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this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
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So don't build 1-off designs, look at the most expensive parts of plant construction, and lower those costs. China's nuclear industry isn't just some construction company that commissions bespoke parts for each nuclear plant, it extends to from heavy forging capacity shared with ship-building to colleges producing construction managers.
I work in construction, and that's just not the way things work in America. Any government project is required to have a bidding phase with multiple options for nearly every required item so that every company has a fair chance to compete.
I do doors, and even when a government project is calling for some hyper-specific Blast+RF+STC door that only one company can even make, my manager still makes me reach out to a bunch of other companies to get a second number just to have something, even if I then have to qualify that what they're able to make doesn't actually fit the specifications.
It's not uncommon for a large, complex project to spend 4+ years in the bidding phase alone, getting rebid over and over with dozens of addendums and RFI's working out all the kinks, without even mentioning the time spent in the planning phase beforehand and the lengthy construction phase afterward.
The issue here isn't that there is a bidding process, it's that only 1 company makes the thing, and that company isn't even an SoE so it has no reason not to charge infinity dollars while delivering as little as possible.
I am not familiar with the specifics of how large complex projects happen over here, but it's not magic, it's insane that we've seen them lap us in every productive measure, and aren't trying to study what they're doing right.