Looking back to see the future: Building nuclear power plants in Europe

The so-called 'nuclear renaissance' in Europe is promulgated by the execution of two large engineering projects involving the construction of two European Pressurized Reactors (EPRs) in Flamanville, France and Olkiluoto in Finland. As both projects have faced budget overruns and delays, this paper analyses their governance and history to derive lessons useful for the construction of future projects. Analysis indicates that the reasons for these poor outcomes are: overoptimistic estimations, first-of-a-kind (FOAK) issues and undervaluation of regulation requirements. These pitfalls have the potential to impact on many other engineering construction projects and highlight fruitful areas of further research into project performance.