What could go wrong with EO to expedite Nuclear construction?

It’s performance art for MAGA… they have convinced themselves that renewables are woke, DEI, communist plots, so they have make sure the dirtiest forms of energy get priority… it’s how they own the libs.

 

Can you provide a link to specific examples of airline safety actually being affected by Trump’s policies?

I haven’t seen anything showing there have been anymore incidents compared to historic averages.

 

I did some searching and see the numbers all over the place for the true cost of production by source. really hard see what is the cheapest vs most expensive.

 

what copter land mines? You're confusing Dulles with National

 

Gotcha. I'll be sure to post some snarky gripe about housespouses, how USA treats young professionals, or how negative the ROI for SS/Medicare is for single men like me next time I'm summoned from over in GatorGrowl's Diamond Gators.

But while I'm here...

1. Concrete and other commodities.
2. Large steel forgings and other big, discrete pieces of the plant. Westinghouse's modular construction didn't help here as hoped at Vogtle.
3. Delays. Cost is usually reported with financing, so every dollar you've already spent is accumulating interest while you wait, plus you're still paying salaried employees (and maybe hourly, do, lest they move on somewhere else). The lack of places to make large steel forgings is also related to this. So is lack of nuclear-qualified skilled tradespeople -- and, in the case of the EPRs in France and Finland, their powerful unions. Regulatory delays plan a role. My own view is that an under-discussed issue is that every plant is a brand-new logistics supply chain. (You know why your local Publix almost always has your favorite products in stock? It's because they ship them in a couple times every week... they get a lot of practice and they're getting really good at it. Just-in-time logistics works well for most stuff, excluding during the darkest COVID days, but it doesn't work for industrial megaprojects.)
4. Changes in construction plans. Some regulatory issues come in here. Perhaps the biggest of the plan-change issues is because the plant and the site aren't quite as distinct as the regulatory process implies. (Site too wet, too dry... soil too soft, too hard... river used for cooling water too warm, too cold, too fast, too slow, too salty, too acidic, too alkaline, etc., etc.) In fact, unlike most industrial projects (e.g.; every Boeing or Airbus jet gets a bit cheaper to make than the one before it), near-identical nuclear plant costs actually go up. If the industry can't solve this -- whether by regulatory changes, more robust standard designs, small factory-produced reactors, automation, or _something_ -- nuclear construction will remain at the margins.

 

Lol... expediting nuclear construction is a relative phrase that seems to have lost it's meaning. How much time is enough to build a power plant that is soundly designed and has been proven safe for several decades already? And why are different sites a reason to start the environmental protection investigations process all over again? Why can't these plants adhere to one of the many investigations already out there? Does every site need a completely new environmental impact investigation? Or can we, and should we, use them over an over again?

 

This is the idea behind the Standard(-ized) Design Certification and Early Site Permit permitted by the NRC. The first says "Nuclear Plant is this", second says "Site is that", snap them together like Lego bricks. The problems have come from revisions to the SDC (AP1000 at Vogtle was version 15 or so), the "Early" in Early Site Permit (issues are found [edit: once, not once] digging starts) and that little tweaks to the plant -- a degree of temperature here or there -- don't fall well within either half of the process.

 

I fully understand that reasoning, but there has to be a way to mitigate that full process for engineering alterations, reigns, especially if they are superficial, and it does NOT change the main design of the mechanism or the underlying method of fission... nor the actual reactor.

Did you hear about what China is about to do with regard to nuclear power?

 

Thorium? Why did we give up on Thorium nuclear power generation?