[oceanagirl]

Right whale, from what I've read about China's reputation for protecting intellectual property and its propensity for reverse engineering (ask GM about this, in particular), I believe that at least one of these plants will not see much actual operation, but instead will be ripped apart and copied. I don't think that we can count on selling more than a handful of them, and if their copies are good and cheap, we won't be selling as many of the original Westinghouses to any country that is not willing to enforce U.S. patents, copyrights, etc.

[RightWhale]

Probably what we have in these plants are some specialty materials, some special steel alloys, and some control systems that could be copied, no doubt, but at great expense and reduced reliability. Even the fuel itself might be a custom mix and in a form that could be copied if their uranium plants had the specialized machinery. They could do this now. That they would buy nuclear plants means that we are winning in the marketplace. Our tech lead isn't so great anymore, and in many areas it is long gone. From now on we're going to have to work hard to stay competitive.