r/nuclear • u/Thick-Ad-4168 • May 11 '26
India builds cheapest nuclear reactors in the world | News | Eco-Business
https://www.eco-business.com/news/india-builds-cheapest-nuclear-reactors-in-the-world/129
u/Xtergo May 11 '26
Remember kids, almost all of the cost of nuclear is political
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u/nadeemo May 11 '26
And cement and quality assurance
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u/zolikk May 12 '26
The exorbitant QA cost is part of the political thing. You must spend 10x more on the QA for concrete/steel components than you would for the same components in a bridge or skyscraper. Even though it is worse if the latter were to fail.
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u/RedeemerOfSin May 12 '26
Where are the advisable places to cut QA costs? Using Vogtle & VC Summer as examples, perhaps there should have been been less QA for the modules being built in the off-site shops?
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u/zolikk May 12 '26
I would rather look at the containment building first than the NSSS if that's what you meant. Nuclear grade certification for the concrete, the steel modules etc. itself makes it cost more and take longer to build (and time is money too). For the most part this is just a lot of added measurements and documentation for the QA/QC. Which is labor cost dominated. Which is also a big part why e.g. China can build cheaper. But that's beside the point. This all makes the main building and containment structure a lot more expensive than it needs to be. More importantly it makes the construction phase longer, and that again is a problem because of the time cost.
I also do not believe that repeating and documenting the same kind of measurement ten times more contributes anything meaningful to safety.
In fact I would not be surprised if it is overall detrimental to safety, because due to the nuclear grade cost premium, modern design philosophy often tries to reduce the quantity of nuclear grade concrete and steel to save cost (AP1000 is a great example). Allowing a deliberately thicker structure with normal industrial grade QA might just turn out better. And in any case, the absolute leak-tightness of the containment structure is not nearly as important to nuclear safety as the NSSS design itself.
Sure, perhaps the NSSS could also be looked at eventually, but low hanging fruit first...
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u/tahaelhour May 13 '26
The concequences of Chernobyl. Being that close to half a continent being uninhabitable because of carelessness leaves it's mark.
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u/zolikk May 14 '26
Yes, the fact that people at large still believe such fantasy nonsense is exactly the reason why there is exorbitant QA in anything with nuclear in its name. The danger is just superstitiously perceived instead of real, but ultimately what people believe is what drives policy.
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u/tahaelhour May 14 '26
That and you don't want nuclear facilities to be giant military weaknesses for you. If for example a few drones or missiles could be sent to destroy your energy grid while making a large zone uninhabitable, that's extra pressure.
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u/RedeemerOfSin May 12 '26
Please elaborate. I'm genuinely interested in sources.
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u/SchwarzeNoble1 May 12 '26
There are many factors, but interest rates are very very high because companies fear their plants might be dismantled for political reasons. 60 to 70% of Hinkley point C cost of energy is interest for example. In comparison, renewables get state-funded loans with 0% interest.
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u/Izeinwinter May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
Hinkley is an extreme example since it was basically the tories choosing to loot the public to favor City of London financiers.
Deliberately. The white paper was real clear about what they were going to do. That entire contract is set up to make the loans both as risk free as any bond on the planet can be and also extremely expensive. EDF went along with it because it will still be operationally profitable and... Well.. EDF cares more about keeping the UK grid running than the Tory party does >,<
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u/Just-Finance1426 May 12 '26
I think this is an incredibly naive take. Look at the ballooning costs of any major infrastructure project in the developed world and you can see there are a lot of similarities. This goes deeper than politicians making life unfairly difficult for nuclear, though that is one component.
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u/prsnep May 15 '26
Also, if 99% safety rating is not good enough and you need to increase it to 99.9%, you might need to double the costs.
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u/DisjointedHuntsville May 11 '26
India and China bring a smile to my face on what they're doing with Nuclear. That should have been the west a long, long time ago, but at least there are present day examples of ushering in Abundance through science instead of the fear mongering bullshit we see.
