Toshiba to Pay $5.4 Billion for Westinghouse

Philip writes "Business electronics firm Toshiba is bidding for 100% control of Westinghouse - famous for making blenders and LCD televisions, but principally in the business of building nuclear reactors. 'By 2020 the market for nuclear power generation is expected to grow 50 percent compared to 2005,' Toshiba CEO Nishida said at a London news conference. 'Toshiba is responding to this challenge by acquiring Westinghouse.'"

Comments

Boy times change

[Marxist Hacker 42]

When I was a kid, Westinghouse was REFRIDGERATORS!

Hydrogen Economy

[Eightyford]

I hope everyone realises that the much hyped hydrogen economy of the future is totally dependent on nuclear energy. If I had the money, I'd invest heavily in the companies ivolved in the nuclear industry. Solar, hydro, and wind energy will not be enough to replace oil.

Re:National Security

[kram2598]

This concern is not valid considering that Westinghouse is currently owned entirely by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL). Also, DOE does not get very involved in the business side of things. This would be an NRC issue.

Re:For that sort of market

[Eightyford]

Here's a good reference. http://www.uic.com.au/opinion6.html

Re:I thought Siemens already owned Westinghouse??

[kram2598]

In the 90s, Westinghouse was split up by Viacom, the owner at that time. The electronics side of the business was sold to Siemens and currently goes under the name Siemens-Westinghouse. All the other divisions of Westinghouse were sold to a variety of companies except for the nuclear division. The nuclear division retained the name Westinghouse Electric Company and was sold to British nuclear fuels.

Re:GE?

[kram2598]

GE does not own Westinghouse proper. GE owns some of the divisions of Westinghouse when it was split up by Viacom in the 90s. GE is one of the main competitors to Westinghouse Electric Company, the nuclear division which is currently owned by British Nuclear Fuels. The other main competitor is Areva/Framatone out of France.

Toasters, LCD televisions and Alternating Current!

[Omega]

While Westinghouse may be known for it's every day electronics (elevators, microwaves, TVs) and the Westinghouse Science Award (which is still a pretty cool and pretty geeky achievement) and it's defense contracting (nuclear power), I think it's most important achievement is bringing Tesla's idea of alternating current to the consumer.

Re:National Security

[bigtrike]

This concern is not valid considering that Westinghouse is currently owned entirely by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL). Also, DOE does not get very involved in the business side of things. This would be an NRC issue.

Not entirely. Anything related to DoD (not DOE) is not primarily owned by BNFL. When CBS corporation split up the company in 2000, the DoD stiuplated that US based companies must have a controlling share in those divisions.

The Inventors of Alternating Current

[wsanders]

Back in the Goodle Days, the battle was set for AC vs DC on the electricity grid. Thomas Edison backed DC, and Westinghouse backed AC.

AC won, and Westinghouse became rich and famous: http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/edison/section 6.rhtml

Toshiba Mini Reactors

[DigitalRaptor]

I'd love to see Toshiba's mini nuclear reactors widely deployed in the U.S., or at the bare minimum looked into with a few test deployments.

They are small, safe, and cost effective.

They are the size of a grain silo, buried 100 feet underground. They are idiot-proof (think of the causes of Chernobyl) because the nuclear reaction only happens while a plate is moving in front of the rods. If the plate stops, the reaction stops. The plate cannot move except intentionally, so the chance of a runaway meltdown approaches zero.

If the U.S. were smart it would take a months budget for the war in Iraq and just buy the technology outright from Toshiba, then deploy them as widely and cheaply as possible.

CANDU

[TubeSteak]

That CANDU link is quite interesting

http://canteach.candu.org/library/20000101.pdf

Existing reactors work by using an expensive fuel (enriched uranium) and a cheap moderator (graphite or water).

CANDU's idea is relatively safer. Instead of enriched uranium, CANDU reactors use natural uranium (which is cheap) along with an expensive moderator (heavy water). The design is a bit safer too.

OTOH, heavy water is still a part of the nucleur weapons making process & is export controlled.

