The Dominion consortium has dropped AECL and Hitachi in favour of General Electric.
The group hope to be among the first to build a power reactor under the Combined Operating Licence (COL) scheme being developed by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
Dominion had been proceeding with a plan based around AECL’s Advanced Candu Reactor-700 (ACR-700) design which employs both light and heavy water, but discussions with the NRC indicated that this design would would be more difficult to certify. Dominion spokesman Richard Zuercher said the complications were significant.
Dominion has now adopted technology the NRC is more familiar with – General Electric’s Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) – at the expense of AECL, AECL Technologies and Hitachi. The consortium is now composed of just Dominion, Bechtel and General Electric.
AECL say it will now concentrate efforts on the Canadian licensing process of the larger ACR-1200.
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