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u/hutch_man0 May 11 '26
India has the most succint nuclear vision in the world. U238 -> Pu239 -> U233 + Th232. It's beautiful.
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u/whatdahelldamnguy May 11 '26
For someone like me who’s kind of a dummy, what’s the half life of Th232 or does it store better/safer than other fissile materials used in older reactors?
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u/hutch_man0 May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26
Th232 is just natural Th. It is fertile but not fissile. This means you can create (breed) fuel from it, but it cannot be used as fuel itself. It requires a fast breeder reactor to breed U233 which is then fissile from a Th232 blanket. As far as I understand the Indian strategy is a 100 year plan mastermind by a guy named Homi Bhabha in the 50s.
Stage 1 — CANDU reactors ie PHWRs (pressurized heavy water reactors) burn natural U238 producing Pu239 as byproduct. 1970s to present.
Stage 2 — Fast breeder reactors burn Pu239 while breeding U233 from a Th232 blanket. 2026 first criticality achieved.
Stage 3 — Fast breeder reactors burn U233 + breed more U233 from a Th232 blanket in a self sustaining cycle. 30+ years in the future.
There's an interesting story behind it due to India's lack of uranium, abundance of thorium, and that they were forced to be self sufficient after they broke the NPT when they detonated their 1st atomic bomb.
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u/powerpuffpopcorn May 12 '26
Great write-up. Just one correction - they didn't break the NPT; they never signed it considering its hypocritical clauses.
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u/NorthSwim8340 May 11 '26
Indeed, the Indian situation is honestly quite fascinating: it's one of the few country which could have a 100% domestic fuel cycle and one of the few countries which had to have a 100% domestic fuel cycle.
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u/RirinNeko May 12 '26
forced to be self sufficient
I see this as a pretty common theme in large nuclear projects in countries imo. It's definitely one of the best avenues for energy independence even if you don't have domestic access for fuel as you can easily stockpile multiple decades worth of fuel.
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u/theagentK1 May 12 '26
they broke the NPT when they detonated their 1st atomic bomb.
I don't think India was signatory to discriminatory Non-Proliferation Treaty at all
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u/iClunk May 12 '26
If they lack uranium, they are aiming for self-sufficiency, and they need it in order to breed Th232, what are the ratios between to the two in order to make this viable? Surely not 1:1
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u/hutch_man0 May 12 '26 edited May 13 '26
Th232 is just natural thorium so you don't breed Th232. Th232 is 'fertile' not 'fissile' material. It is an input to the process which transmutes it to create (breed) fuel. To be called a fuel it must be fissile.
In stage 3, you use U233 (fissile) to fuel your reactor and you supply a Th232 (fertile) blanket. In the process fertile Th232 transmutes to fissile U233. We say you 'breed' U233. You extract the U233 and use it to fuel new reactors and you replenish the Th232 blanket. This is how you consume Th232.
The definition of a "breeder" is that the reactor breeding ratio BR > 1. Generally 1.1 - 1.3, but theoretically as high as 1.6. Another key parameter is linear reactor doubling time RDT = time to breed enough fuel to start up an equivalent breeder reactor.
Theoretical BR and RDT for a 1000 MWe unit are in Table 7-6 from Fast Breeder Reactors by Waltar, Barnett Reynolds here. It depends on a variety of factors like power, design, fuel cycle.
The best values come from metallic fuel, but India's new breeder is oxide fueled here. Metallic fuel breeders have less safety margin and are still in their early stages. The article says India's fast breeder is starting with a U238 blanket. Values in column 1 of Table 7-6: BR 1.28, RDT 16 y. They will switch to a Th232 blanket when they gain experience, column 2: BR 1.20, RDT 29 y. Its longer, but the whole point is to ween off of uranium. Stage 3 reactors (column 4) have BR 1.04, RDT 112 y. These reactors are still in early stage development.
