Thread by @ScipioAcheronus

Good narrative explaining why cost of nuclear energy in US went from reasonable to bananas in a short period of time from 60s-80s. Source is "dated," but so is US nuclear energy, so no real loss there. H/T & thanks to @JvDorp. Precis thread incoming...
phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chap…
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Source = Ch. 9 of 1990 book, The Nuclear Energy Option: An Alternative for the 90s, Bernard L. Cohen, Prof. Emeritus of Physics, U. of Pitt. To my rube eyes, book appears well sourced/reasoned, at least for reasonably credible back-of-napkin narrative. Grain of salt & all that
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Adjusted for inflation, cost to build a nuclear plant roughly quadrupled in this time period. Why? Material costs rose a bit, but the two primary factors (each attributable to rough doubling of cost) were: (1) increasing labor costs; and (2) increasing time to build a plant
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Labor Costs: As a percentage of overnight cost, labor costs were slightly UNDER materials costs in 1976, and more than DOUBLE materials costs in 1988. Wow.
[Interestingly but semi-parenthetical, professional labor grows from 38% of total labor costs in 1978 to 52% in 1987]
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Time to complete:
Design/permit process: Project initiation to ground breaking was 16 months in 1967, 32 months in 1972, and 54 months in 1980.
Construction: Ground breaking to operation testing was increased from 42 months in 1967, to 54 months in 1972, to 70 months in 1980.
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Recap - Final interest-adjusted cost of Nukes 4x higher in 1980 than 1971:
-Roughly 2x attributed to increased overnight costs, mostly from labor.
-Roughly 2x attributed to increased interest costs, due to lengthening time to complete the project.

So why did that happen?
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Cohen argues that three things are primarily to blame here:
(1) Regulatory ratchet (rules only ever more stringent);
(2) Regulatory turbulence (rules change during project, hilarity ensues);
(3) Every plant first of its kind
(4) Enviros (a few directly-thrown monkey wrenches).
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Regulatory Ratchet: Let's pause the precis for just a second. Presumably, safety regulations are designed to accurately align the actual risk of an economic activity with the amount of risk the public is willing to endure for that activity (the "tolerated risk"). Makes sense?
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Normally, regs expand when: (1) experts discover new info or an error in reasoning such that, contrary to prior belief, existing regs lead to actual risk being > tolerated risk; or (2) tolerance for risk goes down as the public decides to place more value on safety than before
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Cohen is slightly handwavy here on out, but his main point is that regs during this time period only ever get more stringent, despite mostly experts determining that, contrary to prior belief, actual risks of nuclear plants w/ existing regs were lower than previously assumed.
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E.g. Tech assessments indicated many safety features worked better than expected: emergency core cooling system, radioactive iodine behavior in water environment. Thus, most(?) engineer/scientist findings suggested plants were safer than had been assumed, not more dangerous.
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Virtually all experts agreed after Three Mile Island that improvements should be added to existing and new plants. These improvements by themselves added only a few % points to total costs. But prior to and after 3MI, public policy was adding far more requirements than these.
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Shortened Quote: "According to one study, b/w early to late 70s, reg requirements increased quantity of steel needed in a power plant of equivalent electrical output by 41%, amount of concrete by 27%, lineal footage of piping by 50%, and length of electrical cable by 36%."
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Obviously such additions raise materials costs, but also the labor to design & construct whatever they're needed for. Now Cohen gets a bit cagey. He's agnostic on whether these regs were needed, but says many experts did not think so. Plus, complexity itself can increase risk
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Cohen argues all these regs were tacked on piecemeal one by one to a design fundamentally unsuited to them. More elegant to add safety w/out cost via fundamental redesign (in the works!) for passive safety. This is 28 years old, but might as well be yesterday's twitter feed.
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Regulatory Turbulence: This was a crazy time for the NRC, including but certainly not limited to Three Mile Island, in which the rules for plants were constantly in flux. Thus, no design ever "finished," completed work might become incompatible/tough to square with new rules.
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This creates some truly unnecessary waste: retrofitting a completed foundation is expensive. Tearing up concrete is even worse. You can let your imagination run wild with the ways even these direct costs can add expenses. But some less intuitive added costs were just as bad.
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Because of regulatory uncertainty, some project managers went "above and beyond," anticipating regulation that never came to pass. Presumably these added costs incommensurate with what they added to safety ("cover my ass costs").
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On the spot worker innovation is impossible with uncertain & growing inflexible requirements, so when unanticipated problems arise bottlenecks form as designers have to approve workarounds (equivalent to the General needing to approve all Lieutenants' tactical decisions...)
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Finally, regulatory turbulence creates a reinforcing cycle of financing problems, as cost overruns lead to cash flow problems for constructing utilities, leading to work occasionally stalling, further delays, and so on...
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Every project is FOIK: Cohen doesn't go into too much detail here, but historically every new nuclear plant has been its own unique snowflake, which never allowed "learn by doing" to put a downward pressure on costs, which might have counteracted some of the upward pressure.
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Enviros: Cohen lays out a parade of horribles, essentially of environmental groups/individuals deliberately forcing delays of NRC licensing, which in turn added substantial costs to individual plants. Examples: delaying tactics slowed Shoreham Plant getting license permit...
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3-year-delay, $1B cost added to Seabrook in NH (evacuation zone of which extended into MA), when the MA governor refused to comply with evacuation drills required under NRC regulations before the plant could begin operating. NRC eventually waived requirement. List goes on...
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I've already taxed patience of anyone making it this far (thanks), so just a few concluding thoughts. Obviously piece doesn't include skill degeneration, leading to Vogtle making 80s seem like golden age. OTOH, is regulatory turbulence still in such flux, or are we past that?
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I do find it quite rich to hear enviros respond to pro-nuclear arguments w/ "Big history of accidents, plus look at the industry's rising costs!" YOU demanded cost increases to alleviate risk of accidents! Don't act so shocked, shocked, while you have your cake & eat it too.
/END