Because different power companies use different engineering companies.
So you are saying market freedom is the reason ?
Power companies are using the highest bidder ?
Power companies are repeatedly hiring bad or inexperienced engineering companies ?
Why not hire the company that did the last reactor build job ?
No, they are using the lowest bidder. But, the utility companies are given a certain mark up on construction. When Brown & Root built the South Texas nuclear power plant, cost overruns were rampant. However, they were mostly caused by HL&P. For example, B&R had a bid for gravel at $18MM, but HL&P wouldnât sign off on it and dragged their feet until the price was over $125MM. They kept running up the price because it benefitted them. 15% of 9 billion dollars is better than 15% of 2 billion dollars.
So that has nothing to do with plant being non cookie cutter does it ? Gravel is a pretty mundane material used in construction.
I was talking about cost of the plants, and yes cost has a lot to do with not using cookie cutter plants.
No other major city would be in the fallout zone for College Station, based on Chernobylâs precedent as the worst disaster. Each College rival is over 90 miles away.
Brenham, however, is only 9 miles outside of the zone, so that Blue Bell may melt, or the cows milk may go bad.
The other unique thing is geology of a location that adds some cost variability.
But your excellent example of paying an additional $107MM for gravel is an HL&P
management issue. You know a priori the tons of gravel and cement you will need to build it. Guess they were buying materials on an as needed basis , there was some price increase for the gravel , they balked, and prices escalated more. Whole story of STP is a fun read. Simple explanations seldom tell the whole story.
Fascinating story on STP.
EDF was created after WWII. Many European countries were bankrupt after WWII. France had to adjust and it did.
Side note:
France paid its debt for the Marshall plan. Germany never didâŠLet that sink in.
EDF is a not a power house/no pun intended in France but worldwide. Nuclear power in America? There has been an ongoing nuclear stigma here in America. Is it justified? The three mile island accident has been exploited by many. Not only is nuclear power clean but it is also safe. Tchernobylâs disaster was a consequence of its own management or lack there of. Fukushima happened because of an earthquake and a tsunami. Having a nuclear power plant on the San Andreas fault is not a good idea. In a âsafeâ area it makes perfect sense.
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I agree nuclear fission will play a needed role in electricity generation. The problems being reported in the newer french N4 reactors is troubling. Stress fractures induced during stainless steel pipe manufacturing or in the welds seems to have been addressed though.
But older plants, with operating licenses being extended, may be ticking time bomb problems all over the world.
Then you take into account the financial status of an EDF like operator and it makes you wonder about the perfect storm.
The navy is chock full of nuclear powered vessels. How can we have the expertise to do that and canât get it done in a stationary plant?
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We all know why we have a miniscule amount of nuclear power plants. This has nothing to do with sensible and real/common sense safety/security issues.
A few big differencesâŠmuch smaller and use of highly enriched uranium and special core. All sounds âmilitary gradeâ vs commercial grade stuff.
While land-based reactors in nuclear power plants produce up to around 1600 megawatts of net electrical power (the nameplate capacity of the EPR), a typical marine propulsion reactor produces no more than a few hundred megawatts. Some small modular reactors (SMR) are similar to marine propulsion reactors in capacity and some design considerations and thus nuclear marine propulsion (whether civilian or military) is sometimes proposed as an additional market niche for SMRs
A nuclear fuel element for the cargo ship NS Savannah. The element contains four bundles of 41 fuel rods. The uranium oxide is enriched to 4.2 and 4.6 percent U-235
As the core of a seagoing reactor is much smaller than a power reactor, the probability of a neutron intersecting with a fissionable nucleus before it escapes into the shielding is much lower. As such, the fuel is typically more highly enriched (i.e., contains a higher concentration of 235U vs. 238U) than that used in a land-based nuclear power plant, which increases the probability of fission to the level where a sustained reaction can occur.
Fuel elements may crack over time and gas bubbles may form. The fuel used in marine reactors is a metal-zirconiumalloy rather than the ceramic UO2 (uranium dioxide) often used in land-based reactors. Marine reactors are designed for long core life, enabled by the relatively high enrichment of the uranium and by incorporating a âburnable poisonâ in the fuel elements, which is slowly depleted as the fuel elements age and become less reactive. The gradual dissipation of the ânuclear poisonâ increases the reactivity of the core to compensate for the lessening reactivity of the aging fuel elements, thereby extending the usable life of the fuel. The compact reactor pressure vessel is provided with an internal neutron shield, which reduces the damage to the steel from constant neutron bombardment.[
You canât help yourself, can you?
