Friday, April 3, 2009

No-Win Situation for AECL

Article

Here's a nice opinion piece that doesn't really say anything. For the past year, all these articles say everything depends on the Ontario decision. But this decision is totally opaque, and steeped in politics. They are also in a 'no-win' situation. If they go with AECL, they are buying a 'pig in a poke', with a half-designed reactor, somewhat inbred with the Maple design.

The other choices are just as unappetizing, politically speaking. Plus, we know that all political decisions are usually a technical disaster.

When I did a project, I would lay out the 'right way' to do it, and then sum the cost of all political distortions. If you got beyond one or two political expediences, then the probability of success went down to zero. This is usually when I would go nuts, and get in big trouble with the bosses. I see this whole new nuclear thing, as having swallowed too many distortions.

2 comments:

Monado said...

Meanwhile, Pickering's 35 years have more or less run out, it's supposed to start glowing in the dark, they have to mothball it, and what's happening? How can they build a new mess when they haven't cleaned up the old mess?

Harold Asmis said...

The bosses would just say "That was then, and this is now."