Why Does Nuclear Power Plant Construction Cost So Much? | Hacker News Reader

Why Does Nuclear Power Plant Construction Cost So Much?

progress.institute

1 pointArnt5 comments

US nuclear power plants have what appears to be a rather simple safety requirement:

    Any event with a probability of 1 in a million or more of occurring must be accounted for, designed for, tested, verified and documented in an approved manner.

In practice, what this means is that every piece of steel and every batch of concrete and every piece of electronics used in every building structure, piece of equipment or control device in a nuclear power plant must be thoroughly tested to make sure it meets required specifications.

First, you have to find vendors that will even attempt to provide equipment and/or materials that have been tested in this way. Documentation must be maintained of these tests. The individuals signing this documentation must be approved beforehand as having the necessary qualifications. These records must be maintained and available for periodic inspection and verification by inspectors who have also been verified and approved.

And it goes on and on and on.

Why can't they build them cheaply in other countries without that safety requirement?

France has 56 nuclear facilities and plans to add more.

They have achieved cost improvements by using cookie-cutter standardized designs. This has not been approved in the USA in the interest of design progress and advancement --- which has been ground to a halt as a result.

Similar efforts are now underway in the USA.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/04/westinghouse-announces-a-sma...

Thank you, but you answered a question that wasn't asked.

According to a translation of his remarks published by Reuters, Macron said the French nuclear industry would “remain the cornerstone of our strategic autonomy.”

It's for national security, not because they are built cheaply.

To sum up, since the early 1970s, the cost of constructing nuclear power plants in the U.S. has been steadily rising. This can be traced to a constantly shifting regulatory environment, which has continuously changed plant design requirements, and added more and more safety features, which often were required to be implemented on plants under construction. The regulatory environment is partially a reflection of the fact that nuclear power and the risks of radiation had become increasingly controversial, and that early understanding of the likelihood of a nuclear plant accident was often inadequate.

Mysteriously, it doesn't address how expensive it is to build them in EVERY country. The PRC doesn't have environmentalists and 'regulatory requirements' to blame it on. The PRC can't even copy Westinghouse AP1000s without cost over runs.

TL:DR Blaming the environmentalists again.

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