[CogentHedgehog]

Worth noting that Unit 3 at Olkiluoto in Finland was started before Flamanville and it hit massive cost overruns and delays as well. It was another EPR -- it's not like Flamanville was the very first build of this design, they had another to learn with.

[cbmuser]

You should also add that China started to build two EPRs after France and Finnland and they are both already operating commercially.

[bobthepanda]

They were both also late and over budget though. Less so than the two European units, but still.

https://archive.is/MT9fA#selection-2255.0-2337.266

> CGN Power, the listed unit of state-owned China General Nuclear Power, China’s largest nuclear power projects developer, has announced a 17 per cent capital increase at its Taishan nuclear project, raising concern cost overruns and commissioning delays will continue.

> The company will inject 2.94 billion yuan into its 51 per cent-held unit Taishan Nuclear Power Joint Venture, which will see the unit’s total registered capital to 28.6 billion yuan from 24.4 billion yuan, the company said in a filing to Hong Kong’s bourse late on Tuesday. Provincial government-controlled Guangdong Yudean, the province’s largest power producer, owns 19 per cent stake, and CGN’s French technology partner EDF holds 30 per cent stake.

> CGN said the capital injection serves “to enhance its financing ability so as to meet its fund requirements for engineering construction.”

> The project, which CGN said on track to become the world’s first third-generation nuclear reactor built on the European pressurised reactors (EPR) design to achieve commercial operation, was originally expected to have its first generating unit come online in December 2013 followed by the second in October 2014.

> The timetable of the two units subsequently slipped to the first and second half of this year, and further to the first and second half of next year after “comprehensive evaluation on subsequent engineering construction plan and relevant risks,” said CGN a year ago.

[CogentHedgehog]

China's nuclear industry and the way the government interacts with it is just... very different from pretty much any other country. This is true of some of their other sectors. Yes, they can do some things incredibly quickly by more or less ramming them through at top speed using a combination of government and state-affiliated corporations. But the ways they achieve those results at speed are not necessarily transferable to other countries.

I also get a bit nervous about how fast they've scaled their nuclear sector and pumped out plants. It reminds me a bit of the big historical push the USSR did into nuclear tech -- which culminated in the Chernobyl incident because they overlooked issues they should not have in order to keep things moving fast.

A lot of technology and engineering lessons have been learned since those days... and so far I haven't heard anything specifically concerning about China's nuclear reactor fleet. But there's always going to be a little doubt in the back of my mind.