Study Identifies Reasons for Soaring Nuclear Plant Cost Overruns in the US 95
A new analysis by MIT researchers details many of the underlying issues that have caused cost overruns on new nuclear power plants in the U.S., which have soared ever higher over the last five decades. The new findings may help the designers of new plants build in resilience to the factors that tend to cause these overruns, thus helping to bring down the costs of such plants. From a report: Many analysts believe nuclear power will play an essential part in reducing global emissions of greenhouse gases, and finding ways to curb these rising costs could be an important step toward encouraging the construction of new plants, the researchers say. The findings are being published this week in the journal Joule, in a paper by MIT professors Jessika Trancik and Jacopo Buongiorno, along with former students Philip Eash-Gates SM '19, Magdalena Klemun PhD '20, Goksin Kavlak PhD '18, and Research Scientist James McNerney.
Among the surprising findings in the study, which covered 50 years of U.S. nuclear power plant construction data, was that, contrary to expectations, building subsequent plants based on an existing design actually costs more, not less, than building the initial plant. The authors also found that while changes in safety regulations could account for some of the excess costs, that was only one of numerous factors contributing to the overages. "It's a known fact that costs have been rising in the U.S. and in a number of other locations, but what was not known is why and what to do about it," says Trancik, who is an associate professor of energy studies in MIT's Institute for Data, Systems and Society. The main lesson to be learned, she says, is that "we need to be rethinking our approach to engineering design."
Among the surprising findings in the study, which covered 50 years of U.S. nuclear power plant construction data, was that, contrary to expectations, building subsequent plants based on an existing design actually costs more, not less, than building the initial plant. The authors also found that while changes in safety regulations could account for some of the excess costs, that was only one of numerous factors contributing to the overages. "It's a known fact that costs have been rising in the U.S. and in a number of other locations, but what was not known is why and what to do about it," says Trancik, who is an associate professor of energy studies in MIT's Institute for Data, Systems and Society. The main lesson to be learned, she says, is that "we need to be rethinking our approach to engineering design."
I wonder if it's not just nuke plants... (Score:2)
I haven't read the study yet, but I wonder whether any of the findings (especially the one in the /. excerpt) apply to other infrastructure. I've often suspected in my work (water and wastewater infrastructure) that there is no benefit to re-using prior designs; the adaptation to new regulations and changes in program requirements takes more work than building from the bottom.
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Re:Bring back San Onofre, Diablo Canyon! (Score:4, Informative)
> if you build plants just to shut them down prematurely... Bring back San Onofre, Diablo Canyon!
San Onofre 1 was licensed for 25 years and operated for 25 years. Unit 2 and 3 were indeed shut down early, but hardly without reason.
Diablo Canyon was originally licensed for 40 years (20+20). It was commissioned in 1985, which means it was planning to shut down in 2025. It is currently planning to shut down in 2025.
So really... what are you on about?
Re:I wonder if it's not just nuke plants... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure, no make that sure enough to bet money on it, that the reason a lot of engineering projects get propelled into high cost overruns is because they can't be built within one term of the local/state politicians wanting a photo-op.
Politician 1, circa year 2000, shows up for a ground breaking
Politician 2, circa year 2004, shows up to inspect the place, so everything has to be put on pause so they can get their photo op
Politician 3, circa year 2008, shows up for a photo op when the plant is built.
That's the minimal expectation where it aligns perfectly. Now what if something like this happens?
Politician 1, circa year 2018 shows up for a ground breaking
Politician 2, elected in 2020 who didn't care for this project decides to cancel or throw cold water on the project, but because of sunk costs, canceling isn't even an option. So they constantly rag on the project like it's the worst thing the previous government ever did.
Politician 3, elected in 2024, believes Politician 2 was meddling with the project, shows up for a photo op promising to complete the project for some political PR. However due to lost time the plant takes additional time to complete. Plant is completed in 2026, overbudget and late.
Like the political process, we all know costs time and money. It all depends if the politicians are on board with the project, or want it canceled. You see this all the time with transit projects. One politician's pet project gets canceled for another politician's pet project, by the time anything gets built, a much better thing could have been built for more money and less time, but instead it got wasted on sunk costs in changing the project.
