NON-REACTIVE
I want to love nuclear. I really do. But there’s so little to like and proponents continually refuse to win me over. Here’s just one more fact that speaks to the problem: Of all the 820 nuclear reactor projects to have ever started construction, 92 of those have been abandoned — often after a decade or more in the building, billions invested, and even long after completion.
That’s right, despite nearly a century of expertise, whole teams of scientists and engineers behind them, and often with what are nearly blank cheques to get these projects done, more than 11% of reactors just don’t do the thing or are plagued with so many chronic issues they can only be scrapped. Would that ever be a great investment? Seems to me far more like a gamble. Imagine a double-digit percentage of aeroplanes or stealth aircraft or rockets to the International Space Station not ever getting off the ground and needing to be scrapped entirely. Bonkers.
For your reference, here are a couple of those recent failed nuclear reactors:
July 2017 - Units 2 and 3 at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in South Carolina have been cancelled. At 64% completion and with years of delays and billions in cost overruns, 143% over original estimates, stakeholders walked away in an attempt to save taxpayers the additional $9.5 billion it would take to complete the project.
December 2016 - Japan is scrapping an experimental reactor that worked for just 250 days of its intended 22-year lifespan. Built at a cost $12.3 billion, it will cost another $4.4 billion to decommission — a project that won't see completion until at least 2047.
Comments