I would be interested in understanding what drives this. Even in Korea, where large scale infrastructure projects like new subway lines get built very quickly, new nuclear reactors seem to take >10 years (both the ones installed domestically in Korea and the export ones in places like UAE).
Nuclear technology requires ridiculous complexity, with miles upon miles of piping that need precision, accurate welds to last 40 years. It requires high performance concrete. It requires huge logistics to get all the concrete pours and rebar and everything in place.
These things are massive projects, utterly massive. There's no reason to think they should be cheap.
That's absolutely false, check out what has happened in Georgia and South Carolina and you will not be able to find any government interference or regulation slowing things down.
It's just rank incompetence, bad management, and three-party contracts where each party is preparing for failure and a gigantic lawsuit in the end.
Meanwhile, the latest excuse for the recent US failure in building was that they commenced building before design was complete, and if we just try again now that designs are complete, everything will proceed smoothly. Meanwhile others in this thread are complaining that the NRC requires complete plans before building.
Those who complain about imaginary regulations can neither state the regulations that slow things down, nor describe suitable regulations, nor apparently even agree on what the current regulations are.
I've been asking "which regulations" for years, nobody has ever, literally ever pointed me to which. They just have supreme confident that it's the answer, despite not knowing specifics.
Yet again, I don't see any recommendations to change particular regulations. I do see some regulations that changed, increasing costs in the 1970s, but that I'm not sure anybody wants to change:
-Triaxial accelerometers and spectrum recorders were added to much equipment, piping, and containment.
-Reg Guide 1.117 required protection from 360 mph tornado winds, in some cases increasing building wall thickness from 18 inches to 24.
-Drain systems for firefighting waterflow had to both prevent fire from spreading and also sample water for radiation.
-Swing diesels at multiunit plants were prohibited by RG 1.81.
-Liquid radwaste had to be solidified before shipping with cement systems costing $20/kW.
-Anti-sabotage measures attempted to avoid any one person in the maintenance crew from working on a set of redundant equipment
Are you suggesting that these should be changed and that these will reduce costs significantly?
Because it's not these regulations that caused massive overruns in Georgia and South Carolina, so I don't know why that will help. There are far far deeper issues in the industry, which is deeply troubled and incompetent.
Later on the venerable 2018 MIT report is cited, which is a far far far better root cause analysis of nuclear failure than "regulations." It doesn't recommend changes in regulations, but it does suggest more speedy approval of design changes during construction, to which I say, great. Make nuclear construction agile.
