Delays, Confusion as Toshiba Reports $6 Billion Nuclear Hit and Slides To Loss (reuters.com)

Makiko Yamazaki, reporting for Reuters: After a day of delays and confusion, Japan's Toshiba said on Tuesday it expected to book a $6.3 billion hit to its U.S. nuclear unit, a writedown that wipes out its shareholder equity and will drag the group to a full-year loss. Hours earlier on Tuesday, the battered conglomerate rattled investors by failing to release its earnings on schedule, saying initially it was 'not ready' and then announcing later it needed more time to probe its Westinghouse nuclear business after internal reports uncovered potential problems. The figures eventually released were numbers that have yet to be approved by its auditor and Toshiba cautioned investors that a major revision was possible. Fully audited numbers are now not due till March 14 after the firm was granted a reprieve for its formal filing by Japanese regulators. "Finally now people are starting to recognize that internal control problems, the accounting issues and governance issues are very real and no longer abstract," said Zuhair Khan, an analyst at Jefferies in Tokyo. "They impact the viability of the company."

Comments

Re:Nuclear: too dangerous, too expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear isn't expensive or dangerous. Western governments are expensive and dangerous, and have pumped billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere by prohibiting nuclear construction. Western governments have made nuclear more dangerous by prohibiting construction and leaving us with older, less safe designs. Western governments have made nuclear too expensive by allowing indefinite, arbitrary delays by every court within a thousand miles, by every NIMBY asshole who whines. Nuclear isn't subsidized; in fact, it's the only power generation, at all, that's pre-funding cleanup. Stop lying.

Re:Nuclear: too dangerous, too expensive

[cheesybagel]

I've been hearing that for two decades now. It still isn't true.

Re:Nuclear: too dangerous, too expensive

[mspohr]

Believe it or not, a lot has changed in 20 years.
To get you up to date, here's a good article (with real data) showing solar and wind are cheaper than coal and nuclear:
https://cleantechnica.com/2016...
Short version for the click impaired: $Cost per MWh: Wind $32, Solar $39, Coal $60, Nuclear $97
These are unsubsidized prices for wind and solar... coal and nuclear are the subsidized prices and do not include the cost of external damage.
"A study led by the former head of the Harvard Medical School found that coal cost the US $500 billion per year in extra health and environmental costs — approximately 9/kWh ($90/MWh) to 27/kWh ($270/MWh) more than the price we pay directly. To fool yourself into thinking these are not real costs is to assume that cancer, heart disease, asthma, and early death are not real.
The air, water, and climate effects of natural gas are not pretty either. On the nuclear front, the decommissioning and insurance costs of nuclear power — unaccounted for above — would also put nuclear off the chart."

Re:China and South Korea and Russia can do it

[Maury Markowitz]

> Countries that want to and commit to building nuclear can do it well, on decent schedule and budget

Uhh, yeah.

Over the years, Russia has committed to building something like 50 reactors. After Chernobyl, that was reduced to something like 25. They have grand plans for a closed fuel cycle using breeder/burners and reprocessing, and lots of other ideas. So far they've successfully built three. The rest remain hopelessly overdue or completely unfunded. They have decommed as many as they've built since 2000.

China had big plans too, something between 50 and 100 reactors over a 25 to 45 year period. Then the 2008 Sichuan earthquake happened, and they learned that all the construction companies lied and cut corners practically everywhere. The famous school that collapsed only did so because the construction team couldn't be bothered to bend the end of the rebars in the vertical supports, which would have otherwise easily survived. This, needless to say, opened many people's eyes, and the plans have been scaled back to about 25 reactors.

However, these plans are very much in doubt. CNNC based much of its economic arguments on buying up old western designs and then selling them, with Chinese financing, around the world. This did not happen, no one is interested in building nuclear and sales have been rather limited. As a result, the government has been somewhat more interested in renewables, which everyone is buying, and the country has since become the largest installer of wind and solar on the planet. They install more PV in the last five years than the entire planned nuclear buildout.

Nuclear is dead. Siemens, Framitome, AECL, Westinghouse, Toshiba, B&W, BNFL, and on and on and on. The few remaining players are all on life support - GE looks very much like they'll end development with their current generation, Areva only remains alive due to repeated massive French taxpayer infusions, and CNNC's only prospects are local.

You can pretend this isn't true, and many people reply to my messages talking about all these paper plans, but to anyone that's actually worked in the energy industry, the CAPEX > $7.50 is a death knell and everyone knows it.