[barake]

France has sort of done this - they have 56 reactors in operation all based on the same 3 basic designs[1]. It's pretty incredible how quickly the plants were designed, tested, and built. Over a span of 15 years they brought 56 reactors online[2] - in the US we'd be lucky to build and commission a single reactor in that time span.

[1] https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/frances-efficiency-in-t... [2] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/read...

[pyrale]

It was more like 30 years. '70-'85 was only the CP0-1-2 part, which was about 34 reactors. P and N models were built from '78 to 2000.

Also that doesn't include design. French design was done in the 60's, and resulted in UNGG prototypes which were abandoned in favor of buying a Westinghouse PWR license. All french reactors are based on that license.

Still an amazing feat, considering it's what provides power to France to this day.

[Ringz]

Many claim that France’s 1974 Messmer plan resulted in the building of its 58 reactors in 15 years. This is not true. The planning for several of these nuclear reactors began long before. For example, the Fessenheim reactor obtained its construction permit in 1967 and was planned starting years before. In addition, 10 of the reactors were completed between 1991-2000. As such, the whole planning-to-operation time for these reactors was at least 32 years, not 15. That of any individual reactor was 10 to 19 years.

[Gwypaas]

Lets add Flamanville 3 to the "experience" graph in the article. The only reason it gets pushed through is for France to have an industrial base enabling nuclear submarines, carriers and weapons.

https://imgur.com/6G2RBa0

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

[adev_]

> Lets add Flamanville 3 to the "experience" graph in the article. The only reason it gets pushed through is for France to have an industrial base enabling nuclear submarines, carriers and weapons.

That's garbage.

- The reason Flamanville 3 takes so much time is precisely because it is a prototype on a new design that never have been produces in series, nor even tested. That supports 100% what is said here: If you want to reduce cost, mass produce.

- Submarines and carrier nuclear reactors are completely different beast that have nothing to do with either Flammanville 3 or the existing nuclear park.

[maeln]

> Submarines and carrier nuclear reactors are completely different beast that have nothing to do with either Flammanville 3 or the existing nuclear park.

To be completely fair, the french nuclear industry is a small world. DCNS (now called Naval Group) did design and manufacture thermal exchanger for civilian nuclear reactors. On the other hand, if I remember correctly, they do work with Areva (now Orano) for some part of the nuclear submarine. Company that can produce parts (even things like tubing or screws) for nuclear reactors are very few, so they often end up working for civilian and military application.

All of this to say that the civilian and military nuclear industry are very much intertwined, feed each other and in many ways, keep each other alive.

[natmaka]

> Flamanville 3 takes so much time is precisely because it is a prototype on a new design

No, this reactor type (EPR) is a mere evolution. Proof: https://www.irsn.fr/savoir-comprendre/surete/presentation-hi...

[pbazarnik]

From the link it looks like it had many changes implemented to improve safety: The EPR is a so-called “evolutionary” reactor, that is to say that its design is based on that of existing reactors, the French N4 type nuclear reactors and the German Konvoi . It thus benefits from proven technologies and operating feedback from its predecessors. It is a powerful reactor with a production capacity of 1,600 megawatts (MWe) compared to 1,450 MWe for the latest reactors built in France (type N4). It is designed for a service life of 60 years . Significant changes have however been introduced compared to existing reactors

[XorNot]

Perhaps more importantly, there's a pretty long engineering history of assuming that "similar" means "don't need to test as much" not working out. Any time you make a change, you can and should be testing the parts as though they were a new design. I mean the most recent example of that was the Boeing MCAS.

[Gare]

Also Ariane 5 maiden launch failure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_flight_V88

[fransje26]

The MCAS was not thoroughly tested by design.

A new system requiring extensive testing would have alerted the FAA that something was off, and possibly led to a more costly re-certification they were trying to avoid.

That aircraft should never have been allowed to fly.

[jjk166]

It doesn't matter if it's an evolution or a revolution - a change of any sort means new tooling to produce the components, new procedures to assemble them, new analysis to certify that they will all work together, and new training for everyone involved to do all the above.

