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Finland's Nuclear Plant Start Delayed Again
mdsolar writes with news about further delays to Finland's Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor. "Areva-Siemens, the consortium building Finland's biggest nuclear reactor, said on Monday the start date of the much delayed project will be pushed back to late 2018 — almost a decade later than originally planned. Areva-Siemens blamed disagreements with its client Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) over the plant's automation system, the latest blow for a project that has been hit by repeated delays, soaring costs and disputes. "The delays are because the planning of the plant has taken needlessly long," Jouni Silvennoinen, TVO's project head, told Reuters on Monday. "We haven't examined the supplier's detailed schedules yet, but our preliminary view is that we could do better (than 2018)."
It'll never be finnished.
Unless it is a fast breeder or similar that can "burn" plutonium, by the time they get around to getting the fuel, there won't be much uranium left on sale, or suppliers willing to sell it.
And banned in space. So, when the last nuclear plant closes, it will be gone. And this will happen on the day some new weapon development obsoletes the nukes.
What happend here is that Areva wanted the deal at any cost, so they agreed to build their prototype reactor cheap with Finnish safety standars (which are very high). the problems started in early stages when they could not produce complete plans to Finnish authorities as their plans were not even finished yet. When Areva got their plans ready they where already a few years late, it was thn discovered that the fail-safe/automation system were not separated well enough, many single-points of failure were discovered and caused further delays as they needed to fix the plans so that the systems fail-safe are autonomus from main systems.
Areva is trying to turn this on TVO (the buyer) by saying the delayes were caused by them not getting the approvals in time, when in reality Areva did not provide complete plans ever when they requested. Abosulte disaster prject and design from Arevas side.
The frogs and ze germans "working" together to get every last penny out of the project.
It's not just software projects that that can't be completed in a timely, cost-effective manner.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
As everyone knows, when it comes to planning, you need someone to manage those plans, you need more project managers.. the more you hire the more planning will happen.. almost in direct proportion. You probably don't need experienced engineers as much as you need project managers... in fact, you might want to add a program manager to manage the managers who manage the projects.. this way many plans will be made, planning projects will be finished and the projects will happen because of gant charts. no real self respecting project can be accomplished unless you have gant charts.. and recently there have been some amazing developments in gant charts, for instance, they don't need to be waterfall.. they can in fact be other shapes too.. we're not sure what shapes they really can be, but to be safe, lets make it a waterfall so project coordinators can follow them without too much management overhead. Oh, I forgot to mention we need project coordinators under the project managers, and program managers on top of the project managers.. you know, like a waterfall.. like a gant chart that looks like a waterfall. I can feel the synergy from here.
All of these delays are teaching us how Gen III reactors work. At this point, a reactor can be built slowly if the buyer is willing to pay $0.15/kWh. http://www.westernmorningnews....
Gen II Vermont Yankee is closing because it can't scare up a contract at $0.06/kWh. Gen III Hinkley C will charge $0.15/kWh, two and a half times as much. Going to Gen IV likely scales to $0.40/kWh. It is true that there is only about 85 years of uranium left at the current rate of use, but breeder reactors don't fix that.
...disagreements with its client Teollisuuden Voima over the plant's automation system.
Could also be that technology changed or "improved" over the years that the plant has been in engineering. At one point in some of these type of projects you can get to where the client ends up very involved in the design process and that can blur lines of responsibility ("who does what", not accountability).
With 3D CAD plant modelling many more people can be involved in design review meetings, and sometimes that causes...issues. In the old days only those who could read technical drawings would be commenting.
Because, yeah, planning for things like nuclear plants is obviously a needless extravagance.
What he doesn't report is how the Chinese are manufacturing their AP1000s on schedule. The problems on Finland and France with EPR have been innumerable because of excessive bureaucracy and people who don't know how to manufacture nuclear reactors anymore getting the job. Not to mention continuous funding delays.
China's state-owned reactor builder said the start-up of the country's first advanced nuclear project based on designs by U.S.-based Westinghouse has been delayed further until at least end of 2015 due to tougher safety checks. In an interview to official news agency Xinhua on Thursday, Guo Hongbo, a spokesman at China's State Nuclear Power Technology Corp (SNPTC), blamed the delayed start of the "third-generation" AP1000 reactor on stringent safety inspections after Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. Originally set to start by end-2013, the project in Sanmen in eastern Zhejiang province was already delayed until December 2014. It has now been pushed back at least another year, after design changes and problems with some components. http://uk.reuters.com/article/...