Re:CANDU

[hayfever]

CANDU reactors (as currently constructed in Canada) have a positive void coefficient and can't be licensed in the US. A next-generation design (the ACR-700) is undergoing licensing in the US but is not drawing much attention as its competitors (Framatome's EPR, GE's ABWR & ESBWR, Westinghouse's AP-1000) are all higher power output reactors.

Re:CANDU

[ChumpusRex2003]

The CANDU reactor while an elegant design suffers from 2 problems which have limited its uptake outside of Canada.

1) It is incredibly expensive - $400-$500 million worth of heavy water are required to commission each reactor. As a result, CANDU designs are 20-30% more than conventional BWR/PWRs.

2) It doesn't meet minimum safety requirements for licensing in many countries (including the U.S.). The problem with CANDU is 'void coefficient'. Most countries require a negative void coefficient for a reactor to be licensed - this means overheating, or loss of coolant pressure, exerts a braking effect on the nuclear reaction via basic physical principles. CANDU has a Positive coefficient - and overheating reactor, or one losing coolant, will tend to accelerate the reaction.

Some countries have approved CANDU, because the void coefficient was designed around - big safety margins, and oversized safety systems. The Chernobyl accident was caused in part by having positive void coefficient - although in the RBMK design, little attention to avoiding run-away was given.

Solution to distribution issues.

[jd]

Use extremely high voltages and very low current. Power loss is proportional to voltage, but proportional to current squared. Extremely high-tension lines with next to no current should be able to deliver power over a very large region with very little loss.

With fewer power stations, the grid would be simpler and less likely to go into spasms when a tree falls on a power line or when some other accident occurs. Keeping things simple is Good.

Maybe three is an underestimate, but even one per State is vastly superior to the existing setup.

Re:Solution to distribution issues.

[dfenstrate]

My nuke plant puts out about 3400 amps at the New England Grid's 345,000 Volts. I don't know what the resistance is for the lines, but it's pretty damn low.

  The outgoing three phase lines have to be kept at a considerable distance from each other (16 feet) meaning that the minimum tower width is 32 feet or so.

If you bring them any closer, you'd have arcing, or you'd need to heavily insulate them.

If you increased the voltage (some places in the US run as high as 750,000 volts), you need to move the lines further apart, or insulate them greatly- not only is this expensive, but it makes them heavier, so you'd need tougher towers, you'd have less margin for ice buildup, etc, etc.

There are numerous reasons why the main grid distribution voltage can't get substantially higher.

Also local lines need to be kept at relatively low voltages to reduce maintanance costs. Again, the higher the voltage, the more prone a line is to arching to nearby grounds. If you run 100,000 volts through a neighborhood line you'd reduce line losses, but you'd have to send tree trimming crews out alot more often, and they'd have to cut trees much further back.

In short, when you decide on a grid voltage for a particular line run, you have to weigh construction costs vs maintanance costs vs material cost vs line losses.

There are numerous factors at play here.

Re:Solution to distribution issues.

[dfenstrate]

The cost factor still plays in strongly as burying a line is a lot more expensive (3x more?) than stringing it along poles. Also, a power line in the air doesn't need to be insulated if it's a proper distance from other pole mounted elements, but burying a 345kv line would require ridiculously thick rubber insulation, or even need to be run in a SF6 gas-insulated bus.

(Ever see what happens when you ground 345kV ? We did that once in New Hampshire and grid operators in New York were asking about it)

(SF6 gas is a fantastic insulator, but it's no longer mass produced, and is thus very expensive. Why is it no longer mass produced? Because it tears holes in the ozone like nothing else)

Like I said, there are many factors at play when choosing grid voltage, and to the folks who built and are building it, losing some electricity is preferable to the investment required to keep more of it.

not to be confused with the Westinghouse of...

[swschrad]

electrical switchgear and turbines, which is part of Siemens... or the historic Westinghouse of air brakes, which is part of Honeywell, through the Allied Signal/Bendix merger... or the Westinghouse of light bulbs and fans, which is some marketer with two tin desks, two telephones, 500 folks with red ties, and containers of Stuff from China arriving daily on docks.

such is the stuff of de-mergers of the US' industrial base in the late 80s and 1990s.

uhhh... no.