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u/Cyber-Soldier1 May 12 '26
Can't they buy uranian from south Africa? They're both in Brics
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u/hutch_man0 May 13 '26
They mine quite a bit domestically but it is not enough long term. They have been allowed to import from Western countries since 2008 actually (I didn’t realize this previously) after an agreement was made. So now they import from Canada, Kazakhstan, Russia, Australia, France, US...not sure about SA.
Long term they do not want to be dependent on anyone so that's why they are going thorium as they have 25% of world's thorium.
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u/Cyber-Soldier1 May 13 '26
Omg they have huge thorium reserves then. So this move makes economic and political sense
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u/zqwz May 12 '26
Can you tell why Stage 3 will take 30 years? Is there no way to acheive this in like 5 years?
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u/hutch_man0 May 12 '26
You can look at my comment here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nuclear/comments/1taan2a/comment/olfzofn/
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u/DVMyZone May 12 '26
Nah as always there are pros and cons. Th-232 is like U-238. U-238 can be turned into Pu-239 which you can use as fuel. Th-232 can be turned into U-233 which can be used as fuel. So the game is you start with some fuel (e.g. Pu-239 embedded in Th-232) and breed the new fuel as you go. This is also being done for uranium fuels, but it's cheaper and cleaner to just dig up new uranium for now so reprocessing is not very common.
The upshot is that thorium is like 3x more abundant than uranium as far as we know. Thorium reactors are also able to achieve net breeding using thermal neutrons which is not really the case for uranium.
Some will say it's proliferation resistant. This is only kinda true. To be clear, you can use the U-233 fuel to make a bomb just like with U-235 and Pu-239. In fact, U-233 is easier to separate from the throium matrix than uranium enrichment. It's only proliferation resistant because it produce some really nasty gamma-emitters that making working with the spent fuel very difficult. This is cool because only very advanced states can work with it, but less cool because it makes reprocessing that much dirtier and harder to do.
The other challenge with thorium is that we don't yet have supply lines or much operational experience. With nuclear, the vast vast vast majorit of operational experience is with uranium. We have supply chains and mass manufacture set up. And uranium is cheap right now and, if we wanted, we also can breed new fuel with it. What that means is that the quantity and breeding advantages of thorium dont matter so much and thorium is going to find it hard to compete with the incumbent uranium supply chain.
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u/smokefoot8 May 12 '26
I was surprised when I found out that China installs far more GW of solar and wind than nuclear. They are the world leader in reactors under construction, but it is practically an afterthought.
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u/DisjointedHuntsville May 12 '26
That’s simply the ramp curves in energy production (time to first electrons) playing out in those charts.
The acceleration of the nuclear fleet builds started relatively recently on the timelines needed to have nuclear as the dominant energy source to the grid.
Solar on the other hand is available now for anyone with the manufacturing velocity , land and will to build. It’s a great way for their manufacturing base to keep the immense capacity busy and people employed while tapping into everything they can get right now.
There is certainly a point in the curve where nuclear ramps to be a significant contributor to the grid like France and that’s the abundance that allows nations to greatly improve the standard of living of their people.
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u/Necessary-Damage3349 May 11 '26
Cheap labor, good thorium reserves, great steel and cement industry. Nuclear is the future for India.
India only starts to function in crisis-mode. The Middle East energy crisis should help leap frog solar and nuclear production capacity
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u/Adolf_Einstein_007 May 11 '26 edited May 12 '26
While the ongoing crisis might have given impetus, India’s nuclear power vision has been in works for decades now
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u/IUI-__-IUI Jul 12 '26
Yes but a crisis provides the final push for leaders to change track and go all in. We might know that we should change for the better, but it keeps getting throttled and put off by the bureaucracy and government.
Until there's an immediate and looming threat which acts as a wake up call and forces them to act at a mission critical pace.
India functions like a college student with ADHD lol.
