Is the problem this project is breaking new ground or inherant in any nuclear plant project?
Rod Adams -
BLOGSPOT - May 30, 2009
The role of nuclear energy is still up for debate, although more are becoming more tolerant --Ed.
Judging from the number of blog posts that have been generated in the past 24 hours in response to the New York Times article titled In Finland, Nuclear Renaissance Runs Into Trouble, some people have never heard of the concept of learning curves or been involved in a project where everyone is inexperienced at the specific task they are assigned.
People who have been involved in the development of any new product or construction project have different attitudes, but most of them do not write anti-nuclear blogs or produce slanted articles in major news media outlets. For people who have been through the pain of a first of a kind (FOAK) and seen it through to work out the bugs and move into steady state production, is is never surprising that the first one takes at least 2 times as long as initially guessed and that the final cost is 20-200% larger than initially budgeted.
There are always lessons to be learned, mistakes to be made, and people to be either trained or fired. The reward comes once the learning has been accomplished and implemented; costs come down, schedules get shorter and more predictable, and people sometimes forget just how hard it was to get started....
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