[dlandau]

Started over 10 years ago is an understatement. It was supposed to be finished over 10 years ago. First the Berlin airport, now this and James Webb Space Telescope: are we really just going to finish our collective homeworks?

[Yaggo]

Yeah, the final permission for the project was granted in 2002, almost 20 years ago. So I was also 20 years younger. You know, after certain age everything feels "just few years" ago.

[yason]

There was also a generation gap between the earlier builders of nuclear plants and now these. Lots of knowhow was lost as we paused building nuclear for a long time. I hope we can now keep on building new plants, riding on the wave of experience from the recent projects and keeping it alive to make future builds cheaper and faster.

[whizzter]

The worst part is that some of this know-how might've been the stuff that makes the plants safe, an accident at a newly built plant due to this would be a death-knell to the industry and our hopes of clean energy.

Also in this theme, even if material science has advanced I'm a bit curious as if it has really advanced enough that people trying to promote building molten salt breeders over and over again (that's the ones that are highly corrosive iirc? if not insert the ones with practical problems).

[Maakuth]

I'm not very worried about the safety aspect, as the safety features are probably among the most explicit parts of the design. These are carefully designed, modeled and simulated and are also the focus of the regulators. Moreover, there hardly has been a lot of room for commercial nuclear designers to the software development-like approach of trying, failing and trying again. Maybe the early experimental and weapon related reactor designers worked like that at some point? These days safety is the first priority for designers and operators alike. One example illustrating the thinking is the EPR core catcher: while the active safety features in EPR mean it's possibly the safest reactor type ever built, there are provisions to minimize enviromental release of radioactive materials in the case of catastrophic failure.

[whizzter]

I think such design things overall is what's needed to make things safe for the environment all around, but if there was stuff that was known to designers 40-50 years ago that wasn't properly logged "and lived within the walls" then we might encounter minor failures (that in worst case could lead to major ones).

Reading about many of the early accidents in military and early nuclear industry, I'm not too sure that there wasn't quite a bit of "trying and failing" going on back then, and while that culture is not up to the NASA standards we see in space flights we've also seen how some of their contractors got slower and slower to the point where they lost the ability to finish things in time (and as time drags on the repeating of mistakes will come up again).

[alex_duf]

Estimations are really hard. I don't know about you but I consistently under evaluate every piece of work...

[y4mi]

It's rarely simple/honest misestimations with large government contracts though.

There is just too much money to be made for the corrupt people to stay away.

The honest and good offers are rarely taken, because they've realistic estimations - the dishonest one's only care about getting the contract, not finishing it... So they'll make the much better offer. And once work starts, the corruption keeps spreading. Everyone on every layer knows how unlikely their charges are going to be contested, so everyone just charges more for the same work, siphoning money from the project.

I'd consider that a cultural issue, because people at large have really started to only think about themselves and no longer identify with their work ethic. Which is understandable because the employers generally treat their employees like disposable tools.

I don't think there is any straightforward or easy solution, and it can get much much worse too. Just look at china's production issues for inland products, esp. food and consumable products.

[burmanm]

This project wasn't government project though, but TVO's.

[hairytrog]

If you accurately estaimted the pain and time required to complete something, you'd never get started.

[mannykannot]

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

[Hamuko]

Anything is small beans compared to Basílica de la Sagrada Família.

[Jormis]

Building started July 2005.