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A comment on The booming business of knitting together the world’s electricity grids. Parent comment

Re:The booming business of knitting together the world’s ele... by TomK32 on Sunday October 17, 2021 @07:45PM (#28900759)
According to the IEAA power plants have a typical design lifespan of 30-40 years which can be extended with proper care https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/extending-operational-l... and let's be honest, the US aren't that much better: > "Since 2001, the ROP has resulted in more than 4,000 inspection findings concerning nuclear power plant licensees' failure to fully comply with NRC regulations and industry standards for safe plant operation, and NRC has subjected more than 75 percent (79) of the 103 operating plants to increased oversight for varying periods" https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-06-1029.pdf Those findings are mostly small unimportant issues, but if the lifespan of a plant creeps upwards the severe issues will become more common.

BTW, the list of cancelled power plants (even ones under construction) in the US is pretty long https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cancelled_nuclear_reac... and even the only reactors currently under construction where are risk of being abandoned. The budget is of course overrun and completion set back by six years, so far. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Pla...

Those 5580 were 1700 more than planned. It's like saying: I can use my car two months a year due to maintenance and being fine with it not working for a third month. I

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The booming business of knitting together the world’s ele... by littlestymaar on Monday October 18, 2021 @03:44AM (#28903136)
The cancelling of power plants is a political decision due to the lack of popularity of nuclear. It's not that we can't build plants, it's that there is no political will to do so.

> Those 5580 were 1700 more than planned. It's like saying: I can use my car two months a year due to maintenance and being fine with it not working for a third month.

Welcome to the real world of industrial processes, these aren't cars. Maintenance are run on tight schedules[1], so there can easily be delays (this isn't specific to nuclear though, you'd find delays during maintenance for every kind of electric production site). Also, small problems happen all the time, and because of nuclear's super high safety requirements, when those small things happen, you stop the reactor and fix it.

BTW, around one third of those 1700 days came from small issues at Fessenheim that EDF decided not to fix and keep the reactor off because the plant was planned for closure by the end of the year. You're not gonna fix you car if you know it's gonna be seized soon right?

[1] mostly because like in every business, project manager are like “it's late: workers were lazy. It's dine before the deadline: we gave them too much time”.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The booming business of knitting together the world’s ele... by pfdietz on Monday October 18, 2021 @06:29AM (#28903990)
The cancellation of new nuclear power plants in the US was overwhelmingly due to economics. In the first nuclear buildout, reactors came in more expensive than promised, demand growth slowed, and then the grids were opened to non-utility generators. This happened again more recently with the nuclear renaissance: projected demand growth again failed to materialize, reactor construction was more expensive than promised (Watts Bar 2, V.C. Summer, Vogtle), and large quantities of fracked gas became available.
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