You are cherry-picking. From the wikipedia page list of commercial nuclear reactors, the duration between 1960 and 1980 ranged from 3 to 15 years. Only one plant (the one you cite) took 40 years to build, and only one other as far as I can tell took more than 30 years, out of the 144 entries of the table.
That chart relies somewhat on outliers, too. But OK, if you’re making a point about costs increasing after Three Mile Island, I agree: new regulations introduced during construction increased costs a lot.
I think those regulations were worthwhile, maybe you disagree, but either way, once the regulations are introduced, builders of later plants know about them and don’t have to make changes during construction. Once compliant plants are built, people know how to deal with them. The actual regulations were about things like redundant control wiring, not things that directly impacted costs nearly as much as changing designs in the middle of construction did.
I don’t care about cost increases during specific past periods where new (reasonable) regulations were introduced, I care about cost increases from then to now—and costs have continued to increase, in multiple countries.
You are cherry-picking. From the wikipedia page list of commercial nuclear reactors, the duration between 1960 and 1980 ranged from 3 to 15 years. Only one plant (the one you cite) took 40 years to build, and only one other as far as I can tell took more than 30 years, out of the 144 entries of the table.
That chart relies somewhat on outliers, too. But OK, if you’re making a point about costs increasing after Three Mile Island, I agree: new regulations introduced during construction increased costs a lot.
I think those regulations were worthwhile, maybe you disagree, but either way, once the regulations are introduced, builders of later plants know about them and don’t have to make changes during construction. Once compliant plants are built, people know how to deal with them. The actual regulations were about things like redundant control wiring, not things that directly impacted costs nearly as much as changing designs in the middle of construction did.
I don’t care about cost increases during specific past periods where new (reasonable) regulations were introduced, I care about cost increases from then to now—and costs have continued to increase, in multiple countries.