Finland is aiming to be carbon neutral by 2035. Do you suggest that if we start planning now, we can rely on having new nuclear plants operational in 13 years? Also note that we wouldn't be buying them from Russia because of the current war, and China would be risky in the same way. There's a current project where the only offer was from Russia and that one is being suspended indefinitely right now.

13 years? Korea has built plenty of reactors in 5 years

Easier when you cheat on the documentation. Sitting on two chairs at the same time is hard.

> In November 2012 it was discovered that over 5,000 small components used in five reactors at Yeonggwang Nuclear Power Plant had not been properly certified; eight suppliers had faked 60 warranties for the parts. Two reactors were shut down for component replacement, which was likely to cause power shortages in South Korea during the winter.[23] Reuters reported this as South Korea's worst nuclear crisis, highlighting a lack of transparency on nuclear safety and the dual roles of South Korea's nuclear regulators on supervision and promotion.[24] This incident followed the prosecution of five senior engineers for the coverup of a serious loss of power and cooling incident at Kori Nuclear Power Plant, which was subsequently graded at INES level 2.[23][25]

> In 2013, there was a scandal involving the use of counterfeit parts in nuclear plants and faked quality assurance certificates. In June 2013 Kori 2 and Shin Wolsong 1 were shut down, and Kori 1 and Shin Wolsong 2 ordered to remain offline, until safety-related control cabling with forged safety certificates is replaced.[26] Control cabling in the first APR-1400s under construction had to be replaced delaying construction by up to a year.[27] In October 2013 about 100 people were indicted for falsifying safety documents, including a former chief executive of Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power and a vice-president of Korea Electric Power Corporation.[28]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_South_Korea

Thanks for this.

I'm curious how many scandals are involved with similar projects taking twice as long to complete in Europe. Or projects taking 4 times as long to complete in the USA? Fewer scandals? More scandals? Worse scandals? I have no idea.

We've seen similar scandals for EPRs in Flamanville and Okiluoto, forged document to fake certification of vital components of the plants, unqualified workers, lack of planning, lot of outsourcing,… it should be documented on the relevant wikipedia pages.

So...cheating is just normal around the world when building nuclear power plants regardless of how long the project takes to complete? And Korea doesn't get 5-year build times because of cheating?

Turns out the same recently surfaced for French fusion experimental reactor ITER.

https://reporterre.net/Stress-peur-pression-le-difficile-quo...

And yet this one took 17 years.

Yes, if we throw capital at the problem and fast track regulatory approval, I don't see why that's not possible. Do you think it's not?

You don't want to "fast track" nuclear security and this is not something you can iterate by building unsafe plants first. Even as it is, people don't want a nuclear plant in their backyard and it's a long process to find and secure a suitable location.

You'd need huge amounts of capital with big risks and little profits foreseen. The track record from the latest western projects is horrible so I don't see how it would be possible to get the backing now.

"fast track approval" -- spare no expense in manpower to review with as little delay as possible. Many workers in parallel, all required regulations observed.

Your implication is "cut corners" which is a misunderstanding.

>You'd need huge amounts of capital with big risks and little profits foreseen.

Ok, so nationalize it. Problem solved.

Going carbon-neutral might have been the right answer 20 years ago. To avoid 1.5 degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels, we need to go carbon-negative today.

Even if we reach 0 in 13 years, the road to flipping the magnitude will be long, and I estimate longer than the time to build a reactor.