[natmaka]

All this was known before starting the building process, and the builder planned to deliver the reactor in 2012. It is late (right now: not delivered) mainly because project management and quality insurance were abysmal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamanville_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

[natmaka]

The costs of the French nuclear scale-up: A case of negative learning by doing https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...

[pyrale]

That article neglects that the plants built by the end of the program were not the same as the plants built in the beginning. Within each "pallier", a speedup can clearly be observed. Likewise, costs can hardly be compared if you don't look at the same models.

[1]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrale_nucl%C3%A9aire_en_Fra...

[natmaka]

I have no idea how a speedup appears to you. On the graph it is quite clear that, with time (and therefore experience), the average amount of time needed to build one is raising.

[pyrale]

Not sure how you read that in the graph.

What I read:

    model : first reactor -> last reactor
    CP0 : 65 months -> 60 months
    CP1 : 73 months -> 64 months
    CP2: 56 months -> 79 months
    P4: 82 months -> 74 months
    P'4: 85 months -> 89 months
    N4: 151 months -> 104 months

That's 2-3rds of the builds showing a speedup. The results are even more striking if you calculate the correlation between start date and build time for any 2 reactors of the same model.

[natmaka]

Sorry, I didn't expose it clearly.

Yes, I considered the long-term experience gain (columns, not lines: from 65 to 151 and from 60 to 104).

The first nuclear plants were theoretically the most difficult to build as the local industry was less adjusted to building such things, especially specific components.

As those reactor 'models' were very similar (there is no quantum leap) pertinent experience (processes, tooling...) accumulated.

However there was no reduction of 'intensity' (investments, amount of simultaneous building projects, foreseeable projects...) as all this was encompassed by a huge national programme (the 'Plan Messmer').

Therefore it seems that both min and max time to completion should diminish with time.

[anovikov]

Negative learning by doing is very easy to explain: as you go, you realise many perils and dangers of this thing that you were not aware of in the beginning, and those result in a lot of safety precautions added in subsequent projects, increasing the costs.

[thriftwy]

I can't imagine how TCO will not be much lower for subsequent ones, though.

[Retric]

Redundancy generally costs more to maintain not less.

Aka design 1 has 500 pumps, design 2 has 600 and is safer but now there’s more equipment to main and more complex plumbing etc.

[thriftwy]

I begin to understand the logic behind the US derailings.

The idea here is that maintenance is much, much cheaper than rescue operations. If 100 more pumps let you run for years without a scram, go along and order them.

[screye]

Genuine question. What is the stopping the US from paying every experienced French Nuclear Engineer x 2 x Usual US cost Adjustment --> and letting them build here in the US ? France and US are allies, and likely aligned on climate goals. France has similar climate as many of the planned regions and has fairly high building standards.

[dotnet00]

The US has no lack of relevant engineers, after all, it does maintain a large fleet of nuclear powered vessels. As is usual with most of America's problems, there's just a lack of sufficiently concentrated political will to get things done.

[JohnBooty]

That, and the influence of the fossil fuel companies.

[HPsquared]

That's probably the biggest single contributor to the lack of political will. Not just the company bosses, though - a lot of the employees will have similar interests. Say there's an "oil town" or a "coal town", that's a lot of voters.

[lobotomified]

I'd resist policies that threaten my job too.

[ImPostingOnHN]

Makes sense, considering the survival of humanity generally comes (if ever) after immediate personal survival is secured

[HPsquared]

Indeed. Worth keeping in mind though that the fossil fuel people successfully displaced whalers and candlestick makers.

[ibejoeb]

Certainly. It's an odd dynamic because the same people who want to eliminate fossils also hate nuclear. The trending political position is energy austerity, while at the same time electrifying everything. But that's just not going to happen. (Well, I guess it does in California with the rolling blackouts.)

[dabraham1248]

Yes, after all, the reason that Texas is currently working on laws to block renewable power generation in favor of fossil fuel power is because their power grid is _too_ reliable.

[ibejoeb]

Not sure what point you're trying to make. I think it'd be a great idea to build nuclear in Texas.

[prottog]

> there's just a lack of sufficiently concentrated political will to get things done.

Ideally it shouldn't be the case that something like building a power plant to produce electricity shouldn't require political will; just willing investors and operators who desire to make a profit.

