The nuclear renaissance is in full effect as Canada joins an international movement to dramatically increase the amount of nuclear energy produced across the country.
Hopefully they are able to utilize the more modern designs. For the most part the general public’s frame of reference is Chernobyl or 3 mile island and those are fairly old designs from the 50s/60s.
Not all old designs were bad. And one has to understand that the USSR, UK, France, and the US all had a shared objective (by the way, these are the primary nations designing and creating nuclear reactors back in the 50’s and 60’s). And the goal? Plutonium for Nuclear Bombs. You can imagine how this changes design Parameters.
So now lets talk about the CANDU Reactor, designed in 1955 (or there abouts).
It’s an oddity of the day - Designed for energy generation for civilian use, without the desire to actively produce Plutonium. Functionally speaking, complete fission of the material with the least degree of enrichment possible for efficient opperation was the design goal. And what you get is well, this.
Beyond this, because it is a Heavy Water Reactor (CANDU standing for Canada Deuterium Uranium), it’s moderator is well, heavy water - which is interesting as two things: If it boils off, the neutron regulator (which is slowing down neutrons to encourage fission in the core) boils off. And Boiling water takes away a LOT of heat. Beyond this, heated water will naturally circulate so even if active pumps pushing the water through the system fail, natural circulation can occur until corrective action is taken.
Yes, there are newer designs that are probably safer. But don’t just say “old designs bad” without understanding the design constraints created by the circumstances to which they were created. Look at also, all of the designs of the era. There is a reason pretty much everyone can name Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, and Fukushima. And anyone with half a length of common sense would avoid putting a nuclear reactor on Japan - a place that has an active Valcano, is prone to tsunami’s, and sits at the intersecting point of three tectonic plates… It’s kind of a bad place for it. Not impossible to do safely, but when you use a reactor design that is basically set up for the production of plutonium by the very design constraints and such of the day: It’s not surprising.
My frame of reference is the latest nuclear reactor built in the US. It was six years late, $14 billion over budget, bankrupted Westinghouse, and is set to increase electric rates. The DoE had to give them a $12 billion loan just to finish construction.
I’m not scared they’re gonna blow up. I’m scared they’re gonna waste a ton of money that could be used for renewables. Heck, even the small modular reactors are running over cost and over time.
Ehhhh Westinghouse bankrupted Westinghouse. They decided they were going to cut Bechtel out of the project and build VC summer by themselves. Pocketing the “savings”. Problem is, the way things had worked for decades before is Westinghouse does the design and Bechtel does the construction. They couldn’t cut it on their own and it destroyed the company. They let the financial dinks speak louder than the engineers and payed for it dearly.
There’s a chance things would have gone much different if they didn’t try to take on a work scope completely out of their league.
Just general problems when using lowest bidder based contracting and cost-plus contracts. The same thing happens any time there’s any major project these days: pipelines, transmission lines, hydro plants, etc.
When you have a firm, that is ran by accountants - odds are, you have a firm that is great at squeezing on line items, but lacks the long term vision to see how that squeeze will lead to deficits and higher cost in the long term.
The fastest way to plummet a successful company, is to take the Industry experts out of the position (I mean people who worked their way up through the industry, and learned management along the way by experts btw), and replace them with an MBA/ Accountant who got hired into their upper management position without really working in the industry prior to.
And I pretty much guarantee you, this is what happened.
The last power plant I worked on was Chinook generating station near Swift Current, a 350MW combined cycle plant for SaskPower. At $605M is was $75M under budget, you will never hear that on a nuclear project.
The various wind installations are typically fairly close to budget and schedule as well. Hydro is problematic, and that does show in cost overruns, because it is very difficult to predict the geotechnical situation for a given site until excavation starts. Given the stress on the structures, even small differences accumulate rapidly.
The worst thermal plant projects are consistently nuclear.
The refurbishment of Lepreau was supposed to cost $1.5B and take 18 months, it ended up taking $2.5B and just under 4 years to complete.
Flammanville-3 started construction in 2007 was supposed to be operational in 2012. They’re now estimating it will complete commissioning in 2024. Costs have gone from €3.3B to €20B+.
Olkiluoto-3 started construction in 2005, was supposed to be operational in 2010, but only completed commissioning in 2022. Costs went from €3B to €11B, the not to exceed amount in the contract.
Hinkley Point C started about 2016, has been pushed back to 2028 and costs have gone from £16B to an estimated £32B.
Vogtle has been covered, but the V.C Summer plant was no better. Initial estimate was $9B, but the project was cancelled while under construction when the estimated total was projected to exceed $23B.
Hopefully they are able to utilize the more modern designs. For the most part the general public’s frame of reference is Chernobyl or 3 mile island and those are fairly old designs from the 50s/60s.
What about CANDU?
