After this period, costs to build nuclear power plants skyrocketed. When the reasons behind these escalating costs were studied in depth, it was found to be due to the fact that plants lack standardization across the board, leading to ballooning engineering and labor costs as designs are reworked in site-specific ways:
> Overall, a common theme emerging from this analysis is the lack of anticipation in engineering models of the cost-increasing contributions of soft technology external to standard reactor hardware, in response to changing regulations and other factors such as variable project-specific conditions. Prospective modeling shows the potentially transformative effect of rethinking engineering design to adapt to these factors, for example through reduced commodity usage and the automation of some construction processes.
> Overall, a common theme emerging from this analysis is the lack of anticipation in engineering models of the cost-increasing contributions of soft technology external to standard reactor hardware, in response to changing regulations and other factors such as variable project-specific conditions. Prospective modeling shows the potentially transformative effect of rethinking engineering design to adapt to these factors, for example through reduced commodity usage and the automation of some construction processes.
https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(20)30458-X?_r...