Longer Lives Of Big Infrastructure

The country is stocked with antiquated infrastructure, but this piece from The New York Times says that some of it is only old because it was built to last.

1 minute read

August 14, 2007, 7:00 AM PDT

By Nate Berg

"Is the country relying too much on decaying infrastructure, the capital investments of generations long gone?"

"Maybe, but there is a good reason why big old things - pipes and bridges, nuclear reactors and even spaceships - stick around. In many ways, they are like your grandmother's dining room set: big, bulky and hard to remove. And in a lot of ways, it makes more sense to keep the old stuff than replace it with something from Ikea."

"Indeed, old equipment is in routine use. Nuclear reactors that were built in Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" era, with a life expectancy of 40 years, have recently had their licenses extended to 60 years. And one member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is already talking about adding 20 years on to that."

"Generally, the bigger an object, the longer it survives, because it has economic value, and has usually become intricately connected to things around it."

FULL STORY: Things Fall Apart, but Some Big Old Things Don’t

Sunday, August 12, 2007 in The New York Times

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