Tuesday, November 23, 2010

How Ontario can actually build nuclear plants

This will never be followed, but is my little Christmas present to the poor beleaguered people of Ontario.

Establish the Ontario Nuclear Design Corporation.  This will resemble the old Ontario Hydro as I once knew it.  Hire some smart people at the top.  The old company used to have a smart guy, but there was such a public outcry that they were paying him more than a useless Ehealth drone, that he quit and packed off to the States for more money.

As such, this company will have minimal political interference, and can pay the market rate for brightness.  No unions!  It will be located in downtown Toronto, not a depressing truck yard in Pickering!  The main goal of the company is to jam 2000 MW into the Darlington postage stamp site.  It has several choices.

It can take the AECL Maple II design and try to fix it.  It can take the Westinghouse AP1000 plans, and jam two plants together.  Or it can take the Darlington design and shake all the silliness out of it, such as the vacuum building, and fix the goddang fuel tubes so they aren't a Water Laser.

The end result will be a design, and enough talent to supervise the construction.  Then you can deal with the political patronage, the mafia, and the unions.  Such is life, and these things will make it twice as expensive as it should be, but should compare with the industry average.  :)

3 comments:

crf said...

You mean ACR, not maple, right?

Harold Asmis said...

Maple II is my code name for the ACR1000. :)

Harold Asmis said...

I just realized that's sooo mean of me! I'm sure that some bright imported Koreans could fix the design, just like they did for the first Maple. :)