The Prediction Graveyard
Made with ❤️ by Aniruddh JangidLinkedIn
The Graveyard / Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation

early · Unscored / disputed

ENEC's September 2014 indicative timetable put Barakah Unit 1's commercial operation in 2017.

Source-backed summary; not presented as a verbatim quotation.

Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation
Developer of the Barakah nuclear power plant · United Arab Emirates

Made: 2014-09-17Resolved: 2021-04-06
Original conceptual trajectory diagram illustrating Right direction, wrong timing
Right direction, wrong timing. Original illustration for The Prediction Graveyard. Aniruddh Jangid, 2026. Original digital diagram. CC BY 4.0. Changes: none. This is a conceptual diagram, not an archival image.

The world at the time.

ENEC reported Unit 1 more than 57% complete and presented the project as on time. Its published calendar was explicitly an indicative project timetable rather than an independent probabilistic forecast.

Unit 1 more than 57% completeUnit 1 started commercial operationsRegulatory licences

What happened.

Unit 1 began commercial operation on 6 April 2021. Start-up and grid connection occurred in 2020, which are distinct milestones and do not satisfy the 2017 commercial-operation target.

Unit 1 started commercial operations

Predicted vs actual.

MetricPredictedActualVariance / caveat
Unit 1 commercial operation20172021-04-06About four calendar years later
Unit 1 started commercial operations

The counter-signal.

The 2014 announcement described an 18-month regulatory review for the later units. This showed regulatory work was a separate dependency, although it did not itself predict the Unit 1 delay.

Unit 1 more than 57% completeUnit 1 started commercial operationsRegulatory licences

Verdict.

Reasoning: contested · Outcome: partial

This is an early project target: the planned technology became operational after its stated year. Evidence supports the timing miss but is insufficient to assign poor reasoning solely because the timetable slipped.

Primary target and final milestone verified. Early status means wrong timing and eventual implementation, not resurrection. Counter-signal is a contemporaneous dependency, not an independent opposing prediction.

Cause of death / explanatory lens.

Right direction, wrong timing

The lesson.

Which commissioning dependencies deserve their own uncertainty range in a construction timetable?

Sources.

  1. Unit 1 more than 57% completeprimary · 2014-09-17 · claim and contemporary dependency
  2. Unit 1 started commercial operationsprimary · 2021-04-06 · outcome
  3. Regulatory licencesprimary · Date not established · licence chronology

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