Thread by @ShellenbergerMD

@USWeatherExpert @davey1233 @swansandsable The Financial Times's @Grepsul investigated nuclear economics last year came to same conclusion: standardization lowers costs and innovation raises it

ft.com/content/c06524…

@USWeatherExpert @davey1233 @swansandsable @Grepsul "Only by sticking firmly to the same specification, engineers and builders could you drive down construction costs. This 'learning by doing' could lead to meaningful reductions."

@USWeatherExpert @davey1233 @swansandsable @Grepsul "Having swallowed the hefty 'first of a kind' (FOAK) costs — see Hinkley and Flamanville — and invested in the supply chain to build the latest big “practical” reactors (after a 30-year nuclear hiatus), countries such as the UK should build large 'cookie-cutter' fleets."

@USWeatherExpert @davey1233 @swansandsable @Grepsul "The last thing needed is a multiyear pause while the next generation is brought to its FOAK phase, turning that costly investment rapidly into dust."

@USWeatherExpert @davey1233 @swansandsable @Grepsul "Solar panels became cheap not through radical changes in design but rather decades of incremental process-based improvements. he writes. Nearly seven decades after Rickover’s memo, it is a lesson the nuclear industry should learn."

ft.com/content/c06524…

@USWeatherExpert @davey1233 @swansandsable @Grepsul "The French have two kinds of nuclear reactors and hundreds of kinds of cheese whereas in the United States the figures are reversed," said Ivan Selin, the former Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner, when asked to explain why French nuclear was so cheap compared to the U.S.

@USWeatherExpert @davey1233 @swansandsable @Grepsul Standardization gives construction workers & manager a chance to “learn by doing” & build consecutive nuclear reactors faster and cheaper. What matters most is the tacit knowledge in the heads of construction managers, not reactor models.

forbes.com/sites/michaels…