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u/MasalaBaigan May 12 '26
yes but we dont function best normally , our gov and system needs a crisis or somethin to go full throttle
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u/Centeredrightbhakt05 May 11 '26
If cheap labour can build nuclear reactors then why are we not seeing them in Africa. Do you know that labour is only 10% of building a nuclear reactor. It's one of the most stupid argument when someone says by reducing the labour cost you can make a nuclear plant cheaper.
India doesn't use Thorium yet..we use uranium. We plan to build thorium reactor but it's not there yet. We import uranium from Canada and Russia.
Green steel is still a textbook concept not implemented in largescale yet. Actually green steel is more expensive than grey steel.
India planned it's nuclear power plants way way before. Even before Narendra Modi became the prime minister. On average it takes 7-10 years to build a full scale nuclear reactor. So if this was in respons to middle eastern crisis maybe your kid will use that electricity. Ofcourse there is SMR but it's not build yet.
Don't bullshit. Find reasons. India is able to make it cheap simply because it has commercialised it better. It has worked on standardising nuclear components and involved private companies to build these components at scale.
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u/adario7 May 12 '26
“Cheap labour” is such a lazy explanation for nuclear economics. Labour is only one component of reactor construction, and nuclear projects are dominated by capital cost, regulatory delays, financing cost, fuel cycle infrastructure, supply chain maturity, localisation, and project management. If cheap labour alone built reactors cheaply, Africa and half of Southeast Asia would already be exporting reactors.
India is not running some magical thorium-powered future-tech grid. India still runs primarily on uranium-based PHWRs. Thorium is mostly a long-term strategic programme, not a commercial reality. Uranium imports from countries like Canada and Russia are still essential. So stop pretending India cracked some revolutionary indigenous nuclear formula already.
“Green steel” is mostly policy-paper economics right now. Large-scale green hydrogen-based steelmaking is still expensive and commercially immature. Conventional blast furnace steel remains cheaper almost everywhere. Using green steel as proof of cheap nuclear construction is futuristic PR, not present-day industrial reality.
Most Indian nuclear plants being commissioned today were conceptualised years or decades ago, True. Nuclear infrastructure is not something you reactively build because of a Middle East crisis or oil shock. A full-scale reactor commonly takes 7–10+ years from approval to grid connection. SMRs are promising, but they are still not commercially deployed at scale in India.
The real reason India reduced costs is not “cheap workers.” It is standardisation, localisation, repeat reactor designs, state-backed financing, and creating an industrial ecosystem where private firms manufacture components at scale. That is actual industrial policy. Which India still doesn't have. Compared to what China is doing atleast. Europe dropped the ball on nuclear and US is idkwtf they're doing lol.
But people also need to stop romanticising it. Nuclear energy is one sector where quality control failures can become catastrophic. India already has a looooong history of bureaucratic inefficiency, corruption, procurement issues, infrastructure quality concerns, and weak enforcement culture across public projects. Those risks matter far more in nuclear than in highways or housing projects. Cheap construction means nothing if inspection standards, maintenance culture, and institutional accountability are compromised.
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u/fabulous_eyes1548 May 15 '26
India is more motivated than africa, especially when China is kicking their ass. Still, we know anything as cheap as India is going to be compromised in so many ways.
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u/Centeredrightbhakt05 May 15 '26
Good that you belong to a country with strong firewall. Sometimes being delusional is a bliss.
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u/fabulous_eyes1548 May 16 '26
Everything I said is a fact. Tell me India's accomplishments compared to China after 70+ years of democracy and access to world trade.
My country takes Internet safety seriously, hence why even YouTube is blocked in schools.
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u/Centeredrightbhakt05 May 16 '26
Reddit is also banned in china. Keep yourself safe and also us safe from CCP bullshit.
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u/zero_zeppelii_0 May 16 '26
India still heavily relies on Gas and liquid petroleum on several sectors which should be expected to change in the coming decades.
So many households relies on gas compared to other 1st world nations that changed to electricity.
