Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

[jpak]

Source: New York Times

Westinghouse Electric Company, which helped drive the development of nuclear energy and the electric grid itself, filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, casting a shadow over the global nuclear industry.

The filing comes as the company’s corporate parent, Toshiba of Japan, scrambles to stanch huge losses stemming from Westinghouse’s troubled nuclear construction projects in the American South. Now, the future of those projects, which once seemed to be on the leading edge of a renaissance for nuclear energy, is in doubt.

“This is a fairly big and consequential deal,” said Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. “You’ve had some power companies and big utilities run into financial trouble, but this kind of thing hasn’t happened.”

Westinghouse, a once-proud name that in years past symbolized America’s supremacy in nuclear power, now illustrates its problems.

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/business/westinghouse-toshiba-nuclear-bankruptcy.html

[dalton99a]

1. This is a huge deal.

[jpak]

2. Yup

No renaissance for you!

[zentrum]

3. Fantastic. nt

.....

[Friend or Foe]

4. Another failure to pin on Trump

If he's willing to take credit for jobs planned in year's prior to 2017, then he needs to accept blame for this.

[Odoreida]

5. Trump is pushing coal not nuclear. n/t

[Tikki]

7. Yes, trump is pushing nuke.

It's part of what his cartel has always supported.

Looks like lost jobs and will there be lost pensions!!!!

Tikki

[progree]

6. U.S. taxpayers on the hook - bigly

The U.S. government granted loan guarantees totaling $8.3 billion to the utilities commissioning the Georgia project ((Vogtle nuclear plant units 3 and 4)).

Japan's government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said the two governments were having thorough discussions on the issue.

Toshiba acquired Westinghouse in 2006 for $5.4 billion, then a major bet on a rebirth in nuclear projects due to high oil and gas prices, convinced that governments would cap carbon emissions to prevent global warming.

The company expected that it would win contracts to build dozens of its new AP1000 reactors, allowing it to build a pipeline of future work for its nuclear power plant maintenance division.

Regulators in both Georgia and South Carolina approved the construction of AP1000 reactors in 2009, a sign of a nuclear renewal taking hold. ...

More: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/toshiba-approves-chapter-11-filing-nuclear-unit-westinghouse-020157059--sector.html

Then along came Fukushima (March 2011) ...

[NewJeffCT]

8. don't worry - Trump will sell off the company to Russia

put them in charge of our nuclear weapons and wessels.

[Warpy]

9. Who knew nuclear power plants were so complicated?

I remember the "peaceful atom" commercials in the 50s, electricity so cheap you won't even have a meter!

Unfortunately, containing radiation and preventing the fuel from eating through the containment and contaminating groundwater were big deals, as were materials fatigue from constant radiation exposure. That dream of set it and forget it power plants that would quietly generate electricity in the background that they sold everybody was a boondoggle of epic proportions. Westinghouse just didn't know when to quit.

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. Problem is.....what happens to the active reactors now?

No Westinghouse, no fall back if there is a big problem,.
It's like Ford going bankrupt after the..... Pinto?..... or any other massive car problem.

[Warpy]

11. No shit.

Securing the tottering and/or defunct plants will likely fall to the Army Corps of Engineers and guess who will be stuck with the tab.

[burrowowl]

12. Good no more badly designed nuke reactors!