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Centaur Write Satyr, MBA's avatar

Fantastic post. Hey, given all these recent EOs, what’s your wager that this administration actually cuts the Gordian Knot?

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Ken Robert Chaplin's avatar

great article.

The Canadian experience was a little different than the US. The Canadian regulator, the CNSC, was possibly less prescriptive than the NRC. The CNSC accepted that the early reactors like Pickering worked adequately. However, the CNSC became more and more unaccepting of new designs of components or systems. For example when Darlington tried to introduce a computer based shut down system, to replace a relay based hardware system, it became a billion dollar plus exercise. Everyone agreed this was a great idea, but try to get it accepted. People that went through the process stated they never wanted to do that again. Pickering got the rights and parts to rebuild a 1965 era large scale computer instead of replacing it with a tiny cheap computer because that was overall cheaper. This process of demanding ever increasing levels of QA and testing on new developments meant reactors could not take advantage of learning curves. In the end (2000-2007) we could not get a 10 MW thermal pool type reactor licensed.

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