AECL sale could be 'death knell' for CANDU reactors

UH-oh...How about we keep it and develop it, so that we don't have to rely on anyone else?

They make it sound like an all or nothing gambit and nothing could be futher from the truth. AECL is prime to have parts sold off that will reap some serious coin and attract needed investors to develop the technology to the next stage. CANDU is great, but it getting stale and it needs to be put to market... we just don't need to sell the whole cow just the milk.

As far as I know the heavy water reactor design is safer than the light water designs. This is especially in case of a catastophic mishap and the moderator leaks out the nuclear reaction halts. This is unlike the Three Mile Island design where you had the possibility of a core melt down.

There are some 450 power reactors in the world today but with energy prices going up there will be a renaisance of the industry. It'll take something like 7,000 reactors to replace oil. This is coming and we should have the Candu ready.

The CANDU suffers from a "positive void coefficient" which effectively keeps it out of major markets around the world. In a large loss of coolant event it suffers a sharp power spike. When one considers this the light water reactors are actually saffer. Reactors will have their place in a future energy market but right now capital costs have gone way up. I work in the industry but would select a natural gas fired combined cycle unit over a reactor today because of these soaring costs.