> The lack of regulatory clarity

Oddly enough, that sounds like a request for more regulation. And I have heard many people say that if the regulators had made sure that if approval had gone beyond mere safety, into constructibility and other areas, that Vogtle would have been closer to the initial budget, and that Summer might have completed.

Thank you for the link, and I will read it in detail later, but at a high level, I think it's great support for my point that it's construction productivity that's the key driver of cost, not regulation (emphasis mine):

> Relatedly, containment building costs more than doubled from 1976 to 2017, due only in part to safety regulations. Costs of the reactor containment building more than doubled, primarily due to declining on-site labor productivity. Productivity in recent US plants is up to 13 times lower than industry expectations. A prospective analysis of the containment building suggests that improved materials and automation could increase the resilience of nuclear construction costs to variable conditions.

I'd say it's a call for more appropriate regulation. Regulations are not a bad thing, they can be a great enabler when used well. Well defined thresholds beyond which your ass is covered are necessary for any complex project to proceed. Obviously anyone building a nuclear powerplant better budget enough to make it a safe one.

The issue is when the goal posts are ill defined or just straight up moved. Things need to be overbuilt to satisfy demands the regulators may not even have, and still you might get caught up on something that you didn't think could possibly be an issue. There is excessive conservatism because you have at least some track record of regulator decisions, even if it's an imperfect indicator of their future requirements.

Overzealous but well defined regulations, like you need 3 backup diesel generators, obviously add cost, but this can be easily priced in at the beginning of the project. Typically, the more regulations you have, the more likely some of them will be vague, so keeping the number of regulations manageable is often a good thing, but is not strictly necessary. Where you really run into problems is when there is an unreasonable fear which draws strong support for "something" to be done, but there really isn't an appropriate action to take given the severity of the risk and the cost of eliminating it - that's how you wind up with bullshit like ALARA.

And safety regulations are just one facet. Environmental regulations, particularly NEPA requirements, are a major driver of construction costs for big projects and especially nuclear plants. If nuclear plants were primarily facing only the same issues as general construction, you'd expect the labor productivity to be similar to comparable scale projects. The fact that labor productivity is an order of magnitude lower indicates something specific to nuclear plants is lowering labor productivity. While many potential things could be causing that reduction in labor productivity, it's hard to think of any that don't stem from or are made substantially worse by the regulatory environment.