The project was planned to involve around €3.3 billion of capital expenditure from EDF, but latest cost estimates (from 2019) are at €12.4 billion. Pierre Moscovici, president of the Court of Audit, gave a statement on 9 July 2020 concerning the release of the report on the delay costs of the Flamanville 3. The report of the Court of Audit reveals that the cost of Flamanville 3 could reach €19.1 billion when taking in account the additional charges due to the delay in construction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)#Flamanvi...
https://archive.is/MT9fA#selection-2255.0-2337.266
> CGN Power, the listed unit of state-owned China General Nuclear Power, China’s largest nuclear power projects developer, has announced a 17 per cent capital increase at its Taishan nuclear project, raising concern cost overruns and commissioning delays will continue.
> The company will inject 2.94 billion yuan into its 51 per cent-held unit Taishan Nuclear Power Joint Venture, which will see the unit’s total registered capital to 28.6 billion yuan from 24.4 billion yuan, the company said in a filing to Hong Kong’s bourse late on Tuesday. Provincial government-controlled Guangdong Yudean, the province’s largest power producer, owns 19 per cent stake, and CGN’s French technology partner EDF holds 30 per cent stake.
> CGN said the capital injection serves “to enhance its financing ability so as to meet its fund requirements for engineering construction.”
> The project, which CGN said on track to become the world’s first third-generation nuclear reactor built on the European pressurised reactors (EPR) design to achieve commercial operation, was originally expected to have its first generating unit come online in December 2013 followed by the second in October 2014.
> The timetable of the two units subsequently slipped to the first and second half of this year, and further to the first and second half of next year after “comprehensive evaluation on subsequent engineering construction plan and relevant risks,” said CGN a year ago.
I also get a bit nervous about how fast they've scaled their nuclear sector and pumped out plants. It reminds me a bit of the big historical push the USSR did into nuclear tech -- which culminated in the Chernobyl incident because they overlooked issues they should not have in order to keep things moving fast.
A lot of technology and engineering lessons have been learned since those days... and so far I haven't heard anything specifically concerning about China's nuclear reactor fleet. But there's always going to be a little doubt in the back of my mind.
The article specifically addresses your cynicism about "regulation and politics", only they call it "safety regulations".
They found it not to be the deciding factor. Lack of construction outside the US would seem to support that conclusion or, alternatively, to accept those factors as unchanging, sort-of like the laws of nature, and to blaming democracy for all ills of society.
Taishan units are up and running
https://archive.is/MT9fA#selection-2255.0-2337.266
> CGN Power, the listed unit of state-owned China General Nuclear Power, China’s largest nuclear power projects developer, has announced a 17 per cent capital increase at its Taishan nuclear project, raising concern cost overruns and commissioning delays will continue.
> The company will inject 2.94 billion yuan into its 51 per cent-held unit Taishan Nuclear Power Joint Venture, which will see the unit’s total registered capital to 28.6 billion yuan from 24.4 billion yuan, the company said in a filing to Hong Kong’s bourse late on Tuesday. Provincial government-controlled Guangdong Yudean, the province’s largest power producer, owns 19 per cent stake, and CGN’s French technology partner EDF holds 30 per cent stake.
> CGN said the capital injection serves “to enhance its financing ability so as to meet its fund requirements for engineering construction.”
> The project, which CGN said on track to become the world’s first third-generation nuclear reactor built on the European pressurised reactors (EPR) design to achieve commercial operation, was originally expected to have its first generating unit come online in December 2013 followed by the second in October 2014.
> The timetable of the two units subsequently slipped to the first and second half of this year, and further to the first and second half of next year after “comprehensive evaluation on subsequent engineering construction plan and relevant risks,” said CGN a year ago.
but we're talking about 20% overrun, which I could call a good upfront guess
Incentives make a big difference here. Ignoring everything else, airlines don't want to lose their hundred million dollar machine in an accident. And the person most directly responsible for the safety of the flight -- the pilot -- is sitting right there in the machine with the rest of us. It's a good arrangement with a long track record.
I could imagine corporate-run nuclear plants that have the same incentives as airlines. I could also imagine bad ones, run by Homer Simpson. It probably makes more sense to judge case by case.
Airlines are also different from power utilities, in that it's very easy to change airlines and not very easy to change grid operators. After Fukushima it's not like consumers could switch to a power utility other than TEPCO.
So how exactly do you enforce that corporate executives and their families must live on site for decades?
https://news.yahoo.com/federal-utility-fined-900k-nuclear-21...
> In a notice dated Nov. 6, regulators noted a “substantial safety culture issue” at Watts Bar at the time of the incident. They also found that “TVA senior management and staff failed to communicate with candor, clarity, and integrity during several interactions with the NRC during the course of the inspection and investigation.”
> The incident wasn't recorded in the plant's logbook and managers later misled NRC investigators about what had happened. The shift manager told investigators he wasn't truthful with them at first because he feared that whatever he said would be relayed back to management.
> last year, TVA was ordered to rehire and pay thousands of dollars in back pay and compensation to a whistleblower who raised concerns about nuclear safety.
And then there was the nuclear corruption scandal in South Korea: https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/04/22/136020/how-greed...
And let's not forget when a nuclear company literally bribed Ohio politicians with $60M to get a $1Bn+ bailout:
https://www.cleveland.com/open/2020/07/fbi-agents-deployed-t...
> if more components of the plant, or even the entire plant, could be built offsite under controlled factory conditions, such extra costs could be substantially cut.
Wait what? France builds with relative similarity and it's cheaper. The problem is with US regulation, politics and CYA hand-wringing, imo.