There is one additional thing that comes up, and this is more specific to transportation projects, but is still the same problem, is that people don't like to look at ugly things. So what could be a very low-cost transport system turns into a high-cost "architect's dream" where every station ends up being in competition with every other station for looking pretty. This adds a lot of cost. I imagine the same goes for power and water treatment plants, where people don't want to see this ugly thing in their backyard so they want it to look as seamless into the background as possible, even covering it up to look like other buildings nearby. (I walked by a building the other day, and glanced in the window to see that the building was mostly a facade over a water distribution point and the entire lower floor was nothing but huge pipes.
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Honestly, more alarming it sounds like no one does a proper site inspection
Re:I wonder if it's not just nuke plants... (Score:4, Informative)
Interesting theory but the study doesn't consider political interference of the kind you describe to be a major issue.
It's events within the nuclear industry itself that are the problem. Flaws discovered at other plants, accidents that were not thought likely or worth protecting against, things that necessitate changes to the design at a late stage. Some of it is just incompetence like using the wrong materials and having to rip it all out, some of it is failure to properly survey the site and find obstacles early enough.
Re:I wonder if it's not just nuke plants... (Score:5, Interesting)
AmiMoJo observed:
It's events within the nuclear industry itself that are the problem. ... Some of it is just incompetence like using the wrong materials and having to rip it all out, some of it is failure to properly survey the site and find obstacles early enough.
Apropos of which, a friend of mine (who is now deceased) was the project safety manager for Diablo Canyon. While inspecting the work on a containment-vessel wall through which several large-diameter pipes critical to the operation of Unit 1, he discovered that the sub-contractor that constructed it had somehow managed to build it backwards. That meant the fittings for the pipe pass-throughs were several inches out of their designed alignment.
When he brought the problem to management, the solution he offered - to tear down and re-build the entire wall right-way-round - he was met by horrified protests about the estimated $35 million cost of the fix. "Can't we just build adapters to get the pipes lined up? That'd keep us on-time and on-budget."
My friend - who had been with the firm for more than two decades and had his position and pension at risk - refused to sign off on the proposal. "The NRC requires us to use only designs approved by their staff. If we asked them for permission to alter the design they approved for this reactor, it will take months to years to gain approval, assuming they'll even entertain the notion," he told them. "And construction on the reactor will be at a full stop until they issue that approval - assuming they ever do."
"But you're going to submit that request over my formal, signed objection," he continued, adding, "and my resignation both from the position of safety inspector for this project, and from the company. The plain fact is that the pipes we're talking about are crucial to the reactor's safe operation. Your proposed solution to this problem will - not 'can,' but 'will' - compromise the integrity of those pipes in a way that could lead to catastrophic failure of the containment vessel, and potentially even to a core meltdown. I not only refuse to be a party to that gamble, I promise you that, as soon as I submit my resignation, I'm going to call a press conference to explain to the world exactly why I resigned, and the hazard to everyone within a hundred miles or more that you're proposing to create. Good luck in getting a license to operate this unit, after that."
Eventually, his employers gave in, and paid to have the wall torn out and rebuilt according to the properly-aligned blueprints. And my friend - whom I miss terribly - went on to spend another decade working for that same company, in a series of increasingly-responsible roles, culminating in his being given responsiblility for building one of the most technically-challenging airport projects in history.
And here's how good a friend he was to me: he spent three days helping us move from the Bay Area to Mariposa County, back in 2000 ...
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The heck with saving thousands of lives, though that's a bonus. A true Great Human Being is one that'll help you move from the Bay Area to Mariposa County.
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sysrammer observed:
The heck with saving thousands of lives, though that's a bonus. A true Great Human Being is one that'll help you move from the Bay Area to Mariposa County.
Absolutely right ...
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Can you cite any specific instances of this happening?
I've seen multiple public infrastructure projects take too long, but it's always been arguing over cost and neighborhood impact, and resulting changes in project scope.
