Just back on China, I was reading an interesting article on what...

Just back on China, I was reading an interesting article on what is believed a new cycle in uranium just begining.

Here's bit of it,

With each new reator it builds, China is becoming better at it. Through replication of the one design the chinese have cut construction time down to 4-5 years, and China's cheap labour costs for what is a labour intensive exercise means it is building reactors at a cost of US$2bn per gigawatt, while in the US and Europe the cost is more like US$7-11bn.

Imo this just typifies how much over regulation(US I talking) can escalate project prices and timeframes. Can't remember where I read it but it talked about regulation in the nuclear industry and how over regulated it is. A brief and rough example was it mentioned for instance, take two nuts used in the building of a power station, One nut went to a coal fired station, costs something like 30c. The other exact same nut went into a nuclear power station, but that nut had to be specially stamped and went through a different process before getting to its destination, cost I think was around $2.00. Now thats just one item.

The good thing is, the UK government has recognised this over regulation problem and is addressing it so as to speed the building of new reactors up over there. Lets hope some of this good policy thinking makes trickles through to washington.

NK