[layer8]

The lack of willing investors might indicate that they are doubtful about the profitability.

[prottog]

Absolutely true, but the profitability is likely affected precisely by government policy.

[layer8]

Well, surely the government can’t allow anyone to just build a nuclear power plant, so some policies are required. I can’t judge how reasonable or unreasonable the current ones are. But I can imagine for reasonable policies to be unprofitable without government subsidies, and that would require political will.

[brohee]

By policy, over the next 80 years.

[anovikov]

If a political will is needed to do X, we need to look again at whether we really need it. Normally stuff that's needed, happens by itself as market forces push it.

[dotnet00]

Which is why healthcare, housing and education is super affordable, big tech companies are respecting people's privacy and freedom and climate change has been averted.

[nine_k]

Exactly! They all lack some of the properties that make markets efficient, or form a market at all.

- Healthcare cannot be an efficient free market, where those who can pay most receive the best, and those who cannot pay get nothing. The reasons are pretty obvious. It sort-of-works as an insurance scheme, but currently in the US it's more like a payment scheme (and prices blow up), and in most of the EU is like a redistribution scheme (and amount of care is highly minimized until your condition is really serious).

- Housing in desired areas is heavily influenced administratively by zoning and other stifling norms (hello, SF), and also lack of land in desirable areas (hello, Manhattan). If you agree to live far from bustling megacities or posh suburbs, houses are relatively affordable. (But how are you going to earn the money then?)

- Privacy is not something you want to sell on the market; the whole point is to prevent it. So market forces can't solve it directly. You can buy e.g. an iPhone that gives you more privacy, or use a paid search engine and, a paid email provider, a VPN, etc if you agree to pay more for preserving your privacy; here the markets work well.

- Climate change is again not about trading and competition, because its downsides were not priced into any goods, and mostly are not yet still. Make carbon emission expensive, and the market forces will do their job. E.g. a lot of datacenters are carbon-neutral and powered by solar / wind / hydro just because otherwise the electricity ends up being pretty expensive.

[sideshowb]

Making carbon emission expensive you say? Lobbyists have historically stopped that one, so we're back to an issue of political will.

What's your market solution for that one? Making lobbying even more expensive? I guess that's the fixed point of this function

[roenxi]

Most of those things are being caused by political will.

Healthcare is paralysed by over-regulation. There are lots of easy ways to bring down costs in healthcare that the average entreprenure would love to fix. They don't fix the problems because most of those ways have been made illegal because regulators who adopt a do-no-harm approach that ironically causes more harm than good. In every country I can read the laws of, a doctor and a patient trying to make decisions about healthcare are going to discover that the regulator is in the room 2nd guessing them.

Housing and education, assuming we are talking the US, have been flooded with credit by the government. That happens to be why costs are so high. There is no way the levels of money there are the market-optimal amounts. Every so often the housing market tries to shed debt and force people to buy the things they enjoy and the regulators step in with money printing. I'm pretty sure the US even has such a thing as a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage which is insane. I see figures as high as trillions [0] in the things.

Big tech the reason we need privacy is because sooner or later there will be authoritarians in charge with a lot of political will, using that data. There is a conversation to be had there; the Europeans have crippled their tech sector and privacy legislation was a part of that. Maybe the upside is worth the costs.

Climate change I give you the market would ignore. For the same reason it is ignored politically - nearly nobody thinks it is worth spending real money on to try and fix it.

[0] https://www.bankrate.com/mortgages/mortgage-statistics/

[pfdietz]

The biggest problem with healthcare is that doctors are sued if they don't provide state of the art care. So there's an incentive to produce more and more expensive drugs and technologies, and no (or at least insufficient) ability to trade off cost vs. effectiveness.

[Panzer04]

Flooding the housing market with credit is only an issue because there isn't enough housing so prices are demand driven rather than supply driven.

[briandear]

> Climate change I give you the market would ignore. For the same reason it is ignored politically - nearly nobody thinks it is worth spending real money on to try and fix it.

Some of us feel that you can literally wipe the US off the map and it wouldn’t make a single degree’s worth of difference to climate. Some of us also feel that the climate movement is not about climate but about resource redistribution and thus suspect in its real intent.

