Roberts: DOE prioritizes standardized nuclear construction practices over modular hardware
David Roberts · The Volts crossover episode · Nov 3, 2023 · at 32:39
Dave Roberts discusses modular nuclear reactors and how the U.S. Department of Energy views nuclear cost reductions.
“If you talk to the people at the DOE, the loans office, they'll tell you what needs to be replicated and done the same way over and over again is not necessarily the hardware, the chunks of hardware, it's construction practices. It's the construction sub parts of building a giant Project. Our problem is that we keep doing first of a kind, you know, bespoke one-off construction projects where everybody's figuring everything out as they go, and they're all going over. So what DOE wants is, is, is to systematize that stuff, the sort of the operational and construction part of, they think that's a bigger deal than the actual pieces of the plant.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →