• @Goodie
    link
    English
    1011 year ago

    That’s the engineering knowledge lost over the last 30 years costed out.

    Making 2 reactors since 95 has some side effects, a lot of the senior engineers since then have retired, standards have changed, and new engineers need to learn.

    • Gormadt
      link
      fedilink
      English
      351 year ago

      Exactly what I was thinking

      It like those highspeed rail projects that are finally getting going in the US, they’re over budget because a lot of people now have to be trained on how to work on such a project due to either lost knowledge or new stuff they’re learning during the process

      • @Maggoty
        link
        English
        231 year ago

        Another factor in the trains, at least for California, is that the project was put on hold for a while because of the hyper loop crap. Now they need to resume buying land for the track and prices are where they are

        • Pika
          link
          fedilink
          English
          41 year ago

          Honestly they should just specify the project as a public works project, would give them eminent domain rights and skip the whole 9 yards of land pricing. It would force it to be done based off fair market price instead of the inflated BS all land is currently at. Least if I understand eminent domain right.

          • @someguy3
            link
            English
            51 year ago

            I don’t know for certain but I expect they used eminent domain.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              2
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              I think you’re right. I’m from Canada, so laws might be different, but AFAIK, eminent domain means the owner can’t say, “No, I’m not selling” to the government, not that the government has total control over the price. Landowners can also argue that losing that portion of land will negatively affect the remaining property and argue in court to be compensated.

              • @[email protected]
                link
                fedilink
                English
                2
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                And since California has Prop 13, i wonder if landowners can sue for the future tax increases for the replacement property? Afterall, that is a direct consequence of the forced sale of the land.

                “You are increasing my property taxes forever. So you should be responsible for that increase… forever.”

                • @[email protected]
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  11 year ago

                  Good Point!

                  Site Note: A family member who lives in California recently explained how their property taxes are calculated, and that system is crazy! That system encourages people to never move, which probably contributes to housing issues because seniors are dis-incentivized from down-sizing, etc.

                  • @[email protected]
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    11 year ago

                    Yep.

                    We used to have the problem of senior citizens having their property taxes jacked up every year to the point that the taxes are almost as high as the original purchase price. Bunch of seniors were ending up losing their houses.

                    Prop 13 was designed to fix that; and it did, but it also caused a bunch of ‘unintended consequences’.

          • @wolfpack86
            link
            English
            31 year ago

            Eminent domain is subjected to legal challenges. Both to the authority (there must be a purpose) and also to the FMV assessment. Which costs money. And time.

            If it was as easy as snapping their fingers, it would’ve happened.

      • @afraid_of_zombies
        link
        English
        141 year ago

        Nah they are over budget because there is no incentive to keep under budget, it was sub contracted out so much that there is either no communication/miscommunication/or willfully not listening, sales pretended they were engineers, and bad engineers were promoted to project management.

        I work in infrastructure.

        Me three weeks ago on email to main contractor: hello, your spec is calling for some parts that are no longer manufactured which means we will have to buy used. Leading to more money now and higher replacement part costs in the future for the government. Plus these parts are on the border of safe.

        This morning: your exception list was rejected, follow spec.

        So a small city in California is getting a brand new system made of used parts. No this isn’t a direct quote this is a summary.

        • @mojofrododojo
          link
          English
          11 year ago

          can the maintenance department who will be eventually responsible start working on fabricating those so you’ll have new-made even if not off the shelf? rapid prototyping and small runs…

          • @afraid_of_zombies
            link
            English
            31 year ago

            Nah. I deal with the electronics and city maintenance departments arent going to sit there and clone a touch screen from the late 90s. Even if they somehow could it wouldn’t matter because the spec calls for products by brand name.

            This is why there are cost overruns. It’s crap like this.

      • @Goodie
        link
        English
        51 year ago

        The paying to train is one thing. The bigger problem is people who aren’t super experienced in these projects doing estimates and costings.

        You’re always going to have some overruns, and if you’re lucky, some underruns too. But if your estimates are out of wack… well. Good luck. Combine that with Parkinson’s law and you are in for a world of hurt.

      • pancakes
        link
        fedilink
        English
        51 year ago

        It’s a big job to train all those train trainers.

    • @Evilcoleslaw
      link
      English
      171 year ago

      Yep. The failed dual reactor project in SC that also used the AP1000s was a gigantic clusterfuck. Most of the major contractors had essentially no experience on projects of the scale and it resulted in massive cost overruns, delays, and a compounding web of fraud and lies to shareholders and regulators that wound up in utility executives in prison and the eventual sale of the entire utility SCANA to Dominion Energy.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      121 year ago

      Cost overruns in the nuclear industry are nothing new. It’s been the norm. The AP1000 design used here was supposed to solve some of those issues, but it’s been more of the same.

    • @Cerbero
      link
      English
      91 year ago

      Welders and other tradesmen too. I met a guy from the NRC that said that there were few if any welders certified and knowledgeable enough to work on reactor construction. And this was 15 yrs ago.

    • @mojofrododojo
      link
      English
      21 year ago

      Haha, this is insightful, but I worry an incorrect conclusion re: cost and overruns. Yes, lots of extremely experienced engineers have retired; but, the pace even in the 70s, 80s and 90s was oft beset by slowdowns and overruns. See: 9 mile, river bend, rancho seco, comanche peak, and those are just the ones I know off the top of my head.

      We need more, but it’s a nuclear-and-renewables, not nuclear instead of renewables. I hope smr and other designs get a better shake this time, because climate change doesn’t bode well for coastal installations, and frankly, building many more large PWRs isn’t going to happen quickly.

      Frankly I hope we can turn the experience debt to our advantage - rigorous investigation of all the many options disregarding the established dogma of large PWRs would be good in my view. YMMV.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      01 year ago

      This is more than a cost issue. It’s a knowledge issue. Countries can’t lost this type of knowledge otherwise they lost independence as well.