[dirtsoc]

What's sad is that it's mainly the US that has problems with this. China has managed to bring multiple of this reactor design to fruition while the US still screws around with building just two. I live in Georgia and the almost decade of overruns and corruption are being about to be paid for by Georgia Power customers via rate hikes.

[epistasis]

France and Finland have had excessive difficulty with their EPR.

My hypothesis is that modern economies with high wages will simply not be able to build a nuclear reactor economically. It appears to require a certain amount of 20th century technological advancement, but not so much economic advancement that labor costs are too high.

France had a much better track record with nuclear in their first round of building. France can also build large construction projects without the massive cost overruns that the US has had. But they can't seem to get a next gen reactor built.

[natmaka]

The first EPR project in France (Flamanville-3) had problems documented in an official report (dubbed 'Folz', per the name of its main author), sadly AFAIK it wasn't translated into English: https://www.economie.gouv.fr/rapport-epr-flamanville

A piece about it: https://www.archyde.com/the-folz-report-draws-up-a-severe-as...

This study may also offer some hints: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151...

[sofixa]

Because those were the first EPRs ever. Now that most caveats and issues are discovered, next ones should be drastically faster and easier.

> France can also build large construction projects without the massive cost overruns that the US has had

Not always, some easily go overboard, like with the Parisian Philharmonic, or the absolutely massive Grand Paris Express (~200km of new high capacity metro lines around Paris) which has seen the budget go up from an original estimate of 19 billion to 35 billion (euros). Completely normal considering the scale and complexity, but still.

[Reason077]

It's a bit simplistic to blame only labour costs. Large, complex civil projects often have cost and schedule overruns because contractors know they're going to get paid anyway so are incentivised to make the project slower and more expensive.

Smaller, simpler projects don't tend to have the same issues because contractors know they can be replaced easily if they fail.

[przemo_li]

French scenario could have been avoided is much better loans where secured. Delays skyrocketed costs for to fat % on those financing agreements.

Which is 101 of big projects anyway. Hard to understand why french project wasn't deemed to risky to investors.

[bjornsing]

Interesting hypothesis…