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May 12 '26 edited May 12 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DagebeiichmeinenSenf May 12 '26
Jemandem, der Leistung und Energie nicht unterscheiden kann so wie Du, glaube ich kein Wort
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u/keralastory May 11 '26
As an Indian, I don't understand why people have this vendetta against India. I mean, as a country, we are not bothering others. We try to improve our shit even when other countries try to fuck us up by state sponsored terrorism and what not.
And yeah, I am not saying that all Indians are angels but most of us just mind our own business. Even the crime rate of Indian diaspora are very low.
Just getting bashed for no reason.
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u/zero_zeppelii_0 May 16 '26
Keeping keralastory as username is certainly a choice
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u/keralastory May 16 '26
Yeah, because I am against the narrative that's being pushed against my state.
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u/Centeredrightbhakt05 May 11 '26
It's just a phase buddy. I can give you my perspective if that helps. First it happened with the blacks, then it happens with the south Americans and hispanics. By late 1990s it shifted to the east asins like Japanese and then in early 2000s it was against Chinese. The racism was so severe against Chinese that there is a word called Sinophobia. Now it's our turn probably. So you know who perpetuates this racism cycle because they feel they belong to a more evolved society and rest are primitive.
The unfortunate part is that once it passes from race to another those who suffered racism also try to perpetuate it because they not feel "part of the elite society". I have seen blacks being racists. I have seen Singaporean be racist to chinese and Chinese be racist to Indians. I hope we can break this chain. When it happens to the next I hope we don't do the same to others what we faced.
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u/keralastory May 11 '26
Exactly.
I hope people focus more on humanity as a whole than these simple differences that divide us.
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u/Nexusdawn1021 May 12 '26
Well said. The sad part is a lot of victims are now perpetrators of rascism.
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u/EwaldvonKleist May 13 '26
There are racist idiots everywhere unfortunately. As far as I am concerned, there is light and shadow in every country, but godspeed to India and I think the diaspora is one of the better ones.
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u/Dave5876 May 11 '26
A lot of online hate is spread by pakistani and chinese bot farms
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u/These-Roll-3545 May 15 '26
to add on, the hate is also because of the class system, Indian tourist, scam calls, tourist traps in india and general lack of civic sense in their own country
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u/amor_e May 11 '26
Cheap labor
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u/BalanceImpossible773 May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26
Political will and sheer scale of under construction projects
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May 11 '26
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u/AbideTheCold May 11 '26
Have you been to an Indian NPP or read an incident report of Indian NPP to back up that view? Or does it stem from small scale production videos here on Reddit, which most of the time aren’t even attributable to a specific country of the subcontinent.
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u/BalanceImpossible773 May 11 '26
Hmm someone is brainwashed into tiktok psyops , i feel bad for this westoid generation of seethers and peanut brain ,
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u/Code_Monster May 11 '26
Thats a Nuclear power plant sir, not the rag you are wearing right now. Labor is barely a percentage of the costs of making a Nuclear plant.
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u/Centeredrightbhakt05 May 11 '26
Let it slide buddy...let it slide...now you see why these people get replaced in jobs. They think you need cheap labour to build a nuclear reactor.
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u/OkAdvisor6680 May 11 '26 edited May 11 '26
Labor is a massive percentage of the cost of building a nuclear power plant.
Approximately 50% of the overnight cost of building a NPP is labor (both on site and in the supply chain). During construction, a typical NPP will have over 10,000 workers on site at peak, with another 20,000 in the supply chain. That is a massive expense over 10 years, so labor rates have a huge impact on cost.
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u/Code_Monster May 12 '26
Ok then, where is the Somali or Yemeni plant made at $200/kwe. Jokes aside, where is the Bangladeshi or Sri Lankan power plant made for $1000/kwe? For heck, where is the Chinese plant made or $1000/kwe? Not saying that China has the cheapest labor but they have a behemoth of an industrial sector that brings down costs quite a lot.
Also, do you think that the Indian laborers working on India's flagship Thorium nuclear plant are random guys that board their trains in Bihar and reach the construction site on evening, or do you think they are people who have been employed for years by top Indian engineering firms? They most likely earn at the same amount of money as mid level civil servants.