I've also seen dysfunctional acquisition practices delay projects. Some states will take a project like a highway and bid out into many tiny contracts. This is to get the lowest possible bid on each component, but project completion is governed by the weakest link.
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That's how the new east span of the bay bridge came to be so expensive, even before the construction problems. The initial design called for a simple causeway structure on an alignment to the south of the old bridge. All of the site investigation was done, and the project was projected to cost about $1 billion.
Then it was shown to the major of Oakland because the new bridge terminated in Oakland. He said, "How come we don't get a pretty bridge like San Francisco does? I want a pretty bridge." So it was
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It's great to hear from people with experience even in related areas first post!
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The Granddaddy (Score:2)
The original, fundamental work was done by Merrow and published in 1988. No paywall, you can get it here: https://www.rand.org/content/d... [rand.org]
I highly recommend reading this if you are involved in any kind of project management. Merrow has subsequently authored other publications in the field, for further reading.
Nuke = Old obsolete junk (Score:2)
The concept of nuclear electricity is simply old and obsolete junk.
Failure is a high risk problem. (Score:2)
The Problem with nuclear energy, is if there is a problem, the disaster will be a long term problem. Not an explosion that takes out a hundred square miles (while that would be really bad) the real problem is those damaged areas will not be habitable for a long time. So there will be decades where a block of once useful industrial land is be lost to generations.
nuclear waste is an issue! (Score:2)
nuclear waste is an issue!
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It is an issue, but if you don't conflate the two different types you realize it's primarily a *political* issue, not a technical issue. For fifty years a particular group of people has been trying very hard to get people to conflate different types, and they've been successful.
The political issue is easy to solve - as soon as leaders like Bernie Sanders and AOC decide that clean energy is more important than a 50 year old allegiance with peace activists who were protesting nuclear weapons testing, their fo
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The fallacy of the excluded middle. You are ignoring the *actual* problem, which is rather odd given that it's the topic of this paper.
Nuclear plants in the US are running about $10/We while wind turbines ate $1.25. Capacity adjusted, that's about $12 vs $4.
Unless you can figure out how to make the $12 shrink to about $4, it doesn't matter how many Bernie Sanders and AOC's you have on your side.
Again, that's precisely what this paper is talking about, did you even bother to read it?
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> Again, that's precisely what this paper is talking about, did you even bother to read it?
Clearly you didn't read the subject line of the post you replied to.
Or the subject line of the parent post.
Or the subject line of your own post.
Get back to my when you're ready to read at least the subject line. Then we can work on reading the actual content of posts before replying to them.
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Deflection, offtopic; potato, potatoe, right?
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...while wind turbines are $1.25
With or without the rolling blackouts??
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Still trying to blame Sanders and AOC huh? As if either of them have very much influence over these things.
It's a toxic issue that needs a great deal of political capital to solve. Why would any politician waste their political capital on nuclear power when there are good alternatives? The only reason is if they are getting paid by the nuclear lobby and apparently the nuclear lobby is a bit strapped for cash these days.
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Yes, AOC officed with Rex Weyler in 1970. Nineteen years later, she was born. Yep, that's exactly what I said.
Thirty years after that, she was promoted from barista to U.S. Representative from New York.
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Yes, AOC officed with Rex Weyler in 1970. Nineteen years later, she was born. Yep, that's exactly what I said.
She was born 19 years after officing with Weyler?
Jesus, Morris, you're even dumber than I thought. And that's going some.
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Yeah apparently that's what AmiMoJo thinks.
She's the one that started it, 19 years before she was born.
You really, really, really suck at understanding sarcasm, by the way. It's really kinda ridiculous - you actually thought I seriously said "AOC officed with Rex Weyler in 1970. Nineteen years later, she was born." They say tungsten carbide is dense, but you ...
Already in my house (Score:2)
I already have radioactive material in my house.
In fact, it's exactly the radioactive material that is currently being cleaned up from Fukushima. It glows.
See, I happen to know the difference between plutonium, uranium, tritium, etc. Also the difference between alpha radiation and beta. Here's the 30-second explainer so you can get the gist:
A firecracker is dangerous because it releases energy very quickly.
