I often hear opponents of nuclear power say that it takes too long to construct, so it's interesting to look at the timelines for these reactors -- most of them took about 5-6 years from the start of construction to being hooked up to the power grid, and there was a lot of concurrent construction, so their peak throughput was several reactors per year. More recently France seems to have lost the ability to build nuclear plants quickly; their only one under construction has been under construction for the past 14 years, and is projected to finish in 2023.
France in the 1970s is existence proof that nuclear plants aren't inherently slow to build, so I have to wonder: what happened? (And what other technology are we in danger of losing?)
We lost the sense of urgency and the connection between our decisions, what happens, and why we feel the way we do. It was also helped along by the ‘green field’ nature of Nuclear at the time (writing new code is easier than fixing a legacy code base, and making a new design when you don’t know and have to consider the bazillion regulations and gotchas since discovered is also easier), and a general ‘do it’ mindset after the massive destruction of the war and ongoing rebuilding.
Mostly now we’re not in a hurry because we ‘already have stuff that works’ because we’ve had so many of those prior projects ‘just work’ (hint: they didn’t, it took massive hard work to make them happen - but the people alive today were not the ones getting dirty on the ground there, so they don’t know that). And we haven’t had many big disasters around them yet (as in electric grid collapses for a month in winter and can’t be restarted) to give it more urgency and importance.
In some ways I think we’re in a classic ‘rich kid’ fallacy.
Hey, we have so much money, why do we need to be responsible right? We can be irresponsible because even if we crash the Porsche we got for our birthday, we’ll get a new one in a week anyway.
Well, we only have so much money because the prior generation worked so hard (and stole a bunch of stuff and murdered a bunch of people, but hey whatever - sometimes folks need their illusions), and while the inheritance might last
if we keep pissing it away, it usually doesn’t for very long. And one of these days we’re going to crash the Porsche and end up with life long medical issues.
It does tend to self correct, but oooof does the other side of the curve hurt. And sometimes whatever mindset or situation created the wealth in the first place just never is recaptured. Greece and Italy are certainly not on a trajectory back to world defining empire status anytime soon, and are more
worried about how to keep
their pensioners fed.
The main thing is actually learning effects, the second thing is 'mass production'.
If you have teams that have build reactors before, they will be much better. Once you have people on their 3rd reactor, they go fast.
Its kind of like other massive infrastructure projects like bridges.
Basically nuclear reactors are large civil engineering projects, and you need experience to do it.
The second is that some parts, like the core reactor vessel are insanely complex high pressure and the production of these needs special facilities that basically only exist in like 3 places. They managed in the 70-80s to kind of 'mass' produce these but today its totally costume.
Another things is, France totally failed by themselves to build next generation plants. Its borderline crazy that we are still building PWR type reactors. All attempts at next generation reactors have been terrible.
I am really high on what's going on in Canada, real next generation reactors are FINALLY really seriously going threw real internationally recognized nuclear validation from a first class regulator.
The reason why we still use PWR is because of pilotability. When you're able to modulate the power of a reactor of 40% in 30 minutes without damaging anything or engaging any failsafe, you can reasonably make nuclear reactor follow the consumption.
PWR are not actually good at that. In theory, with a liquid fueled reactor you should be able to be almost completely load following. Most GenIV reactor that are trying to go threw regulation is able to load follow at least as good or better then PWR.
The reason we mainly use PWR is because the military wanted them for submarines and the government and industry had a massive program them into commercial use. From there we got a large amount of legacy, knowledge and infrastructure around them.
After 3 Mile Island the nuclear regulatory system changed and regulation were made technology specific. So even if you wanted it would be practically impossible to get a license for anything else. Thankfully this has now been realized and they are changing their regulation to make them less technology specific.
France in the 1970s is existence proof that nuclear plants aren't inherently slow to build, so I have to wonder: what happened? (And what other technology are we in danger of losing?)