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

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: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.