Steven Chu warns UK its nuclear plans risk becoming financial drain
Source: Guardian
Former US energy chief and Nobel physicist says UK plan to build various types of reactors is expensive and time-consuming
A world-leading energy expert has warned that although the British government is right to proceed with new nuclear plants they risk becoming a financial drain unless they can be built on time and on budget.
Steven Chu, the former US energy secretary and Nobel prizewinning physicist, believes using a variety of different reactor designs as the UK looks poised to do is not the best way to keep costs down.
Unless we can learn to build nuclear on schedule and on budget it will be a financial drain. Other countries have learned how to do this: South Korea has built 10 plants exactly the same and the tenth plant was only 60% of the cost of the original one. The cost came marching down because they just kept doing the same thing, he told the Guardian.
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/16/steven-cru-warns-uk-nuclear-plans
South Korea cut costs by cheating and lying - and doing it over and over again:
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 shutdown, and Kori 1 and Shin Wolsong 2 ordered to remain offline, until safety-related control cabling with forged safety certificates is replaced.[16] Control cabling in the first APR-1400s under construction had to be replaced delaying construction by up to a year.[17] 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.[18]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_South_Korea
bananas
(27,509 posts)Tony Roulstone, who runs the Master's programme in nuclear engineering in Cambridge, gave similar warnings a few weeks ago:
'Unconstructable' Hinkley C could end UK's nuclear dream
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016105755
muriel_volestrangler
(101,321 posts)Roulstone mused on why this might be. He said that learning effects are usually observed for goods made in factories. The fact that nuclear power stations are almost entirely constructed on individual sites meant that the expertise gathered in one place are not transferred to the next construction project.
Recent experience, such as at the Finnish EPR construction site, shows that management is particularly difficult when large bands of workers, sometimes speaking different languages, try to work productively together in a relatively small and cramped area. The workforce is unused to the extremely demanding construction quality requirements imposed by the safety engineers.
http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/Blogs/2605273/unconstructable_hinkley_c_could_end_uks_nuclear_dream.html