[temojen]

While XCell-N has obvious advantages in the area of time between battery replacements, Shephard advises there are some minor disadvantages. "Due to government regulations, use of a laptop powered by XCell-N is prohibited in airports, government offices, schools, hospitals, public transport, hotels, residential areas or within 12 miles of food preparation areas.". XCell-N also weighs substantially more than a regular laptop battery, coming in at 7 kilograms (15.4 lbs).

Westinghouse's Endeavors

[Anonymous Coward]

Rotary Steam Engine
Railroad Block Signal
Railroad Air Brakes
AC Power Generation
First Long-distance power transmission
Niagra Falls AC Generation
Steam turbine generators
Light Bulbs
AC Electric Locomotives
First Marine Turbine Engine
Micarta Laminate
Electric kitchen Range
Radios Receivers/Transmitters
Electric Iron
Television Cameras
Televisions
Elevators
Electrostatic Air Cleaners
First Atom Smasher
Radar
Automatic Washing Machine
Electric Clothes drier
X-Ray Machines
Self Defrosting Refridgerator
Electric Rotisserie Grills
Room Air Conditioners
Submarines
Jet Engines
Nuclear Reactors
And on and on and on

For those who don't know...

[iamlucky13]

Westinghouse orginally was a power company. Westinghouse himself was a major proponent of using AC current for the US electrical grid, versus Edison's preference for DC, which was less efficient. It's not really a big stretch.

Westinghouse Electric Company

Re:How qualified is Toshiba to managing nuclear si

[dimension6]

Along with General Electric and Hitachi Ltd. (6501), Toshiba has built BWRs (boiling-water reactors) for Tokyo Electric Power Co. (9501) and other Japanese power utilities. With little near-term growth expected in the domestic market, however, it needs to expand overseas.

But the fact that Toshiba does not have expertise in PWRs (pressurized-water reactors) represents a major disadvantage because this technology constitutes about 70% of the nuclear reactors operating worldwide.

By acquiring Westinghouse, Toshiba will improve its chances of winning orders because Westinghouse both designs and maintains PWRs, in addition to processing uranium.

--The Nihon Keizai Shimbun Tuesday Morning Edition (Nikkei)

This strikes me as a good move as it opens up a huge worldwide market segment for Toshiba.

Re:How qualified is Toshiba to managing nuclear si

[FleaPlus]

According to this table, Toshiba has been building nuclear power plants business since the 1960s, and is currently the largest nuclear plant supplier in Japan. I suspect that they're fairly qualified.

Re:GE ESBWR

[thanatospsu]

Actually, I am a nuclear engineer here... The BWR has a greater efficiency, but on the other hand, you get much more radiation dose, and you have issues with fuel moderation when you have 2 phase flow that gives us nuces a major headache. The PWR is much better on the safety/design side of things. The current generation of steam generators don't have the leaking issues that the previous ones have, so you don't have to plug them. And the vessel deterioration that happened at Davis-Besse was management stupidity, which is why they got their ass whooped for $28 Million. Most of the relevant engineers were going you need to check this. The latest generation of CANDU's do NOT run on natural uranium. They used slightly enriched uranium with the D2O moderator. You still have to enrich the uranium! The new Westinghouse designs IMHO kick ass. The AP-600 is a sweet piece of engineering, and the AP-1000 makes me drool. The reduction in machinery, in operating ease, and also in increased efficiency makes it one of the prime choices for new safe nuclear power plants. And the PWR is a mature technology. They have had 40+ years of operating experience to go from. I know that most of the new orders for nuclear power plants that are being thought of are thinking about using the AP-1000 design. The new smaller reactors, like the one that they are building up in Galena are great for out of the way environments, like a salt water desalination plant on the Mediterranean coast. Not for powering a massive urban grid like in New York, DC, whatever.