Sure - but they've been working on the last 1% for years now. Nuclear Power plants are almost always over budget and over time, big misses. And they've built lots of them. Every piece of software ever built suffers from this issue to some degree. Elon Musk misses every deadline he ever sets. Something taking longer than initially thought shouldn't instantly set off alarm bells suggesting it won't ever get done.
Because nuclear power projects are never finished on time and within budget. Partly for political reasons (as in: People really don't like it), partly because engineers suck at estimating large projects.
Westinghouse had severe technical problems with AP1000 and it's not alone. French nuclear reactor builder Areva was restructured after they could not get their new EPR reactors ready on time. Their flagship project Olkiluoto 3 is nine years late and several billions of euros over budget.
Chinese are building reactors as fast as they can. They are buying reactors designs from all main manufacturers. There are 21 reactors under construction and they are three years late on average because manufacturers can't get these next generation reactors ready.
Nuclear reactors being constantly late and exceeding their budgets is not new. This was true in 60's and 70's and it's true now.
Worse, it's a total gamble on whether or not we'll even be able to BUILD a given reactor. Reactor construction projects have an absolutely gobsmacking rate of delays and massive cost overruns, and many end up getting canceled.
Flamanville in France is fully 3x its original cost estimate. If it manages to hit its current planned opening date in 2022, then that will be after 15 YEARS of construction.
Out of the recent wave of reactor construction in Europe and the US, most are have hit massive delays and cost overruns. At this point it's hard to conclude that the nuclear industry is remotely competent to deliver on any single promise.
The key problem in my mind is the failure of project management in building reactors.
If they said it was going to take 2 years and 1 billion dollars and it stretched out to 3 years and $1.5 billion that is one thing.
Back in the 1970s it was more like 2 years stretches to 9 years and $15 billion and you could blame union workers who never did nuclear work before, the no nukes, high interest rates, etc.
The industry was supposed to come out with standardized reactor types like the EPR, and we have low interest rates, little active opposition to nuclear power, and projects like Olkiluoto-3 are still 9 years late.
Nobody is going to put up billions of dollars unless there is some predictability in terms of cost and schedule. The fear of Fukushima is just icing on that cake.
If you look back at the history of nuclear construction, at least in the US, late and massively over budget is the norm. Late and over budget are closely tied together, of course, as it's all about project management and that's not trivial at this scale. This sort of typical overrun is why US utilities stopped building more nuclear in the 80s.
85% of nuclear reactors are built in under 10 years[1].
It also seems to me that if there were sufficient political willpower that improvements could be made here. It’s a bit like how anti-solar folks complain about the massive cost while ignoring that it is possible to improve costs.
There's a big gap between securing funding and actually completing large infrastructure projects. We have a bunch of cancelled nuclear power plants halfway through construction from NIMBYism, cost overruns, office changes, etc.
Thirteen years late and four times over budget for the first new plant in Finland in 42 years. I bet if they build a second one, it won’t take so long nor be so over-budget.
In the UK, the Hinkley Point C project is over-budget and late, partly because they had problems with their initial concrete pours that necessitated exceptionally costly and time-consuming rebuilds. But as Hinkley gets closer to completion, the lessons learned are being transferred to Sizewell C, another EDF plant. [1]
The world needs these large nuclear plants and we can’t just give up because the first few constructed went over budget and took too long.
Good thing the last generation of nuclear plants is only ten years behind schedule (was supposed to be done in 5 years, now estimate is 15) and 5x over budget
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