Sask Nuclear

Article

I'm back, and I know I have at least 5 readers who are smart enough to push buttons! :) It's the party season, and I dread the question of "What are you doing after retirement?" I can now say I blog for money! Even when I dip into the acid 'real world', I have excellent relationships with CNSC who are really rising from the ashes of the Keen affair. I can show them how to regain credibility! (maybe). As well, I managed to top my first $100 before the end of the month, so I'm getting a Christmas check! Yeah!

Here's an article that's all gung-ho about the northern Sask nuclear plant. I can safely say that I have absolutely nothing against it! Who cares? It's in the middle of frickin' nowhere!

How do you get people to work in Sask-Siberia? Probably not a problem if you pay them lots of money! This leads me to a funny story I heard lately. Seems the old company is trying to hire experienced infrastructure engineers, who have had 5-10 years experience in actually building something that stood up! They can't do it, because these people think Pickering is a wasteland, and they can only offer just under $100K, so they're not on the Fat Cat Pay List. But these engineers are getting $150K a year and working in the city! The same goes for real nuclear managers that could actually build a nuclear plant. They can only offer $150K, when these guys earn $1 million! So they are stuck promoting the internal people who are responsible for the Niagara Tunnel Disaster.

Since Sask is so keen, I thought they could also get the high-level nuclear waste, but then I thought of the Cigar Lake Flooding Disaster. These old, glaciated rocks are riddled with underground rivers. Despite words to the contrary, we will never have a waste storage in this crap.

Now, my 'NoNukesNever' buddy makes fun of me because I cling to a hope of rationality, and the thought we can actually have a nuclear plant, running at a reasonable cost. These are my Christmas wishes to make it happen:

GE slowly swallows AECL by steath. With the Harper non-government drowning, we can't expect any decisions from that quarter. If GE takes over AECL, they may actually put in the 2-bit rational changes in the ACR-1000 design to actually make it work! Better still, the whole place switches to installing Westinghouse, which is 99% of the same amount of jobs in Ontario as AECL.

Ontario gov't throws up it's hands. They finally realize they can't build a nuclear plant, using back-room, high-ethanol Bush tactics. They need to go Obama all the way!

Old company gets new management. Once the Ont. gov't releases iron control, the old company gets real management, and forgets about the NDP, the union, and the fat-cat issue.

Ok, that's about the same odds as a million-dollar meorite landing in my backyard, but I can always dream...