A glow stick lasts a long time because it releases energy slowly.
There are some materials that relea
Re:nuclear waste is an issue! (Score:5, Insightful)
You could build reactors that burn waste back into depleted Uranium and Thorium if we would let the engineers do their job.
Who does not let the engineers do their job...lawyers and politicians who regulate without any understanding of the fuel waste cycle.
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It's not a question of letting them do it. It's a question of paying them.
The price is too high. Taxpayers don't want to pay it. The nuclear industry doesn't want to pay it. It's too risky to be of interest to investors. Where is the money going to come from?
Yes, you could do all that. And still ... (Score:3)
... nuclear fission wouldn't be cost-effective.
Again, read my lips: Nuclear Fission is not cost-effective!
A modern fission reactor needs to run flawlessly for 25 years to simply repay its construction. And none of them run flawlessly. They only work and exist because our societies dump obscene amounts of tax-payers money into them only for centralized energy corps to rake in loads of cash and leaving a serious 20 000 year waste problem for the rest of us to clean up. And even that comes with questionable en
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It's an issue, but there are solutions. The one's I like are:
1) Melt low level waste with (or into a) glass, put it in the center of a glass brick, and use it for process heat.
2) Some reactor designs claim to be able to accept spent fuel from other reactors and use it as a part of their fuel. One reactor that I've seen this claimed for is a molten salt thorium reactor.
I don't like just leaving it sitting around, or burying it. And some of that "spent fuel" reported to be so thermally hot that calling it
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Debunked [epa.gov].
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1. Global Warming is a long term problem too. Your argument makes little sense.
2. The existing disasters (3 mile island, Chernobyl, Fukushima) prove you wrong. The plants are almost always built > 20 miles, 100 miles from prime industrial real estate. Chernobyl has a 20 mile exclusion zone that people insist on living in. 18 years after 3 mile island they found no health effects within 5 miles of it. Fukushima had one cancer fatality that insurance paid off, compared to 18,000 deaths from the ea
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I pay attention to facts, but you do not. I am not saying that nuclear does not have problems. I am saying that nuclear's problems are NOT greater than other forms of energy.
Fukushima is proof. You complain about the 50,000 households that were uprooted and had their lives destroyed. But you see there was this little thing called a TIDAL WAVE. As I stated that tidal wave killed 18,000 x as many people and should be given at least SOME responsibility for the 50,000 households disruption.
Secondly, those
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The concept of nuclear electricity is simply old and completely obsolete expensive junk.
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1959 model automobiles are simply old and completely obsolete junk, too.
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True.
That's why todasy we use a new form of energy storage named Batteriies, and we get rid of the old Oil based junk.
Exactly the same with nuclear electricity. A form of technology rendered obsolete by costs, and pollution.
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> Why does the summary downplay regulations?
Which summary? Here? It doesn't say anything about it at all.
> The abstract says: "Relatedly, containment building costs more than doubled from 1976 to 2017, due only in part to safety regulations."
Concrete's 5x what it was circa 2000, I suspect that has something to do with it.
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Every time we hear about cost overruns with nuclear construction, a whining chorus joins in saying "It's the safety regulations, wehhhh", resulting in the perception that these regulations are the only factor that makes nuclear power uneconomical. In turn, this perception leads to this feckless idea that nothing can be done to reduce costs because it's
Shoreham (Score:3)
People in NYC are still paying for the Shoreham Long Island plant that was nearly complete and starting test generating runs. The plant was shutdown over fears that Long Island couldn't be evacuated quickly enough. Billions of dollars spent on a plant and it was never used. Nuclear power has been hamstrung for a long time.
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This is basically what the report is saying. It's mostly down to a lack of planning and foresight.
Because these things were not properly thought through and planned for they come up late in construction, when they are extremely expensive to fix.
To use your example of the Shoreham Long Island plant, when it was started they didn't think an evacuation was necessary. Then TMI and Chernobyl happened and the world re-evaluated the need for one, and it became apparent that Shoreham had been built in the wrong pla
building subsequent plants... (Score:2)
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Is it real dollars vs inflated dollars?