[ako]

Nah, market forces are usually short term, whereas political forces should handle long term needs.

[pyrale]

> Normally stuff that's needed, happens by itself as market forces push it.

...As we can see in our efforts to avoid climate change.

[nine_k]

While market forces may be pushing for it, administrative forces may be pushing in an opposite direction.

[hanniabu]

In my experience, admin will go out of there way and to multitudes more work in order to not get anything done

[nine_k]

To do work is what they are paid for.

To solve the problem which an organization was created to solve means to show that the organization is no longer needed. But this means no more work to be paid for!

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Administer is the opposite of complete.

[hanniabu]

We really need a lot of things yet nothing is being done about it

[pyrale]

This may come as a surprise to you, but many french people have no interest living in the US, even for more money.

> France and US are allies

Probably not after such an event.

[calaphos]

The same reason that France is utterly failing at building flamaville 3 - it's not a technical problem but of regulation, government and public support.

[Xixi]

And yet, EDF successfully built Taishan 1 and Taishan 2 in China, pretty much in time and in budget. There were a couple of teething issues (as expected given these were the first two EPRs to enter service), but they are now running great.

According to Yves Bréchet [1], former head of the French Atomic Energy Commission, the main difference is not regulation, government or public support. It's something that should speak a lot to the engineers on HN, but is almost always absent in public debates: the lack of technical expertise. Think expert welders, pipe-fitters, boiler makers, etc. The expertise required when making a nuclear power plant is very high, including and especially when it comes to welding, quality of steel, etc.

Costly mistakes were made while welding critical parts of Flamanville 3 for instance, requiring expansive and expensive rework. I don't think Hinkley Point C is faring much better. On the other side of the world China has been building nuclear power plants relentlessly: they have all the expertise needed. If you allow me a slight exaggeration, given France and UK massive de-industrialization over the last few decades, we are now amateurs compared to China.

Again, it's not an issue of regulation. It's just that when you don't build things the know-how gets lost very very quickly. Something that should get hammered in the head of all CEOs/managers/decision maker...

[1] https://www.thinkerview.com/france-la-strategie-du-canard-sa...

[guerby]

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

"It was estimated that the plant’s investment cost would rise to between 22 and 23 yuan per watt from an originally budgeted 14 yuan"

So about 60% cost overrun.

[Xixi]

Compared to Hinkley Point, Flamanville or Olkiluoto, that’s actually pretty good…

[pfdietz]

Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, the play was pretty good, wasn't it?

[seqastian]

So public support wasn't an issue in China?!

[Xixi]

Yves Bréchet point in the linked video is that it’s first and foremost technical expertise, rather than political/regulatory landscape that explains why Taishan has fared better than the other EPR projects.

It’s not something we (I’m European) want to hear.

It doesn’t mean that public support doesn’t impact projects in Europe (or democracies in general), but it should not be used as an excuse to refuse to look further.

For instance Flamanville got a massive delay because of welding issues. That’s not a regulatory or public opinion issue. That’s an issue with the (lack of) expertise of French welders.

I don’t remember if it is for this one, or for repairs in other French nuclear power plants, but Canadian welders were called to the rescue…

[pfdietz]

I think it was for other nuclear plants that had been operating. Foreign welders were needed because there was only so much welding one worker could do before they reached their radiation exposure limit.

[rowanG077]

I'm not sure whether this is a troll post or but China is not a democracy. So public support isn't needed.

[OJFord]

US compliance & regulation, which would take three committees and five years to approve each metric BOM item or certified acceptable substitute?.

You don't even need to oay the engineers more, not only because you have engineers, but because EDF for example can be given attractive enough terms to build and operate overseas, as it has in the UK.

[thrawa8387336]

Probably the biggest bureaucracy in the world. Wonder how it compares per capita with China

[OJFord]

Hard to be sure because of the population difference, but India's got to be well up there. US border control is a paramilitary operation; India's is a bureaucratic one.

[AtlasBarfed]

Look, the elephant in the room is that if a power company wants to invest a billion dollars in power generation, they are going to do it with solar/wind. The project scales out, the cost is dropping constantly, and they get power generation early in the project.

