—”Energy is the road to wealth.”
If the road is followed.
Nuclear Power Is Poised for a Comeback. The Problem Is Building the Reactors
https://energiesnet.com/nuclear-power-is-poised-for-a-comeback-the-problem-is-building-the-reactors-wsj/
In France, the construction of a cutting-edge reactor at the Flamanville nuclear plant was expected to anchor the country’s independence from foreign energy supplies and churn out electricity with nearly zero greenhouse gases.
The reactor was supposed to be ready by 2012. A decade later, welders are still fixing mistakes discovered seven years ago, squeezing into the reactor’s warren of pipes with soldering irons and using robots to repair more than 100 substandard welds across the reactor’s cooling system.
...Georgia Power is building two reactors, among the first new U.S. nuclear units to break ground in more than three decades. The project is behind schedule and billions of dollars over its estimated cost. “We had to train welders and all these other crafts to be nuclear workers,” said Will Salters, a union official working on the construction at the Vogtle plant in Burke County, Ga. “We hardly had them in the country. All the ones we had were either retired or passed away.”
“The quality was very far from the expected level,” said Julien Collet, deputy director of France’s Nuclear Safety Authority.
Stories like what you posted are what make me thing the USA is in a perhaps irreversible decline. In the 50s the US Navy decided to do the insane: put a nuclear reactor on a submarine. Admiral Rickover had convinced them to do it and then personally kicked ass, and then took names, fired people who weren’t on board, enforced his will on everyone and got it done in a couple of years. Boom. Now it takes years and years just to find qualified welders.
Yeah, they look down their noses at the blue collar trades, until they need them. I got some really bad news for folks.
By degrading the trades, and insisting that everyone go to college, we now have a huge gap in the labor pool. We have a bunch a newbies that think they should be to boss and a bunch of older fellas looking to quit the game.
Can't wait until we start building an international fleet of fusion reactors.