Many years ago it was my job to design and procure control systems for natural gas power plants - this included mostly valves and instrumentation. Of course, o

Many years ago it was my job to design and procure control systems for natural gas power plants - this included mostly valves and instrumentation. Of course, once you're dealing with superheated steam (whether fired by natural gas, coal, angry isotopes, etc) it's all the same valves and thermocouples. So I got to know the product lines of the handful of suppliers very well. A few had nuclear product lines (USA only) which were identical in spec to everything else...with two major differences: 1) Everything had to be manufactured in the US with all the requisite paperwork 2) Every non-destructive test under the sun was required for every distinct part, including an encyclopedia's-worth of paperwork per test per part In this case, it's not the parts, or even the design that breaks the bank. It's the validation.