Seriously? You think they would make such an elementary mistake?
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FUD much?
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Parts for one thing. If you are using a design too old, they will be calling out for stuff that does not exist any longer so you have to redesign to include the "equivalent" part available today which then cascades into everything downstream making sure it is within the spec of what the new part specs. Designing is not just making a blueprint for the building, designing means the minutieau all the way down to screws, bolts, valves, pumps, everything. You were probably just better off starting from scratch i
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Re:the reason is a more verdant relationship (Score:4, Insightful)
Systems like San Onofre are not environmentally sustainable as their primary cooling is not a closed circuit, and existing systems like three mile island expect to casually vent radioactive byproducts into the atmosphere as a feature in the event of even the slightest concern. in 2020 this is considered generally undesireable.
Radioactivity is everywhere. It's important to talk about it with nuance and precision. That means mathematics, but how do we educate the innumerate public? Barring science-fiction level breakthroughs, fission power is our only hope to turn the tide of climate change. But our system is going to allow the critical decisions to be made by voters and legislators who can't handle logarithms and inverse-square laws.
In this case those voters are smarter than you. (Score:2)
Everyone else looks at the massive capital investment, many years before a new plant is operational, the significant deferred costs (like waste disposal & decommissioning), and the significant risk profile (Chernobyl, Three-Mile Island, Fukushima). Everyone else says "Nope", and rightly so.
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"fission power is our only hope to turn the tide of climate change"
- do you plan to be alive to care?
- do you believe you have some religious obligation to turn the tide on climate change?
sooner or later the problem will self correct and the natural laws Darwin identified will take care of rebalancing things, OR
people will recognize that their is an important moral / aka religious aspect to taking care of 'creation' and start taking personal responsibility.
However, you can't have it both ways. Eith
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If it's wrong to beat you senseless and steal your money today, and it's also wrong to club your skull and take your money next week, then it's also wrong to beat you senseless and steal your money in 2050. We can even generalize this, and say that in general, it's wrong to cause you harm for the sake of profit, and it's also
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Everyone else looks at the massive capital investment, many years before a new plant is operational, the significant deferred costs (like waste disposal & decommissioning), and the significant risk profile (Chernobyl, Three-Mile Island, Fukushima). Everyone else says "Nope", and rightly so.
Nerds also realize that comparing the safety and maintenance records of nuclear power plants designed in the 60's and built in the 70's with modern nuclear reactors is like pointing at the Ford Pinto and saying that cars are not safe.
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Now compare those things to all other power production on the same scale.
Build new? When we are closing them for any excuse (Score:1)
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You are asking why we should build new nuclear fission power plants when there are plans to close 50 year old plants for being unprofitable? Have you considered that they are unprofitable because they are 50 years old?
Let's apply this to other energy options. Why build more windmills when there's plans to tear down 50 year old windmills for being unprofitable? Why should we put up new solar panels on the rooftops of homes and factories because the 50 year old panels became unprofitable?
We don't build new
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We don't build new nuclear power plants like we did 50 years ago so the economics are quite different.
Yeah, old plants cost millions to build. Modern nukes cost tens of billions to build,
and half are decommisioned long before they pay off their debts, if ever.
this a job for Elon Musk (Score:1)
Clearly this is a failure of American engineering. Americans no longer want to build things and think that everything can be outsourced. Smart people nowadays work in Silicon Valley to invent better way how to serve ads.
Elon Musk is already working on this problem. (Score:2)
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The solution will be solar power and batteries. Safe, decentralized, pragmatic.
I've been hearing this all my life, when is it going to happen?
So many promises on solar power and batteries and yet nothing real to show for it.
I see that even the Democrat Party gave up on the promise of solar PV and batteries in powering the future. Last summer they reversed their anti-nuclear power policy, a policy held for nearly 50 years.
If you want to claim that in the future solar and batteries will be safe, decentralized, and pragmatic then that's fine by me. What we need though are options we ca
The key phrase (Score:3)
"... 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.