A nuclear power plant is:

- a 10 year investment delay (with no return until completed)

- could be cancelled at any moment (high risk)

- with a very uncertain price target (solar/wind + grid storage will probably be half the cost or less of what it is today)

- can't be expanded

- very likely to balloon in cost and be a total financial quagmire

Solar/wind can be scalably purchased, installed, and expanded as needed. The costs will drop continuously, replacement and maintenance is easy, there's no nuclear waste to get rid of, and can very reliably be specced in terms of cost for generation.

[belorn]

Power companies that wants to invest a billion dollars in power generation will also invest into fossil fueled power delivery. Solar and wind produce a lot of cheap energy when the weather is optimal, but when the weather change and demand exceeds supply, the market price of energy goes to the roof. Last winter in Europe we saw prices spikes well over 100x of what the average market cost, which primarily went pay for fossil fueled power generation. Fossil fueled power delivery also get a lot of subsidizes in order to provide reserve energy, so they get the advantage of being paid twice.

Solar and wind is excellent investment for those wanting to compete when supply in the grid is high and prices are low. Nuclear, hydro, storage and fossil fuels are there to compete with supply is low and prices high.

[Zigurd]

But not the ones who underestimated decommissioning costs by a factor of 4 vs. Germany's estimates, and about a factor of 10 vs. UK. France is not the paragon of nuclear efficiency it is commonly portrayed as being.

It's not just that NPPs are expensive to build, and unpredictably priced in ways that make the price of power generated uncompetitive. They are also a large and hard to predict liability after they stop generating power and the income from selling that power.

There is no example of "this is how to do it." New designs have to emerge and be proven before it is possible to build new NPPs with as much cost certainty as other kinds of power generation.

[godelski]

France still hasn't built a reactor in several decades. Latest started in 91 and finished in 02. The problem is that the parent missed some parts of the story.

[sashank_1509]

I don't think this is an issue of engineer competency. If you gave it to a French company, even they would be bogged down by the US regulatory agency and simply fail.

[diordiderot]

> would be bogged down by the US regulatory agency

Oooooh buddy, you mustn't be familiar with some layers French bureaucracy.

Imagine a unionized DMV.

[inglor_cz]

I am a Czech, so no dog in this particular fight barks for me.

But the French train company SNCF abandoned the Californian high-speed rail project, citing local political dysfunctionality and comparing it unfavorably to ... Morocco.

https://www.businessinsider.com/french-california-high-speed...

[runarberg]

That is a bit ironic now isn't it. Now that Morocco has high speed rail, but California doesn't.

[pfdietz]

The California high speed rail project never made any sense, even before political dysfunction.

[diordiderot]

Made perfect sense. Uncomfortable length to drive, and end to end trip time would be shorter (and more comfy) on a highspeed train than on a plane (getting to the airport early, security, baggage collection, taxi to the city, etc).

[otikik]

Ask yourself where does the word “bureaucracy” come from.

[fransje26]

Probably the same problems that are making (rail) infrastructure building 10x more expensive in the US than in Europe.

It's not that the knowledge is inaccessible, the problem is that the not-invented-here syndrome compounded by administrative red-tape, powerful counter lobbies and greedy actors make those projects prohibitively expensive.

[lmm]

Who would vote for it?

[dabber]

If you mean the public, I'd expect a lot of people, if it were presented right, considering how often the cost of energy comes up in political discussion

If you mean congress, I think the more important questions are - who would lobby for it? - who would lobby against it?

[robertlagrant]

GreenPeace has a lot of content on their website[0] with questionable anti-nuclear power content. They have been a force for decades for anti-nuclear content, when renewables were in a hilariously worse state than they are today.

[0] https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/challenges/nuclear-power

[pfdietz]

Greenpeace had the unmitigated gall to be correct. For this, some people can never forgive them.

Amory Lovins is another example of this phenomenon.

[Turing_Machine]

Greenpeace cofounder Patrick Moore not only admits that he was wrong about nuclear power, he is now actively pro-nuclear.

https://www.politico.com/story/2008/03/why-a-greenpeace-co-f...

[robertlagrant]

They had no idea if they were correct, and if more nuclear power had been built then we would be in a much better place globally than we are in now.

