Welcome to the inaugural Nuclear Reaction Awards 2008. As the year comes to its close we’d like to recognise those who have help make the nuclear industry the over-subsidised and under-scrutinised joke it is today.
Today’s Award: The Worst Nuclear Construction of 2008
Oh, come on, you didn’t think it was going to be anything else, did you? The award goes to Areva’s OL3 reactor currently under construction in Olkiluoto, Finland. There really was no other competition.
Not due to open unto 2012, three years late, the reactor is also massively over budget. Some 1,500 defects have been found in its construction so far. Then there was the ‘small’ fire. A disturbing disregard for safety guidelines and inspections at the site was publicised by Greenpeace in August. It was revealed that load-bearing welds in the reactor’s steel frame have not been done properly. Workers were warned about speaking out about safety concerns.
Olkiluoto stands as a monument to the hubris, deception and stupidity of the nuclear industry. If the state-of-the-art third-generation OL3 is to be the gold standard of reactor design and construction in the coming nuclear ‘renaissance’ then the industry is in a lot of trouble.