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Comment by Hilift | Hacker News Reader

Or acknowledge the true cost of $10 billion to build a reactor. Look at recent implementations. Finland was complaining that they had to deal with the mafia. The plant cost €11 billion, original proposal: €3 billion. Yikes.

"... 3,800 employees from 500 companies. 80% of the workers are foreigners, mostly from eastern European countries. In 2012 it was reported that one Bulgarian contracting firm is owned by the mafia, and that Bulgarian workers have been required to pay weekly protection fees to the mafia, wages have been unpaid, employees have been told not to join a union and that employers also reneged on social security payments."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant

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> Or acknowledge the true cost of $10 billion to build a reactor. Look at recent implementations. Finland was complaining that they had to deal with the mafia. The plant cost €11 billion, original proposal: €3 billion. Yikes.

This particular plant is a terrible example. It was the first of its kind, so it was bound to be more difficult than as part of a series. For example, there were issues with contractors that would not have happened if it had been the 5th reactor with the same specs. There were also issues with project management and changing regulations, which prompted some extensive tweaking of the reactor core almost as it was built. This is not representative of the difficulty of building a reactor that is par tof a fleet with identical designs.

It is not like nth of a kind Hinkley Point C, EPR reactor number 5 and 6, at $32.5B per reactor is going any better?

Also do note that no one knows the true cost of Olkiluoto 3. The $11B figure is from a settlement many years before it was completed as interest and construction costs kept accumulating.

It is probably infuriating to many that costs are that significant and that important. France should be the model for nuclear, but mismanaged EDF which now has €54.3 billion debt and is years behind in maintenance. (2022 debt was €64.5 billion). And the public and politicians pitch a fit if the PM proposes a balanced budget with cuts. Nuclear doesn't make the cut when there are multiple competing interests of nitwits.

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