Europe Is Losing Nuclear Power Just When It Needs Energy

Re:Europe Is Losing Nuclear Power Just When It Needs Energy by tablespoon on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @09:29AM (#30162844)

> It is very simple, nuclear has been a failure in Europe in the last couple of decades. Look at projects in the Finland, France and the UK. The situation would have been much better if there was a nuclear industry that could deliver in time and within budget.

What are the reasons for that failure? Has Europe had the same problem as the US of severe under-investment in infrastructure and withering capabilities? Is risk-aversion becoming pathological, leading to ballooning costs and complexity?

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Re:Europe Is Losing Nuclear Power Just When It Needs Energy by phicoh on Tuesday February 01, 2022 @10:12AM (#30163502)

It seems to be a combination of nuclear becoming too high tech combined with not enough volume to maintain the technology.

Maybe its a scale thing. If you build only a few nuclear plants per decade, you can't iterate over designs. You may lose valuable knowledge, etc.

If I look at complex building projects in The Netherlands, it seems that beyond a certain complexity, companies just cannot come up with a design/plan to make it work.

For example, the Dutch government said, we want the biggest lock in the world (https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sluizen_van_IJmuiden#Bouw_nieu...). Not a controversial project, yet the winning concortium had a design that didn't work and had quite a few other problems.

On the other hand, windturbine designs iterate so quickly, that even floating turbines in rough sea is now economical.

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