There’s been a lot of talk about SMR’s over the years, it’s nice to see one finally being built.
Even if it comes in over budget, getting the first one done will be a great learning experience and could lead to figuring out how to do future ones cheaper.
Assuming it’s on time, completion in 2029, connected to grid in 2030.
Cool, we’ll finally get to find out if it’s actually even more complicated and expensive than the traditional kind.
They plan to build 4 of them at this site… at the very least I hope each one is progressively cheaper to build as they learn.
If each one is more expensive that’ll be bad news bears heh.
I’ve heard it suggested that the mass production efficiencies wouldn’t kick in until they’re building hundreds or thousands. That’s pretty typical for manufacturing, and it’s not like we’ve never built a reactor before.
Maybe if you are building laptops and dishwashers. These are small building crammed with plumbing and electrical work, making 4 or 5 of them in a dedicated factory will significantly reduce production costs. You can have one guy who is good at flanged stainless pipe, one guy who is a panel building wizard, and so on. The first project will take the normal amount of time, each subsequent one will go much faster because the team already has a process in place.
Source: I worked industrial construction for 6 years, jobs where more than one copy of the same machine was being built always came in under budget because each copy was built quicker than the last.