Only France, being the archetype of the unmitigated Gaul, actually pushed ahead despite all this Greenpeace pressure and established a great example of lowering CO2 emissions without burning a load of gas. Which to me implies that they weren't correct.

And no one is forgiving them or not. I'm just stating another large force that has been a nuclear power trip hazard for the last 50 years and prevented the economies of scale for nuclear that all forms of power generation need to lower their costs. The question was "who would lobby against?" which I was answering.

[mc32]

Hard to say. The public is divided. Even environmentalists are divided. Some follow the old misinformed guard led by ms. Fonda and you have some more new throwback environmentalists behind nuclear.

It really sticks is my craw that a misinformed but activist actress can torpedo an industry for half a century.

[kwhitefoot]

The industry and governments of the time torpedoed itself by insisting on secrecy and, especially in the case of the UK, doing stupid things like building the reactors on SSSIs (sites of special scientific interest, for instance Torness) instead of building them near where the power was needed.

As someone else said in this discussion: presented properly many people would vote for nuclear power. However, you need to have some substance to the presentation too.

[roomey]

Well... They only know metric, would be a recipe for disaster!

[otikik]

Weapons manufacturers would not benefit from this.

[eastbound]

Chronological scale of the construction dates of French reactors: https://fr.quora.com/En-combien-de-temps-construit-t-on-une-...

We did 6 batches of 6-to-20 reactors.

[i_am_proteus]

Friendly reminder that the US does have such a program (the Navy's nuclear propulsion program), and several reactors are commissioned every year.

[MrBodangles]

One of the core problems with nuclear is the size and scale of risk posed by cost cutting and neglect over its lifetime, especially the waste. People neither trust for-profit enterprises or present/future governments with that sort of responsibility (and with empirically justifiable reasons). I’m aware newer models are stated to be significantly safer, but assurances mean little when these institutions have repeatedly lied and failed in the past.

Either way, US carriers are probably one of the safest places for nuclear, as they’re mission critical for the life of the carrier and most likely to receive the utmost care… Plus the US has a long history of rubber stamping virtually unlimited funds to solve any military problem, whether the people approve or not. The handling of the waste is still a major concern, but what about the consequences of a torpedo compromising the reactor in warfare?

[godelski]

> in the US we'd be lucky to build and commission a single reactor in that time span

Most countries, including the US and France, did a build out in the 70's/80's and then basically stopped. France a bit later than the US, but both essentially did the same thing. Checking the wiki list[0] and sorting by operation year you can see 4 things. 1) the vast majority of reactors were built in the 70's, 2) the newest reactor was built in the 90's (operational 2001), 3) the most recent reactors took longer to go into operation (including a few at 16 years, where the 70's build out was typically 6-7 years), 4) almost all 70s/80's reactors are of the same type and same power level (CP1, CP2, P4 REP 1300). We actually see the exact same story in the US (see Watts Bar, ouch).

On the other hand, South Korea didn't do their build out till the mid 80's and continued into the 90's. Then we see the wall hit in the 2000's with the APR 1400. Japan did a bit better and strangely looks like the big success story, especially considering how many reactors such a small country built. Interestingly only Mitsubishi reactors are still operational... Canada is also a good success story but also hasn't built anything since the late 80's (but last reactor was still <10yrs).

Countries like Sweden, started their build out but then there was a hard stop. Sweden had nothing past '85. Germany isn't too far off, but it is also a different story. Ditto for UK.

I intentionally left out China and Russia because different economic structures and because the stories are a bit different even though might appear similar to what I'm discussing at face value (note that my comments are vastly oversimplified, with some things only being alluded to), but it is worth paying attention to the above patterns and think about how the economic structure might reinforce some of those aspects, then think about the western countries different styles during their build out phases (how it actually worked).

The nuclear story is long and complicated. Even this wall of text is oversimplified. This is part of the problem: we like our simple talking points but as speakers are often unwilling to admit that these are only part of the stories or as listeners rebut the speaker as if they are only considering a single factor. It makes real conversation almost impossible and both play a role and build over time. Which is not too dissimilar to a few problems that happened in the nuclear industry.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...