Shoreham’s Construction

Abstract

The Atomic Energy Commission gave LILCO a construction permit for Shoreham in April, 1973. Over ten years later Shoreham was the most expensive nuclear plant in the nation on the basis of cost per kilowatt (See Table 9, in Chapter 2). A review of the Shoreham project by the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) concluded in 1985 that about one- third of the plant’s costs were incurred imprudently, indicating the scope and magnitude of Shoreham’s construction, engineering, and managerial problems. In the 1970s other nuclear projects ran far over budget, and planning and control failures were widespread in the industry (United States Office of Technology Assessment, 1984; Cook, 1985; Leigland and Lamb, 1986; Tomaine, 1987; Campbell, 1988; Morone and Woodhouse, 1989). Thus, while the Shoreham project evolved into a distinctively large failure, many of its fundamental problems were common in the industry.