, so it's not only a technical problem.

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It's also the AP1000 from Westinghouse, not just Areva. There are definitely deep problems at the senior management level down to project management down to QA on welds with Westinghouse. I haven't followed Areva.

At least for the EPR they are building in Finland, AFAIU a lot of the delays and subsequent cost overruns have been due to stuff like poor welds or poorly done concrete that has to be redone. Really basic stuff that one would assume that a company that is building a nuclear power plant could handle, but, alas, apparently not. Of course, Areva is claiming that it's just the Finnish nuclear safety inspectors who are being overly nitpicky.

Yes, nuclear advocates in the US love to blame regulators and ignore the incompetency of their own industry too. There's a new report out today highlighting that at the South Carolina project that was just cancelled, there was an internal report highlighting lack of plans, unconstructable plans, low morale, and high turnover. And that the project was likely to fail. Three months after the report, an additional $800M was requested, and then 18 months later it was cancelled.

http://www.postandcourier.com/news/newly-released-report-hig...

Such behavior seems to be borderline criminal, particularly covering up the internal audit.

Yet this is par for the course on nuclear these days.

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