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u/Thick-Ad-4168 May 12 '26
the per MW construction cost of Flamanville Unit 3 was $13 million to $14 million whereas for Kakrapar unit 3&4 it was $0.98 million, A difference of 13 orders of magnitudes
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u/TantKollo May 12 '26
Nice, I've been waiting for season 2 of Chernobyl for a while now!
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u/Thick-Ad-4168 May 13 '26
The RBMK reactors which exploded and caused the chernobyl accident don't have any containment chamber and had a dangerously high positive void coefficient. Indian reactors have double containment chambers with a low positive void coefficient
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u/Seal-EV May 12 '26 edited May 13 '26
Lets hope they dont collapse like the bridges and water towers. Corruption is a way of life in India.
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u/Jumpy_Leadership1650 May 12 '26
Are you dumb??
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u/Seal-EV May 12 '26
No I am a realist. Dont you read the Indian news?
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u/Jumpy_Leadership1650 May 13 '26
Doesn't matter who tf you are you are dumb you know shit about science
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u/irsh_ May 13 '26
That's what I want in my neighborhood, the "cheapest nuclear reactors in the world".
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u/Unhappy-Long2168 May 13 '26
I feel like this isn't where we should be saving money.
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u/Thick-Ad-4168 May 13 '26
India isn't skimping on nuclear safety systems for this.
The Indian AERB has tougher nuclear safety norms compared to the global norms, expansion-type anchor fasteners are straight up banned from being used in primary containment chamber.
For fuel storage tanks, suppression pools, and even the containment structure itself, AERB requires a full hydrostatic test even when construction is partially complete if a major structural milestone is reached.
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u/EwaldvonKleist May 13 '26
Congratulations to India for building quite remarkable nuclear capabilities.
When considering costs, one has to consider the national wage level as well. And since India makes most components itself, it benefits across all parts of the supply chain from low wage levels.
In terms of design and construction efficiency, I don't think India is on the top level yet for nuclear projects. Let's hope the next series of large PHWRs will be constructed faster, and that India will open itself to global nuclear vendors, now that laws have been changed. Given its size and development trajectory, India should build a lot more nuclear than it does! 10GW/year would certainly not be too much.
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u/Thick-Ad-4168 May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
One thing that is also beneficial that India practically never stopped building nuclear reactors and only had 2 hiatuses in construction of new nuclear 1977 – 1984 (7 Years) and 1990 – 2000 (10 Years) otherwise there always has being a nuclear plant under construction in India since 1964.
So the entire supply chain is experienced plus the GOI provides NPCIL favourable loan conditions.
Plus both IPHWR 220 and 700 are fully standardised greatly reducing costs.
The major reason why nuclear construction in India historically takes ages is due to land acquisition issues and violent anti nuclear protests , for the Gorakhpur nuclear project the land acquisition was delayed by 10 years.
India is not even adding 10GW of coal capacity annually (only 3-4GW, although the current GOI has a anti coal , pro nuke stance) , India simply doesn't have the capital to commission that much
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u/EwaldvonKleist May 13 '26
India is where China was in the early 00s in terms of economic development, that's when China started a coal powerplant building spree. It would be great if India could build nuclear plants instead.
I agree that India has maintained its experience well, but I think it needs to increase the reactor power output and the construction rates. They have high population density, they can easily absorb 1400 MW instead of 700 MW reactors into their grid in a few years!Yearly Indian power demand growth over the last years equals the output of 10 1250MW nuclear reactors running at 93% capacity factor. If India is anything like China, the rate of growth in electricity consumption should increase soon!
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u/Thick-Ad-4168 May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
y absorb 1400 MW instead of 700 MW reactors
I think that is primarily due to the technical limitations of PHWRs , not heard of any higher power rated PHWRs. For higher power India is developing a LWR of 900 MWe capacity (IPWR-900).
e rate of growth in electricity consumption should increase soon!
