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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."
Shares in the group slid 8 percent, putting the company's market value at 973 billion yen ($8.6 billion), less than half its value in mid-December. Just under a decade ago, the firm was worth almost 5 trillion yen.
Lost over 80% of it's market value in ten years. Sounds like Toshiba has other problems besides this.
Thanks, I'll make sure to get my next nuclear power plant from someone else!
Wind and solar are getting to the point where they'll be cheaper than coal (without subsidies). Nuclear is the most expensive.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Toshiba Customer Support: Hello, and thank you for calling Toshiba Customer Support. How can I help you today?
cellocgw: There's hole burning through the bottom of my Toshiba Nuclear Power Plant and it's really, really hot in here. What should I do?
TCS: Have you tried rebooting?
c: Yes, I've tried rebooting. I've also pulled the core out while the reactor was on and then re-inserted to core and turned it back on. That's how I fix my Blackberry.
TCS: Great. What happened when you did that?
c: I got even hotter and now my hand is swelling up.
TCS: Good, that shows the core is still working. Is you're reactor connected to the Internet? Can you request Remote Assistance?
c: Sure, doing that now.
TCS: What credit card will you be using to pay for today's Remote Assistance?
c: What, I'm not paying?!?
TCS: Sir, the warranty on your reactor expired yesterday.
c: What?!? Fuck Toshiba and the [generic beast of burden] they rode in on. You have by far the worst consumer customer service I've ever run across.
> 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.