The island hosting the ruins of a nuclear lab

[ssfc72]

An interesting short BBC video on a German scientist, who after WWII persuaded the Argentine president to fund the attempt to develop Nuclear fusion.  As a side note from me, I believe GE Canada/AECL did have some role in the supply of equipment/fueling machines for the Argentine Nuclear fission plant, in the 1970's?

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p084871w/the-island-hosting-the-ruins-of-a-nuclear-lab

[Jason]

You're good at finding the most eclectic films, ssfc, but I appreciate it. I'm exposed to new ideas, concepts and histories that I never would have otherwise been. I had no idea that they were trying in the 1940s to develop nuclear fission in Argentina, of all places! I wonder if they were the first to think about it? Probably not, but one wonders. For those that are curious, the video is a little less than 7 minutes long, so not a huge commitment of time. It reminds me of one of the Canadian film board movies.

Regarding the AECL involvement in Argentina, I found this article about a refurbishment of a nuclear power plant there in 2011, but it was SNC-Lavalin Nuclear Inc. But this plant was built in 1984 so they probably had another one you are talking about that was built before then. Or SNC-Lavalin farmed out part of the work to GE. First I've ever heard of them being involved with nuclear. I wonder how many officials they bribed there to get the contract.

[ssfc72]

I believe SNC-Lavalin bought out either AECL or maybe it just was the nuclear services part of AECL?

[Jason]

Apparently AECL is still around but it's focus has changed they don't sell nuclear reactors or do refurbishments now so maybe SNC has been handling it for a while. But I'd expect they probably just handled the logistics part since their experience is in construction, I believe. Here's what the AECL website says about what they do now:

As a federal Crown corporation, AECL’s mandate is to enable nuclear science and technology and to protect the environment by fulfilling the government of Canada’s radioactive waste and decommissioning responsibilities.

https://www.aecl.ca/about-aecl/


That doesn't mean what you're saying didn't happen, because the article I quoted was in 2011 about a refurbishment. It doesn't say who originally built the reactor. And there were probably other reactors before then so what you're saying happened likely did. I don't recall, ssfc, did you build fuel assemblies? Or were you in QA?

[ssfc72]

The building of the Argentine nuclear fission electricity generating plant was before my time at GE Canada.  GE Canada may have built the fueling  machines.  I know we did supply some other replacement parts for the fueling machines, while I worked as a technician at GE Nuclear Peterborough.