Constructing a nuclear power plant is investment and time intensive. Total costs are sky high and timetables between project proposal and actual construction and operation are unpredictable. Two cases in point—UK’s Hinkley Point C project is currently being delayed eight years after the initial target and faces huge cost overruns, and the bankruptcy of a contractor that led to the scrapping of a South Carolina nuclear project. According to a nuclear fuel expert who has worked on developing nuclear gas turbines, some 80 percent of the construction costs for nuclear power projects where nuclear fission is used to heat steam plants is spent on the technology and facilities outside of the so-called nuclear island , the one that contains the nuclear reactor. Nuclear plants produce electricity by boiling water into steam, and this steam then turns turbines to produce electricity. There are technologies that have been studied and developed […]