alt Hacker News> It almost makes aviation look like running a lemonade stand.
I'm about as pro-nuclear as you can be, but that's probably a good thing. Modern reactor designs are amazingly safe, and the industry itself has a really amazing track record, but there should be no room for the usual corner cutting shenanigans when it comes to nuclear.
I do genuinely believe that the West at large has lost the capability of getting any kind of large infrastructure project built due to hilariously blatant corruption. Even France, the poster child for nuclear energy and how much of a success story it can be, is struggling with their latest nuclear expansion because we let the private entity ghouls come in and suck everyone dry for every penny they can manage.
Say your 1979 Chevy is in need of a new 12V battery, but your car (for the purpose of the example) is under the NRC regulatory regime.
Can you just go to the auto parts store and buy a new lead acid standard issue battery? Definitely not. Well then ok, lets buy the most top shelf high-performance 2026 grade one. Also no.
The only battery you can use is the original one that came with the car in 1979. That's it. So now you have to pay a factory to produce a battery with a design from 1974. This battery easily costs $750k for all the custom engineering and low volume needed. And it is objectively worse by every measure to what is available at Walmart today for $50. So why do we have to use the original one? Because that is the battery that was certified, and certifying a new battery would take 10 years and tens of millions.
Again, I have pretty direct experience with this (a division of my company), and the situation above is a "translated" example of what goes down.
Maybe you call it "corner cutting" to use a new battery, but frankly I think you might be just speaking from the hip.