The Iron law of nuclear power construction: Always over budget, over time and eventually when it gets built under-performing.
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RE: https://mastodon.energy/@Sustainable2050/116105185558774838
The Iron law of nuclear power construction: Always over budget, over time and eventually when it gets built under-performing.
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RE: https://mastodon.energy/@Sustainable2050/116105185558774838
The Iron law of nuclear power construction: Always over budget, over time and eventually when it gets built under-performing.
@malte plus, how will data centers be able to use up all the portable water if nuke plants are sucking it up?
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RE: https://mastodon.energy/@Sustainable2050/116105185558774838
The Iron law of nuclear power construction: Always over budget, over time and eventually when it gets built under-performing.
@malte
Not that I'm in any way supportive of Nuclear power, but I think that goes for almost all big public projects. -
@malte
Not that I'm in any way supportive of Nuclear power, but I think that goes for almost all big public projects.@MrManor It's a quote from Bent Flyvbjerg who studied megaprojects and based on his data nuclear power construction suffers under this law much more so than other big projects.
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RE: https://mastodon.energy/@Sustainable2050/116105185558774838
The Iron law of nuclear power construction: Always over budget, over time and eventually when it gets built under-performing.
@malte And it produces enormous amounts of a very long-lived highly toxic waste. But nuke proponents always pitch it as electricity too low cost to bill.

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RE: https://mastodon.energy/@Sustainable2050/116105185558774838
The Iron law of nuclear power construction: Always over budget, over time and eventually when it gets built under-performing.
£35bn and they will get a whole 3GW out of it! (but only with both reactors working flat out)
Same story everywhere. This industry has some first rate lobbyists.
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RE: https://mastodon.energy/@Sustainable2050/116105185558774838
The Iron law of nuclear power construction: Always over budget, over time and eventually when it gets built under-performing.
@malte Based on long experience: If you can’t bring it in on time, on budget, on function, don’t bother.
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@malte
Not that I'm in any way supportive of Nuclear power, but I think that goes for almost all big public projects.@MrManor @malte True, but it particularly applies to nuclear for several reasons:
- Approvals take a long time (as they should), inflating costs
- Costs are ‘most likely’, and inflate during construction as problems crop up that *must* be worked around
- Maintenance and shutdowns are always harder and longer than planned, so much less uptime
- Reactor efficiency is always lower than projected to avoid high temps or corrosion.Roughly, costs x3, output x 2/3, opex x2 for 30 years.
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@MrManor @malte True, but it particularly applies to nuclear for several reasons:
- Approvals take a long time (as they should), inflating costs
- Costs are ‘most likely’, and inflate during construction as problems crop up that *must* be worked around
- Maintenance and shutdowns are always harder and longer than planned, so much less uptime
- Reactor efficiency is always lower than projected to avoid high temps or corrosion.Roughly, costs x3, output x 2/3, opex x2 for 30 years.
@BashStKid Building on your list:
- Nuclear power construction is always a bespoke process - a unique building project. The security risks make it so - every location and context being slightly different from the next, which creates lots of important details to work out from scratch. It is the opposite of modular. There is almost nothing "off-the-shelf" with nuclear, which makes it expensive. @MrManor