[acidburnNSA]

It really does seem relatively easy to raise money in nuclear power for making a few dubious claims about factory production, reactor performance, and delivery timeline.

In the industry, we call the 10 years it takes to realize that it's a lot harder than newcomers initially think, and that the people who tried in the past didn't fail merely because they were idiots who didn't think about economics: "getting run over by the nuclear bus".

After 15 years professionally in the industry, I'm just amazed that Rickover wrote his paper reactor memo back in 1953! https://whatisnuclear.com/rickover.html

[jillesvangurp]

Nuclear has actually been a really hard sell for the last few decades, which is why there are so few new plants coming online.

Politicians are opportunistic and short term focused. So they'll back anything that makes them look good and important during the next election cycle. Nuclear projects take too long to complete for them to be interesting. There are some brownie points of course for approving one but it's not the same as the instant gratification you get with renewables where they might see operational solar, wind, batteries, whatever within a single term. Anyway, politicians and the people voting for them are the main target of nuclear lobbying to unlock subsidies, grants, permits, etc.

Those are needed to lure in investors. Investors are more skeptical of course. And these are very risky projects. Time delays and budget overruns are common. By triple digit percentages typically. And the ROI is uncertain too. So, raising money for new nuclear is not that easy. Government support somewhat mitigates the risks but not completely. Which is why there's a lot of talk about nuclear but not a whole lot new capacity coming online for the foreseeable future.

[readyman]

Exactly right. Financialized capitalism is essentially incapable of building big things or taking care of the big things that were built in the past.

[DeathArrow]

Is that true in any country or just US? I have the impression that in China is not so difficult to build nuclear power plants.

[pjc50]

In China, if you're the medium rank politician charged with ensuring that a nuclear reactor gets built in province X, and ten years later there is not an operating nuclear reactor in province X, then the Party tends to get mad. And if they find out you've stolen the money then the consequences can be fatal.

If there's any one thing that's causing a ""decline"" in the west, it's a tolerance for fraud and failure of big projects.

Edit: found a really interesting backgrounder on details of the Chinese nuclear programme. https://world-nuclear.org/Information-Library/Country-Profil...

[Krasnol]

> If there's any one thing that's causing a ""decline"" in the west, it's a tolerance for fraud and failure of big projects.

You should google "Tofu-Dreg". Videos are especially entertaining.

That money get's stolen. You just build it cheaper, get smeared by contractors, employ slaves, etc.

Also, that "tolerance" of the West is surely worth a discussion, but comparing it to the ways a dictatorship enforces their laws and regulations makes it kinda, disturbing.

[fallingknife]

In China there is tolerance for stealing as long as the job gets done. In the USA there is tolerance for the job not getting done, but not for stealing. I used to think our system was better, but it seems like China gets more done when they accept that there will be some losses to stealing.

[whizzter]

Turkey has had the same kind of semantics about getting things done but that recent earthquake did prove fatal though, except in one town where they didn't allow shoddy construction.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/erzin-turkey-earthquake-b...

[fransje26]

> the USA there is tolerance for the job not getting done, but not for stealing.

Well, at that level it's playing loosely with semantics..

The money didn't get pocketed directly, but it got misused to pay a vast amount of costs and salaries with no result. As there are no results, the costs covered can be considered fictional. Which brings us back to bribery and stealing..

[fallingknife]

This is exactly what I mean. Take the Obamacare exchange website for example. It cost $800 million, didn't work, and nobody got so much as fired for it because that money was wasted, not stolen, and the contract was given out in accordance to procedure. If the execs had pocketed any of that money, they would be in jail.

In China it would have been given to a friend of the bureaucrat in charge of giving out the contract, and they would know it would cost $40 million to build, but they can charge 80 and kickback 10 to the official. And more importantly, that friend would be damn sure to deliver a working website because he knows if he doesn't he will be investigated and punished for his stealing.

So while our system is less "corrupt" I guess, China gets a working website for $80 million when we get a broken one for 10x the cost.

[Krasnol]

How does it help you if the job is "done" but causes a serious risk to lives?

As I said: the stealing still happens. It's institutionalized in China.

Your system IS better...or at least, for now. China is a dictatorship. Their way of handling "their" people is mad and dangerous. Even if you get things "done", you better be happy that you've been lucky to live in the US and not be afraid that your house may fall apart, or you disappear in some hole in the road.

[fallingknife]

Is poor construction that needs to be replaced soon worse than no construction at all? I guess that's debatable, but I would have to see actual statistics on Chinese construction failure rates vs the US rather than just a general assumption that China = low quality before it is even worth considering.

[spookie]

There are plenty of issues with that approach, mind you.

[willcipriano]

Somehow our leadership convinced us that them facing consequences is a bad idea while they erected a police state that would throw us in a cage if we so much as had a plant they don't like in our pocket.

Leaders need to face the greatest consequences. That's the price of leadership. We have things backward.

[throw0101d]

> I have the impression that in China is not so difficult to build nuclear power plants.

Up until the mid-00s Japan was building quite a few plants as well, and they took about 4-5 years from breaking ground to commercial operation:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_rea...

Turns out that nuclear plants are like any manufactured widget: building at scale gets costs and time down once you have the workflow down and supply chain stood up.

The "trick" is settling on one standard design and just turning the crank.

[Jedd]

The sets { USA } and ¬ { China } aren't equivalent, of course.

I think the extra challenges 'in the west' (UK has a spectacularly famous on-going example, but Europe's experience is closer to the USA's than China's) are a function of safety regulations, and you're obviously not going to suffer the same challenge(s) in a locale that lacks those.

Where you believe your nation's regulations around build & operations sits along the spectrum from sensible to pesky will presumably correlate with how strongly you believe that fission power plants are the (misunderstood / underappreciated) answer.

(I'm in AU and a few minutes after wrapping a decade of federal administration where they never thought or mentioned the idea - the now opposition (conservative) political party started suggesting fission nuclear power was A Great Idea. We're in a unique position here in AU, but this was clearly a political, not a pragmatic, advocacy.)

[whizzter]

It wasn't too difficult to build RBMK-1000's in the Soviet either, it was far more difficult to clean up the results though.

I think it'd be immensely interesting to hear of the differences in the EPR reactors built in China (built in 8-9 years) vs the European plants (taking 18years for the finished site in Finland, the French one not finished yet?). On paper the same basic design but twice the build time.

Olk-3 in Finland was first to break ground so were they hampered by being first to be built and fixing build issues as they went along or were issues from Finland just not deemed a problem in China?

[wordofx]

Apparently idiots on HN like to just flag rather than admit they are wrong.