Canada

Yeah, I've seen that video before. I've worked in consulting engineering, primarily in generation for 25 years. The major non-nuclear projects I've been involved with have been within a few percentage points of the original budgets. Some of the worst ones were off by 10-15%. Not 150% as in the case of Vogtle.

The last combined cycle gas plant I worked on was the Chinook Generating Station in Swift Current. Fairly small at 353MW, but cost $600M, which was roughly $75M under budget. Those are words you'll never hear for a nuclear project.

The refurbishment at Point Lepreau was originally expected to run 18 months and cost $1.5B. It ended up being just short of 4 years and cost $2.5B. That's very expensive for a 660MW unit. CANDU6 have a design life of 30 years, when they need extensive refurbishments, or decommissioning. Lepreau made it to 28 years when reliability was really starting to impact it's viability. When faced with the same issue at Gentilly on a near identical reactor, Quebec Hydro pulled the plug. Quebec Hydro obviously having other options available to it.

At Pickering A plant, two units (A2 &A3) have been decommissioned. Units A1 and A4 were refurbished in the early 2000s. The refurbishments were supposed to cost $670M, but ended up costing over $2B. The 4 units of B plant were commissioned from 1983-1986. They've had life extension work to maintain their licensing to continue operations, but they need complete refurbishment or decommissioning. The Ford government has been dragging its feet. If a decision isn't made soon, the federal regulator will order them shut down.

The 860MW Combustion Engineering PWR at Maine Yankee only ran from 1972 until 1997, 25 years, when it was powered down for the last time. It was never particularly reliable and only hit a lifetime capacity factor of somewhere around 70%, not nearly enough to be economically viable. The cost to refurbish was estimated to exceed it's initial construction costs, so it was decommissioned and the site is currently used for storing radioactive waste.

These projects could be getting far better finance rates if they could stick to the 5 year construction schedule. They're penalized because history is pretty clear that they can't. With projects like the V.C.Summer plant being cancelled mid-construction due to overruns, financing became even harder to secure.

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

Here's a Practical Engineering video on "Why Construction Projects Always Go Overbudget"

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