The old reactors are the things nuclear advocates dismiss and say modern designs are better than on issues like safety and other concerns.
So the technology that looked good, theoretically, in 1970 may not have the same outlook in 2020.
In particular, France's failing attempt is the EPR. There have been construction starts at three sites, and all have been massive off schedule. For the three not in China, they have been massively over budget. The build in China was the third to be started, but is the only one completed; planned construction time was 48 months, but it ended up taking twice as long. I don't know how to judge the pricing of construction in China, but if the Western world could do it in 8 years and at the stated cost of $7.5B, it would be a fantastic deal.
What has changed since the last time? I don't know. Maybe different sorts of people go into the same jobs. Maybe executive culture is to blame. Maybe engineering culture is to blame. Maybe procurement and construction is to blame. Nobody has provided a solid explanation of X, Y, and Z with concrete examples.
Some will say regulations are different and the cause, but at the same time nobody says that these are unnecessary regulations, or that there's a smarter path that would make them cheap, it's always just vague accusations without any specific call to action.
Why would we remove a common sense environmental regulation, when we can build cheaper better things that have less environmental damage? Why the obsession with nuclear, at any cost? What is the benefit and gain when we have cheaper better alternatives?
What was considered "cheap" in the 1980s is no longer the cheapest option. We have better, cheaper technologies.
And on top of that the US can no longer build big things. We don't have construction management competence.
No we can't. The plans are to build nuclear plants that do exactly no environmental or social damage. Solar/wind/etc can't possibly compete to that standard. Try reliably isolating solar panel waste from the biosphere for even a century and see how much it costs. The figures would be too absurd to consider, which is why nobody is suggesting it.
I'd be happy to go with the cheapest thing if everything was to the same standard; but solar seems to getting a free pass that nuclear isn't, because people care about having to evacuate an area but have no fear of heavy metals poisoning. For reasons that continue to baffle the rationalists.
I'm not sure if you're serious with post. "No" environmental damage, when we have to mine uranium, iron ore, and massive amounts of concrete? Yet somehow they "waste" of old solar panels is hazardous to the biosphere and impossible to separate? Nuclear waste is far more hazardous and we don't seem to have much problem isolating that in France.
And then you say that solar is getting a free pass, when you invent issues for solar that are far more difficult for nuclear to handle?
How is this rational in any way?
If you include the mining that tips the scale even further in the favour of nuclear. A renewables-first strategy use substantially more iron ore and concrete and many more rare-earth metals (which are typically mined in China last time I checked, because they are environmentally damaging to produce). Less uranium with renewables, for obvious reasons, but you can power a country with a very small uranium mine. And again, uranium mines are typically held to higher standards than other mines because they are so small and relatively easy to manage.
> ... Nuclear waste is far more hazardous and we don't seem to have much problem isolating that in France. ...
You seem to be inching towards enlightenment. Keep following that thought.
> you invent issues for solar that are far more difficult for nuclear to handle?
https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/6/21/are-we-...
I care about the environment when it is convenient. Nuclear remains hands-down the most environmentally friendly option. The only defence renewables have against it is economics (which is a compelling case, I must admit).
Renewables need fossile backup plants.
Go on electricitymap.org and see how Germany has among the highest emissions in the electricity sector in Europe despite 50% renewables in their electricity mix.
China and Russia are building new reactors faster and faster because in these countries nuclear never had a strong political opposition.
Of course the plans should be a lot more rigorous.
And then of course prices would go up. But cost overruns would go down.
Also, the fact that "the West" has stopped its building boom led to the construction industry atrophying. There is no efficiency, because there's no scale.
Also the mechanical safety standards are way stricter now, so you can't really just take an old design and add digital bus automation. You need more redundant safety systems, corium catcher and stuff. Not so easy.
It’s not a design problem, it’s a bureaucratic problem.
Is China planning any more EPRs? I can't find any evidence of them.
I would agree that it's a bureaucratic problem, but it's a bureaucratic problem of the construction industries in all Western nations. And nobody can even figure out what exactly the problem is, or how to change it.
The West just forgot how to build large projects.
Well, they've built them.
Even unsafe nuclear plants (at least historically) are higher frequency of still-rare but potentially-catastrophic failures, not regular failures that are likely to be obvious after a handful of years of a small number of reactors being in operation, its far from clear that they do so safely. (And, since neither of these regimes favors transparency, its not like you can easily externally analytically assess likely safety, either, and even the economics before considering safety may be less clear than they superficially seem.)
But, yes, getting things done that some currently-in-power faction would prefer is more complicatdd in systems in which the dominant faction is constrained by competing power bases rather than free to run roughshod over them. Though that's not something that has recently changed, its always been true, and those constraints have been a feature of the West for centuries, and most people in the West consider it a feature, not a bug; what is new in regard to nuclear power since the 1950s is that there are both more alternatives and more understanding that it has risks at all.