AECL was sold of the SNC_Lavalin. They tried selling new designs for a bit then gave up. They focus on supporting existing reactors now.
But this could be an opportunity to get it going again, no? It’s a reasonably modern design with a proven track record.
Not all old designs were bad. And one has to understand that the USSR, UK, France, and the US all had a shared objective (by the way, these are the primary nations designing and creating nuclear reactors back in the 50’s and 60’s). And the goal? Plutonium for Nuclear Bombs. You can imagine how this changes design Parameters.
So now lets talk about the CANDU Reactor, designed in 1955 (or there abouts).
It’s an oddity of the day - Designed for energy generation for civilian use, without the desire to actively produce Plutonium. Functionally speaking, complete fission of the material with the least degree of enrichment possible for efficient opperation was the design goal. And what you get is well, this.
Beyond this, because it is a Heavy Water Reactor (CANDU standing for Canada Deuterium Uranium), it’s moderator is well, heavy water - which is interesting as two things: If it boils off, the neutron regulator (which is slowing down neutrons to encourage fission in the core) boils off. And Boiling water takes away a LOT of heat. Beyond this, heated water will naturally circulate so even if active pumps pushing the water through the system fail, natural circulation can occur until corrective action is taken.
Yes, there are newer designs that are probably safer. But don’t just say “old designs bad” without understanding the design constraints created by the circumstances to which they were created. Look at also, all of the designs of the era. There is a reason pretty much everyone can name Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island, and Fukushima. And anyone with half a length of common sense would avoid putting a nuclear reactor on Japan - a place that has an active Valcano, is prone to tsunami’s, and sits at the intersecting point of three tectonic plates… It’s kind of a bad place for it. Not impossible to do safely, but when you use a reactor design that is basically set up for the production of plutonium by the very design constraints and such of the day: It’s not surprising.
And then we can talk about SMR’s.
My frame of reference is the latest nuclear reactor built in the US. It was six years late, $14 billion over budget, bankrupted Westinghouse, and is set to increase electric rates. The DoE had to give them a $12 billion loan just to finish construction.
I’m not scared they’re gonna blow up. I’m scared they’re gonna waste a ton of money that could be used for renewables. Heck, even the small modular reactors are running over cost and over time.
Ehhhh Westinghouse bankrupted Westinghouse. They decided they were going to cut Bechtel out of the project and build VC summer by themselves. Pocketing the “savings”. Problem is, the way things had worked for decades before is Westinghouse does the design and Bechtel does the construction. They couldn’t cut it on their own and it destroyed the company. They let the financial dinks speak louder than the engineers and payed for it dearly.
There’s a chance things would have gone much different if they didn’t try to take on a work scope completely out of their league.
Just general problems when using lowest bidder based contracting and cost-plus contracts. The same thing happens any time there’s any major project these days: pipelines, transmission lines, hydro plants, etc.
When you have a firm, that is ran by accountants - odds are, you have a firm that is great at squeezing on line items, but lacks the long term vision to see how that squeeze will lead to deficits and higher cost in the long term.
The fastest way to plummet a successful company, is to take the Industry experts out of the position (I mean people who worked their way up through the industry, and learned management along the way by experts btw), and replace them with an MBA/ Accountant who got hired into their upper management position without really working in the industry prior to.
And I pretty much guarantee you, this is what happened.
The last power plant I worked on was Chinook generating station near Swift Current, a 350MW combined cycle plant for SaskPower. At $605M is was $75M under budget, you will never hear that on a nuclear project.
The various wind installations are typically fairly close to budget and schedule as well. Hydro is problematic, and that does show in cost overruns, because it is very difficult to predict the geotechnical situation for a given site until excavation starts. Given the stress on the structures, even small differences accumulate rapidly.
The worst thermal plant projects are consistently nuclear.
The refurbishment of Lepreau was supposed to cost $1.5B and take 18 months, it ended up taking $2.5B and just under 4 years to complete.
Flammanville-3 started construction in 2007 was supposed to be operational in 2012. They’re now estimating it will complete commissioning in 2024. Costs have gone from €3.3B to €20B+.
Olkiluoto-3 started construction in 2005, was supposed to be operational in 2010, but only completed commissioning in 2022. Costs went from €3B to €11B, the not to exceed amount in the contract.
Hinkley Point C started about 2016, has been pushed back to 2028 and costs have gone from £16B to an estimated £32B.
Vogtle has been covered, but the V.C Summer plant was no better. Initial estimate was $9B, but the project was cancelled while under construction when the estimated total was projected to exceed $23B.
The numbers for nuclear sound absolutely fantastic for whoever wins the contract. 🤔
3 mile island wasn’t that big of a deal, and the mistakes there caused a complete redesign of how control panels for nuclear plants are layed out