[Krasnol]

This "loss of nuclear engineering capability" doesn't hold up when you see reactors build by the French having the same problems: overdue and over budget.

The French never stopped building reactors all over the world.

"Base generation" is an outdated concept. It can be replaced by storage and grid size for example.

[Animats]

France built most of their reactors to one design in the 1980s. That worked out well, but those reactors are nearing end of life. More recently, reactor projects in France have been taking far too long and going far over budget.[1]

You have to make multiples of something to get production efficiencies, and you have to keep building on a regular basis to keep the production line alive. Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock was once so fed up with the Navy's intermittent aircraft carrier orders that they said that if Congress would order two at once, they'd throw in a third carrier for free.

[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a33499619/fr...

[Manuel_D]

The French have the same problems of loss of engineering capability. They built many reactors of the same design during the Messmer plan, but haven't had to build new reactors in a long time. The fact that nuclear plants are so long-lived is a huge strength: they are among the cheapest forms of green energy if they are allowed to serve the entirety of their service life. But because they last so long, if you build a bunch of them there's no reason to build more for half a century.

[Krasnol]

Weird that the French somehow missed all those basic facts some random person can come up on the internet when they presented their designs in recent years and started building those massively over budget and overdue projects, eh?

> they are among the cheapest forms of green energy

The only interpretation of "cheap" which makes nuclear "cheapest" in something is the one where you ignore everything related to nuclear waste. From reprocessing over storage to decommissioning. Making it a lie, basically. Just like the "green" in this greenwashing.

[Manuel_D]

What facts are the French missing? The point is that building 48 reactors of the same design (like in the Messmer plan) is cheaper on a per-unit basis than building 2 reactors of a new design. The learnings from the first few builds inform subsequent iterations, and these learnings decay over time as plants haven't been built in decades. I'm not sure what you're referring to here.

Nuclear waste disposal is not a huge portion of nuclear power's cost, it accounts for about 10% [1]. Nuclear plant builders have to finance the cost of disposal upfront. Decommissioning is even less - less than one percent if the plant serves its full service life.

1. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec....

[Gwypaas]

They had reduced costs within each generation but the costs between generations increased wildly.

They never saw any kinds of economics of scale.

Have a look at Figure 25 here and add Flamanville 3 waaaay beyond the end of the scale at $12 000/kWe

https://www.oecd-nea.org/upload/docs/application/pdf/2020-07...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Pl...

[Manuel_D]

You just described an economy of scale: costs within generations went down. The more plants in the same generation the lower the cost.

Flamanville is the first EPR France has built, and this it's not leveraging the intra-generational learnings.

[Gwypaas]

Take the 20% cost reduction the last two generations lead to. That would change Flamanville 3 from exorbitantly expensive to exorbitantly expensive.

The French nuclear program as a whole has had a huge negative learning curve. The more they've built and learned the more expensive they have become. Sure you can brush of 20% with a lot of money down the drain, but that does not make it in any way economical.

[vuln]

Do you have any examples of other energy plants that weren't nuclear, were consistently under budget and delivered before the due date?

[mikeyouse]

It's entirely routine in the natural gas world;

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170518005288/en/Pan...

> After the installation of 1.4 million linear feet of electrical cable, 113,161 feet of pipe, 890 tons of steel and expending more than 1.6 million man hours, Panda Power Funds’ 778-megawatt “Stonewall” generating station has achieved commercial operations. The Loudoun County, Virginia power facility was finished ahead of schedule and under budget, and initial tests show the plant is exceeding performance guarantees for both power output and efficiency. The plant is capable of continuously supplying the power needs of up to 778,000 homes in the Northern Virginia/District of Columbia metropolitan area.

Lest you believe the PR page after the fact -- They fundraised in 2013/2014, started site prep in November 2014, broke ground in August 2015 with a target commercial launch date of June 1, 2017 and Bechtel finished commissioning in May 2017.

https://web.archive.org/web/20151015014525/http://www.power-...

https://www.power-technology.com/projects/stonewall-power-pr...

[ilyt]

I thought "overdue and over budget" is natural state of any big project

[Krasnol]

No, it's not.

But this generalization comes always up if someone wants to sell a project which they knew will be overdue and over budget.

[ttoinou]

They did stop building them in France though, and they switched technology to EPR

[Krasnol]

French engineers were still allowed to travel abroad and work on other French projects which were overdue and over budget.