[Jedd]

Perhaps relevant.

2005 ish - UK government release energy strategy and declares fission power plant intent.

2010 ish - UK government formally announces Hinkley Point site. It's declared the first reactor will come online 2019.

2019 - it does not.

2026 - best estimate is now 'around 2030'.

Historical cost estimates are an utter quagmire - but roughly estimated at £18 billion a decade ago, back when it was estimated to be online last year.

Current estimates - bring your own hubris - are roughly £46 billion.

This story has been beaten to death, I know - but recall, this is a country with some history of building and operating nuclear fission power plants, with convenient (2h by rail) access to a lot of expertise from France, and it's a joint-venture with China General Nuclear Power Group so presumably plenty of expertise to draw upon there.

[gottorf]

These day's it's a common problem in all of the Anglosphere, but it does seem especially bad in the UK; they appear to have just given up the ability to build literally anything.

[locallost]

They're not building anything. The French are building it and doing a terrible job for the third time straight. Flamanville at home, Olkiluoto in Finland and now Hinkley.

[Moldoteck]

Also relevant - all recent Canadian refurbs were on time and budget

[Jedd]

When you say 'all' - is that five?

Since 1999?

[Moldoteck]

I mean these https://www.opg.com/news-resources/newsroom/our-stories/stor...

https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1007558/ontario-delivers-...

[Jedd]

Your first link to OPG - suggests, when looking at https://www.opg.com/about-us/ - that they have TWO nuclear power stations in their fold, and it's not clear how many of them were refurbished over what time period.

Your second link suggests a refurbishment of ONE power station.

[Moldoteck]

ONE station has SEVERAL units

[Jedd]

Okay, so not to detract too much from this tiny handful of refurbs - where the assessment, design, build etc were already done, and target state was well understood (it was to get back to whatever parameters and specs they had previously built at the same location), are there any contra-examples of Canadian hubris around budget and schedule on large projects where things might go wrong?

Eglington Crossing light rail - 6 year delay (to 15 year total) with a tripling in cost to $15B - so about $1b per kilometre of light rail.

Peace River hydroelectric - costing double ($16B) original budget.

Vancouver wastewater - a 4x budget creep (to $4B) and a 10y delay so far - it hasn't opened yet.

My point is that it's not only nuclear fission power plants that are grossly underestimated in terms of cost and complexity, but rather, all large infrastructure projects.

Just happens that on top of all that, the estimated numbers for LCoE, payback, clean-up, opex, etc for nuclear fission are also misrepresented (or misunderstood, depending how cynical you are).