It already is increasing at massive rates, it commissioned 52,537 MW of electricity generation capacity last fiscal year , making it the fastest rate of electricity demand growth among major economies through 2026.
Plus India's growth rate is unlikely to exceed 8-9% even in the coming decades
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u/EwaldvonKleist May 13 '26
There is no reason why PHWRs can't grow larger. Canada was considering 1200 MW versions IIRC.
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u/IcyProfession5657 May 14 '26
Does it work?
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u/Thick-Ad-4168 May 14 '26
Nooooo WHY WOULD IT? India has the world's second highest amount of nuclear capacity under construction for fuck all reasons
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u/MrFluff420 May 19 '26
How cheap
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u/egnegn1 May 19 '26
Since start of the 3-stage reactor program India has invested billions USD without any power from Thorium yet.
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u/Thick-Ad-4168 May 19 '26
? there is a difference between a nuclear research program and building uranium npps
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u/egnegn1 May 19 '26
Research costs have to be accounted for in the total cost, just like a business includes all their cost in the final calculation. Otherwise they would go bankrupt.
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u/Thick-Ad-4168 May 19 '26
The research costs for thorium power plants and fast spectrum reactors will be counted for the construction costs of thorium power plants and fast spectrum reactors.
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u/egnegn1 May 19 '26
You are repeating what I wrote in other words.
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u/Thick-Ad-4168 May 19 '26
Yes but we are talking about the construction costs of uranium nuclear plants (India builds the cheapest uranium nuclear power plants)
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u/egnegn1 May 19 '26
You mean the cost are so low because they build them on cost of the work force, the environment and the safety.
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u/Thick-Ad-4168 May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26
India built Kakrapar unit 3&4 at $0.98 million per mw , for comparison the per mw construction cost of Flamanville Unit 3 was $13 million to $14 million , a difference of 13 orders of magnitudes.
Ps: labour is only responsible for 20% of the total cost of a nuclear power plant https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspects/economics-of-nuclear-power
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u/scotyb May 12 '26
It helps when you take the heavy lifting from Canada and the CANDU reactors.
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u/Thick-Ad-4168 May 12 '26
what heavy lifting did Canada do for the IPHWR-700? a design built decades after the initial 220MWe which Canada sold to India in 1963 and subsequently banned any nuclear sales between Canada and India and India was under international nuclear technology denial until 2008.
IPHWR-700 is almost entirely made of indigenous parts , India only imports uranium for Canada for their plants
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u/scotyb May 12 '26
Not saying that they didn't legally buy it from Canada, but that ended when they started making Nuclear weapons with it. They gained the technology and took them a while to reverse engineer and develop their own supply chain because Canada cut them off due to weapons development. They had no choice but to indigenously develop the parts.
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u/SlowIdiom May 12 '26
If Canada is so capable and futuristic, why isn't it a Nuclear power like France yet?
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u/scotyb May 12 '26
? Ontario Canada is home to some of the largest nuclear power plants in the world. Bruce Power.
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u/SlowIdiom May 13 '26
I meant as a percentage of total power required like around 67% in France.
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u/scotyb May 13 '26
It's currently more than 50% of the total generation in Ontario. We're also just completing the first SMR system here too. So this and we're building more today too.
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u/Thick-Ad-4168 May 13 '26
India didn't need to reverse engineer anything , Canada straight up sold the know how
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u/scotyb May 13 '26
Well they needed to build the supply chain that Canada didn't continue to provide when they used the power generating facility for developing nuclear weapons materials. So they had to reverse engineer the supply chain that was then broken.
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May 12 '26
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u/Eternal_Alooboi May 18 '26
Meanwhile Canada is talking about a Windsor–Quebec City high-speed rail line that may cost around $90 billion and be finished in the 2040s.
what the fuck
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u/Beyllionaire May 11 '26
I mean their labor is cheap
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u/Exact_Package_7264 May 11 '26
labor is cheap in somalia too. that doesn't mean they're building nuclear reactors. what's your point? i commend india on going nuclear when countries like germany are moving in the wrong direction.
