Nuclear revival bumps against atrophy (Canada)

[jpak]

http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/420941

The Japanese maker of a $10,000 samurai sword could, inadvertently, help Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. land a deal to sell its next-generation nuclear reactor in Ontario.

Sound like a leap of logic?

It turns out that Osaka-based steel-making giant Japan Steel Works Ltd. makes much more than traditional swords of the kind used by noble warriors of the country's pre-industrial Edo Period. The company is also the world's only maker of ultra-large forgings, a crucial component in the construction of most new nuclear reactors.

These forged parts, made from steel ingots weighing up to 600 tonnes, – equivalent to 100 African elephants – have 30-centimetre-thick steel walls able to withstand the immense pressures inside a nuclear reactor's core.

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