Tosh in deeper financial doo-doo as banks crank up the pressure

Toshiba is looking to raise almost $9bn (‎¥1 trillion) by selling off a majority stake in its memory chip business, according to Reuters, and so repair its finances, which have been devastated by cost overruns in its US nuclear power business. That is costing it around $6.3bn but Toshiba's banks want it to raise more to cover …

[Anonymous Coward]

This could be interesting for...

...UK energy policy. Toshiba having been hugely harmed by US nuclear cost problems, and looking at the problems EDF/Areva are having with their EPR new builds, it would seem a grave error of judgement for Toshiba's board to engage in new build nuclear in the UK. As Tosh are the most significant part of the NuGen consortium, looking to build a three reactor plant at Moorside (=Sellafield), this could be a big problem for the carbon-obsessed energy policy that the UK has. Hinkley Point is on course to be the world's single most expensive folly, and the sale of Westinghouse to Tosh by serial traitor Gordon Brown, well.....polite words fail me.

Looks like we'll have to sit and shiver in the dark when the wind's not blowing.

[cantankerous swineherd]

Re: This could be interesting for...

"sale of Westinghouse to Tosh by serial traitor Gordon Brown" - eh?

[isogen74]

Re: This could be interesting for...

> eh?

CBS sold the nuclear power bit of Westinghouse to BNFL, which was wholly UK government owned and run. BNFL started trading at least partially under the Westinghouse Electric Company brand at this point. WEC was sold to Toshiba in 2007, under approval from Brown who was busy selling off anything which wasn't bolted down to at least try to cosmetically look like "prudence".

BNFL Plc itself is now mostly defunct (shell for the pension fund, nothing operational), the other bits have been either sold off too, or relate to the Sellafield clean up operations which has been spun off as Sellafield Ltd.

[cantankerous swineherd]

why don't tosh just liquidate Westinghouse instead of throwing good money after bad? must be some politics happening here.

[eldakka]

Apparently they've tried to sell it off, but no-one is buying. Wonder why that is? ;)

[John Smith 19]

"why don't tosh just liquidate Westinghouse "

Because Westinghouse designed the PWR that most of the worlds nuclear power is actually generated by. It's a know brand despite being owned by CBS (who seem to own most of the not nuclear bits of Westinghouse, if any are left), British Nuclear Fuels Ltd and then Toshiba.

[Vector]

Would someone please tell me what Daniel Tosh has to do with IT!?

Every time I see one of these articles, I have just a moment...

[PNGuinn]

UK Nuclear Power

The old Magnox ("experimental") reactors have had a long and successful life. The next generation - Sizewell B etc - seem to be still doing well ...

I don't suppose anyone has kept any of the old plans??

At least the designs work. Build some more?

And this time don't waste all that nice warm cooling water into the sea. Use it to provide "free" heating on land. If we cant (wont) build 'em near enough to decent sized towns then there are plenty of horticultural uses for all that heat.

Just leave enough going into the sea at Sizewell for my heated swimming pool. Yes, it does make a significant difference.

[John Smith 19]

"The old Magnox..reactors have.. successful life. The next generation - Sizewell B etc"

The Magnox reactors were viewed as machines for making Plutonium for the UK nuclear bomb supply. Electricity was viewed as a side benefit.

Sizewell B was a PWR with a core systems design (including cooling loop designs) by Westinghouse.

The actual British 2nd generation was the Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor. IIRC this can match the steam characteristics of big coal and oil fired plants (which are about 200c hotter than PWRs) so you can avoid special PWR only turbines and alternators, the other big parts of a power station.

The downside is they need enriched uranium (Magnox was designed to use natural) and run CO2 at around 1000-1500psi (a PWR runs at 200atm but the water is much denser so the core is smaller), needing a shed load of pre-stresed concrete for the pressure vessel to contain it.

But the real downside is the continual tweaking by boffins, multiplied by numerous strikes meant some of them were 15 years late coming online, by which time everyone else had either bought PWRs or the CANDU design (which the British seem to look down on but is pretty flexible in terms of fuel). Also no two sites are exactly alike (which set of plans should you use?) and IIRC finding a new supplier for the complex shaped graphite blocks is going to be a PITA.

[eldakka]

Good plan.

Sell off the profit-making business, and keep the (massively) loss-making business.