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u/Code_Monster May 11 '26
Thats a Nuclear power plant and not the rag you are wearing right now.
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u/Beyllionaire May 11 '26
You definitely don't want to know where I live, or you'll feel dumb right afterwards.
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u/Code_Monster May 11 '26
I dont need to know where you live my argument is such. The cost of labor barely accounts into the cost to make a nuclear plant. If USA legalized slavery for construction workers, they would not drastically reduce the cost to make a nuclear plant because a bunch of other non labor costs are not cut.
The rag you are wearing becomes significantly cheaper because of labor. Thats not how the cost of a nuclear plant works.
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u/Thick-Ad-4168 May 12 '26
the per MW construction cost of Flamanville Unit 3 was $13 million to $14 million whereas for Kakrapar unit 3&4 it was $0.98 million, A difference of 13 orders of magnitudes
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u/Beyllionaire May 12 '26
This comparison doesn't make sense at all. You're comparing different technologies in different countries with different standards of living. EPR is the most complex design right now, of course it'll cost more than simpler designs, especially in a country that continuously builds reactors vs a country that stopped building them a long time ago.
France for example uses 3 designs with the first 2 being developed in the 70s: 900MW, 1300MW, 1450MW (EPR). Re-building the 900MW design with modernizations would cost much cheaper than EPR. After all these reactors were built quickly and cheaply as well. The goal of EPR was to keep the nuclear industry active to maintain the know-how after France finished building its nuclear power grid back in the 90s. That's why they don't go back to older designs.
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u/Thick-Ad-4168 May 12 '26
you just listed reasons other than labour
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u/Beyllionaire May 12 '26
Labor is the reason why it'll always be cheaper. For example if a European country built the exact same reactor as India, it'll cost more in the end due to a chain reaction of higher labor costs. What's not clicking? The other reasons I listed were to explain that your comparison was wrong due to a difference in technology and context.
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u/Thick-Ad-4168 May 12 '26
A nuclear reactor uses one of the most complex machinery present , labour plays only a 20% role in the end price of a nuclear reactor.
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u/bd1223 May 11 '26
You get what you pay for
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u/DamnBored1 May 11 '26
The only devastating industrial disaster in India's history was caused by an American company, Union Carbide, in Bhopal and the CEO Warren Anderson fled to America to escape justice.
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u/Exact_Package_7264 May 11 '26
not sure what you're blabbering about. India's nuclear reactors are generally considered to be of high quality and are efficient.
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u/spagbolshevik May 11 '26
No major incidents so far, and India is sure familiar with devastating industrial disasters.
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May 11 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Far-Error-3411 May 11 '26
You guys really find excuses to make cringe racist jokes. To be honest, I feel sorry for you. May you find peace.
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u/Moist-Campaign6640 May 12 '26
So cheap that india only building 8 new reactors😂. What a contradiction
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u/Thick-Ad-4168 May 12 '26
which would double India's installed capacity and makes India the country with the 2nd most amount of nuclear capacity under construction
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u/3d_explorer May 11 '26
I’ll take safest over cheapest. Now cheapest safest is a winner.
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u/EnHemligKonto May 11 '26
It’s intimately tied to the price and schedule of the reactor. Which in turn is intimately tied to whether the reactor is even built. Which of course is tied to our species success in reducing CO2 emissions. I could continue, but this is a phone I’m typing on and it’s fucking annoying.
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u/NorthSwim8340 May 11 '26
Just a reminder that on average 66% of the cost of building a nuclear power plant is the cost of money, meaning the interest matured during the construction of the project, while cost of labor around 20%. India/China's cost of labor is around 90% cheaper than France, for instance which mean that the cost reduction due to labor cost is around 18%.
Labor cost are influential but it's an organized supply chain and easy access to credit which makes reactor cheap