New NRC tidbit has leaked out. Testing on Unit 3 at Vogtle revealed a bit too much vibration in one of the depressurization system lines. Fix is an additional pipe brace. No big deal. On a normal job, the fix would have been implemented in a day or less.
But this is nuclear. The additional pipe brace requires a license amendment. Southern hopes their request will be expedited and the start up of Unit 3 will only be delayed by a month.
The cost of the delay will be at least a million dollars per day. That will be a 30 million dollar pipe brace. A system in which this is "just the way things are" is suicidal insanity.
Added 2023/01/30. It turns out it was an installation screw up, not a design error. They failed to install two interface plates between a pipe on the 4th stage of the depressurization system and its supports. The fix is to lift the pipe slightly and slide in the plates, not an additional brace. The license amendment was to allow them to isolate the pipe to do the job. See comments below. The actual job was even easier than I originally assumed.
Who are nuclear’s biggest allies and enemies in the U.S. Congress?
Yes, the license to design model is horrible. That model is designed to give make work to bureaucrats.