[pyrale]

> The French managed to. I guess they have super-human engineering prowess.

As a french Engineer, I can confirm this. For work inquiries, please reach me at [e-mail]

> The trick is that they keep building the same obsolete US-based design

In fact, we don't keep building them. The last N4 reactor was delivered in 2003. Since then, aside from the failed joint-venture with Germany that is the EPR, France essentially delivered nothing. That's not really an engineering issue so much as a political one.

Also France didn't "keep building the same reactor", and didn't build "obsolete" reactors. From the initial reactors (the CP generation) to the N4, the buildings got larger, late reactors produced 60% more energy than the original ones, and significant safety improvements were made. Safety changes were also backported on previous installations. In fact, the major reason why Framatome freed itself from the Westinghouse license is that it provided significant independent contribution to the original design.

[throwaway5959]

Why does it seem we can’t build complicated things like we used to? The same seems to be true here in the US as well.

[pyrale]

The French and the US reasons are, from what I understand, quite different. I don't know the US situation that well.

In France, many factors were involved:

* France over-producing power for decades around y2k, which meant it was hard to commit the country to build more nuclear reactors.

* The EPR being an over-engineered fiasco due to it being designed in a Franco-German partnership which quickly folded, but the design was kept.

* The privatization of the energy sector involved a lot of restructuring for EDF, and the creation of Areva. This had a lot of involvement, but the main one is that the state took a hands-off stance, and EDF and Areva started competing with each other rather than collaborating.

* Areva got mismanaged quite heavily. People like to point out the Olkiluoto fiasco, but what really killed the company was the Uramin scandal.

* Politicians since 2007 started asking hefty dividends from public companies, involving EDF, in order to prop up the government's budget. That created an investment deficit, and significant debt for EDF.

So yeah, lots of things, but the underlying issue seems to be that France used to have a culture of the state coordinating huge projects, which was lost with the new generation of politicians. There seems to be an appetite for new reactors, but the industry is significantly harmed by 20 years of political mixed signals, and whether the current politicians and the industry can deliver remains unclear.

[khuey]

Mostly because we prioritize other things over actually getting stuff built for a reasonable budget.

[threeseed]

You can. It's just not economical and sometimes politically tenable to do so.

[PaulHoule]

Isn't the Hualong One (both of them!) derived from French designs?

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

[pyrale]

Yes, some of the older generations also got exported around. There's one in South Africa too IIRC, based on CP1 reactors.