Bent Flyvbjerg sounds like a made-up detective character in an obscure Danish murder mystery, but he is a very real and very serious person. A Danish economic geographer and professor at the IT University of Copenhagen, he was the inaugural chair of major programme management at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School before returning to Copenhagen. He is a recognized global authority on how best to accomplish large projects from airports to the Olympic Games.

Among his many books and articles is the fascinating, How Big Things Get Done, which he co-authored with Dan Gardner. The book outlines the factors that determine success or failure for large projects. By studying over 16,000 large projects worldwide, he has developed a listing of attributes or principles necessary for a project to be completed on time, on budget, and deliver all that it was supposed to. He has found that of these 16,000 plus projects, only 0.5% of them met all three measurements. Only 8.5% were completed when promised and at the original cost estimate. The projects that were worse at meeting their original objectives were nuclear power plants. I’ll use his principles and criteria for success to show why a small modular nuclear reactor in Dunkirk is doomed to fail.

One of his most important critical success factors is to define the desired outcome first, to ask, “What do we want?”, then work backwards to determine everything needed to achieve it. To make all decisions based on their moving the project toward the desired outcome. So, what do we want from a nuclear reactor in Dunkirk? Cheap electricity, clean electricity, more electricity and damn the cost, taxable income for Dunkirk, political points for Hochul or Wendell, or just being ‘the first’ to build one? What Governor Hochul wants might be different from what County Executive Wendell wants, which might be different from what Senator Borello wants. Is anyone asking what the citizens of Chautauqua County or the investors in National Grid want? The many competing interests and politicalization of “the first Small Nuclear Reactor in the US” does not bode well for this project.

Another critical success factor is to think slow, act fast. Spend as much time as necessary planning the minute details to achieve the design, because mistakes are cheap on paper and ruinous in concrete. Once you’ve planned thoroughly, execute the plan quickly. Does this sound like something Governor Hochul and NYSERDA will do? Given that the Governor wants New York to be ‘the first’ to have an SMR nuclear reactor, thinking slow does not seem likely. Acting fast without it leads to ruin.

One of my favorite of Flyvbjerg’s principles is to build like LEGO, not pipe dreams. Favor modularity and repetition using proven, off-the-shelf parts. Mass produce the required parts in a factory, then just assemble them quickly onsite. This approach is what made building the Empire State Building in 1930 such a success.

If only LEGO made an SMR block. Modularity is supposed to be a key advantage of SMRs and someday in the distant future it may be. Work out all the problems, make them all the same, build them on an assembly line, and just bolt them together onsite. Unfortunately, this has not been done yet, anywhere. There are only 2 or 3 operating anywhere in the world with no one planning to mass produce them. There are currently 30 different SMR designs being developed in the US alone. Which will succeed, if any, is decades away from knowing. Should one ever emerge as the most successful model, hundreds will have to be made to work out the details of manufacturing them for the economies of scale to take root. One of Flyvbjerg’s corollaries is to never be the first, only use proven designs. Let someone else suffer the growing pains.

The ‘build with LEGO’ rule is why solar projects are so successful. Make a silicon wafer, assemble it in a grid, enclose it with glass and aluminum, and repeat; again and again and again. Of the 16,000 projects in Flyvbjerg’s database, utility scale solar is the most successful at being on time, on budget, and delivering as promised, while nuclear power plants are the worst. It is now why utility-scale solar is the least expensive way to generate electricity. Advances in technology and reduced installation costs have made these more cost-effective than traditional fossil fuels

Another of Flyvbjerg’s principles is to plan for errors. Every project faces mistakes, delays, and shocks. Build in buffers for time, money, and risk. I’ll use an anecdote from Flyvbjerg’s book to describe how this principle is not to be applied. Willie Brown, when mayor of San Francisco was quoted saying: No one should be shocked by such cost overruns, “We always knew” the estimate was artificially low. “In the world of civic projects, the first budget is really just a down payment. If people knew the real cost from the start, nothing would ever be approved. The idea is to get going. Start digging a hole and make it so big, there’s no alternative to coming up with the money to fill it in.” If New York is foolish enough to proceed, be prepared to pony up.

The last principle I’ll apply to this proposed project is to say no early, clearly, and often.

Identify and kill weak or overly risky projects in the planning stage before they waste resources. I’ve heard nothing but (unfounded) optimism and vague, often conflicting, promises from the proponents of small nuclear reactors and from the proponents of building one in Dunkirk. If this project goes ahead, we’ve already lost.

Tom Meara is a Jamestown resident.