Promises of easier nuclear power plant construction fall short in new round of building

[bananas]

http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/metro/2014-07-26/promises-easier-nuclear-power-plant-construction-fall-short-new-round-building?v=1406413077

Promises of easier nuclear power plant construction fall short in new round of building

Prefabricated sections costly, difficult to make

By Ray Henry
Associated Press
Saturday, July 26, 2014

WAYNESBORO, Ga. — The U.S. nuclear industry has started building its first new plants in decades using prefabricated Lego-like blocks meant to save time and money and revive the once promising energy source.

So far, it’s not working.

Quality and cost problems have cropped up again, raising questions about whether nuclear power will ever be able to compete with other electricity sources. The first two reactors built after a 16-year lull, Southern Co.’s Vogtle plant in Waynesboro, Ga., and SCANA Corp.’s VC Summer plant in South Carolina, are being assembled in large modules. Large chunks of the modules are built off-site in an effort to improve quality and avoid the chronic cost overruns that all but killed the nuclear industry when the first wave of plants was being built in the 1960s and 1970s.

Analysts say engineers created designs that were hard or impossible to make, according to interviews and regulatory filings reviewed by The Associated Press.

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[Indydem]

1. Is this the first time they've worked with engineers??

In my experience, that's what engineers are ALWAYS doing; making designs that look great in paper, are easily understood by their engineer peers and unfucking believably complex and unusable in the real world.

[awoke_in_2003]

2. I am a technician that works on flight simulators...

one thing we say about engineers- because of them we have guaranteed job security

[dougolat]

3. "radiation doesn't kill people - people kill people" ...oops!...nt