Study suggests micro plants built off site (Score:4, Interesting)
That was my take away from reading the article. Big plants require massive changes in plans due to different physical locations - i.e. rivers, soil, near by roads, etc.
But small nuclear plants that can fit on a single 18 wheeler truck can be delivered to any site, using perhaps 100s such micro plants to deliver the same power as a larger power plant. Spread them out in a huge facility and any problems will be small and contained.
If one breaks, it can be moved away by a crane.
That would also solve the insurance problem (Score:2)
Might be (Score:2)
But for sure it ain't the insurance costs, because they don't get one anywhere on the planet.
The moving target of regulatory compliance (Score:2)
There are a lot of politically-connected groups that have a vested interest in preventing nuclear power from being implemented in any significant way in this country. As such, they generate more regulatory issues and keep moving the goal posts. The actual cost of materials and labor doesn't change much. Keeping people happy is expensive.
Curious omission (Score:2)
Nothing in that summary that mentions the impact of the resistance of green protesters on the costs of nuclear plant development and construction. (Maybe the actual report does?)
"if youâ(TM)re having to go back and redo the design because of something about a particular site or a changing safety regulation, then if you build into your design that you have all of these different possibilities based on these things that could happen"
While certainly their showboating shenanigans (chaining themselves to
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Because they fail to discuss or even mention an OBVIOUS and widely-recognized factor impacting exactly what they're talking about?
It would be like talking about obesity but not talking about sugar in food.
They're not STUPID, so one must believe they are willfully ignoring the subject.
Really? (Score:2)
I thought it was the deposit for the salary of the armed guards protecting the nuclear ashes from terrorists for a million years that did them in.
Am I wrong?
Is the taxpayer funding it?
Just like with their non-existing insurance?
Damn, it's good to be king.
I'm glad people are noticing this (Score:2)
I've had the great pleasure of driving nuke apologist "blindseer" into fits of rage by pointing out that in the history of the United States, there has never been a nuclear generating plant built on time, on budget, that provided electricity at the cost promised. Not. One.
And then, of course, there's the fine print in the insurance contracts. If anything goes wrong, the taxpayer will be on the hook for almost the entire cost of the cleanup.
We'll leave the part about including costs of mining, refining, t
Thermal fission/fusion plants are uneconomical? (Score:2)
Hello,
To further drive your friend crazy, here's a thought:
I read that fission and fusion plants are both uneconomical for the same reason that coal power is now uneconomical and is being phased out.
The cost of the machinery/infrastructure to take heat, make steam with the heat, and make electricity with the steam, just that part of the plant alone, is more expensive than direct generation techniques, which do NOT use steam. Direct generation techniques include:
Because inflation... (Score:2)
Over the years I've noticed that there is an "apparent" inflation and a "true" inflation. The apparent one is measured by prices of food, gas, electricity, other common goods and services, but all of those can and are produced in increasingly optimized ways. Their prices rise a bit year over year, but usually not that noticeably.
In certain places however, the "true" inflation can be observed - land/housing prices, mega projects (like
Finally people are asking the right questions. (Score:2)
Instead of simply accepting the "fact" that nuclear fission power is "too expensive" we see people looking into what has made nuclear power cost so much.
What has driven this, by my estimation, is the impending retirement of a large portion of the fleet of existing nuclear fission power plants in the USA. Most of the still operational power plants in the USA were built between 1970 and 1980. Since 1980 we've seen nuclear power capacity grow mostly from improvements in operating practices, bringing capacity
Why? One word - Greenpeace (Score:1)
Greenpeace opposes any nukes. They have sued and done everything they can to hurt the industry. Their head is so far up their butt that one of the founders wrote about it - https://www.wired.com/2007/11/... [wired.com] .
Want a new Nuke plant? They sue.
Want to move nuclear fuel? They sue.
Want to sore nuclear fuel? They sue.
Want to keep a Nuclear power plant open? They sue.
Want to think about Nuclear Power? They sue.
Ok, maybe not in every case, however it seems like it. Spend a whole bunch of money to do anything with it
Not much of a revelation from MIT (Score:1)
Dang, it's not on Sci-Hub (Score:2)
interesting (Score:1)