Consulting

shortage of skilled labor; quality control issues; supply chain issues; poor planning either by the
utility or equipment suppliers; shortage of finance; and public opposition.
The role of public opposition in delaying construction is frequently overstated and there is no
evidence that construction of any of the Generation III+ plants has been delayed by public
opposition. At least in the U.S., this reflects the nuclear industry’s successful efforts to restrict
meaningful public access to judicial or regulatory proceedings and to rule that unresolved safety
issues cannot be raised. While obtaining finance is clearly now one of the major hurdles to
building new nuclear plants, this is much more likely to occur before construction starts. Again,
there is no evidence that shortage of finance has delayed construction apart from the plants under
construction in Russia. The Fukushima disaster did delay ordering in some markets, for example
China, but there is no evidence that any of the delays at the Generation III+ plants resulted
directly from lessons drawn of the catastrophe in Japan.
A frequent problem has been that detailed design is worked out by the vendor only during
construction. If producing the final detailed design proves difficult, for example, or if the regulator
is not satisfied with the detailed design, this can delay construction. A notable example of this was
the Instrumentation & Control (I&C) System for the EPR. In 2009, the safety regulatory
authorities for Finland, France, and the UK issued a joint statement expressing concern about the
adequacy of the safety systems (those used to maintain control of the plant if it goes outside
normal conditions), and their independence from the control systems. 159 This was eventually
resolved in all three countries but with a different solution for each and only after up to five years
of effort to produce designs that would satisfy the national regulator.
Delays can also be caused by designs that meet regulatory requirements but do not function as
specified. A particular example has been the reactor coolant pumps (RCPs) for the AP1000 to be
supplied by Curtiss-Wright. Curtiss-Wright acknowledged that it “failed to meet deadlines for
shipping RCPs from the U.S. to AP1000 plant sites in China and that it had to ship pumps back
from the Sanmen and Haiyang sites in China for modification.” 160
The low ordering rate for new nuclear power plants over the past 30 years has meant that there
has been little demand for skilled construction workers, so the workforce has aged and its skills
have not been utilized. Re-building a skilled workforce cannot be done quickly, requiring basic
education as well as experience. Until the flow of orders is more established and the job prospects
secure, the incentives for workers to undergo such training will be weak. For both the first orders
for EPRs, the pouring of the concrete base-mat had to be re-done because of errors. Particularly
for France, where EDF, the owner and site engineer had already built 58 PWRs, it seems
reasonable to assume this was due to loss of expertise at diverse levels of craft labor and
management. This is not surprising, since the French vendor’s last construction start before
159 Health and Safety Executive’s Nuclear Directorate (HSE’s ND), French Nuclear Regulator (ASN) and
Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Regulator (STUK), “Joint Regulatory Position Statement on the EPR
Pressurised Water Reactor—Release No V4 22/10/2009”, 2 November 2009, see
http://www.hse.gov.uk/press/2009/hse221009.htm, accessed 21 May 2015.
160 NW, “AP1000 reactor pump issue brings plant design change: Westinghouse”, 6 November 2014.
Mycle Schneider, Antony Froggatt et al. World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2015 59