June is going to be a historic month, for Ontario, and Canada’s Nuclear industry…and the wicked web of possibilities is getting weary with every way of weaving.
See, the crown is putting up AECL for sale, simultaneously, during the decision making of who wins the work at Darlington. Areva, Westinghouse and AECL are the bidders, and the stakes are high.
My hypothesis is that AECL will win the work and then Westinghouse, Areva, and/or GE will come in with bids for AECL – and this is exactly how the government wants to see it played out…because a competitive AECL, with better access to capital, and smarter risk management, combined with a notch under its belt from a sale of the ACR1000 would launch Canada foward in the nuclear energy industry.
I sat down with a top manager at Ontario Power Generation (the largest nuclear site in North America) late last night, a mechanical engineer and my girlfriend’s father. It is his opinion that the nuclear industry is a unique one, in the way that competition actually share intelligence and research, rather than attempt to leverage it over the competition. The reason is that, any accident looks bad on the entire industry. It is his opinion that without the problems at 3 mile island, the US would today, have ~70% of their power from nuclear. Instead, American’s have a sever case of NIMBY syndrome, and it stems from lack of education about the sector.