Reactor crisis wipes £7.4bn ($12 billion) from General Electric

[jpak]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/reactor-crisis-wipes-16374bn-from-general-electric-2245271.html

The unfolding crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has put a harsh spotlight on General Electric, the giant US conglomerate which built parts of the plant and which had been hoping to benefit from a renaissance in nuclear power that now looks to be on hold.

Almost $12bn (£7.4bn) has been wiped from the value of the company since Monday, and a retired nuclear engineer revealed how he and several colleagues resigned from GE in 1975 because of his safety concerns over the design of the Mark 1 containment unit used at the plant.

GE beefed up its nuclear business in 2007 by forming a joint venture with Hitachi of Japan that could bid to build new nuclear reactors around the globe. Climate change and energy security concerns are driving a global resurgence in support of nuclear energy, it said at the time.

But China and Germany are among the countries that have already said they will re-examine their nuclear building programmes in the light of events in Japan, and public opposition to nuclear power might now be expected to grow.

<more>

[LiberalEsto]

1. Karma nt

[global1]

2. GE, We Bring Good Things To Life......(sarcasm) nt

[jpak]

3. Parent company of NBC & MSNBC

n/t

[DCKit]

4. Guess we should prepare ourselves for an onslaught of pro-nuclear propaganda...

from all of GE's media companies - news, documentaries, pundits, expert panels, LTTEs... maybe even posters on sites like DU telling us "It's all good, and the dangers are entirely overblown."

Gotta wonder how much this PRopaganda campaign is going to cost them.

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

5. Makes me wonder WHO wants to keep the media in the dark... the Japanese Government or G.E.

[Statistical]

6. Some US utilities were in the process of considering GE newest reactors ABWR & ESBWR

I think that is about finished.




ABWR (GenIII) GE - Advanced Boiling Water Reactor
ESBWR (GenIII+) GE - Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor
EPR (GenIII+) Areva - European Pressurized Reactor
AP1000 (GenIII+) Westinghouse Electric - (Pressurized Water Reactor)
USA-PWR (GenIII+) Mitsubishi Heavy - Advanced Pressurized Water Reactor

ESP indicates that no reactor design has been chosen.

Personally I think it should all be standardized on the AP1000.
The US has much less experience with BWR than PWR, and both are made by GE. The EPR has had huge cost overruns and problems. That leaves APWR from Mitsubishi and the AP1000 from Westinghouse. Given the AP1000 has already been chosen for 12 reactors and APWR for 3 its makes a lot more sense to standardize on a single design.