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Westinghouse Electric Company has filed for bankruptcy:
Westinghouse Electric Co, a unit of Japanese conglomerate Toshiba Corp, filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday, hit by billions of dollars of cost overruns at four nuclear reactors under construction in the U.S. Southeast.
The bankruptcy casts doubt on the future of the first new U.S. nuclear power plants in three decades, which were scheduled to begin producing power as soon as this week, but are now years behind schedule.
The four reactors are part of two projects known as V.C. Summer in South Carolina, which is majority owned by SCANA Corp, and Vogtle in Georgia, which is owned by a group of utilities led by Southern Co.
Costs for the projects have soared due to increased safety demands by U.S. regulators, and also due to significantly higher-than-anticipated costs for labor, equipment and components.
Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse said it hopes to use bankruptcy to isolate and reorganize around its "very profitable" nuclear fuel and power plant servicing businesses from its money-losing construction operation.
Also at Ars Technica and Business Insider.
Toshiba's Westinghouse problems have caused the company to sell off other assets:
Toshiba in Trouble
Toshiba Shares Plunge Ahead of Nuclear Investment Writedown
Toshiba Considers NAND Business Split; Samsung Delays Release of 4 TB SSDs
Toshiba Nuked Half its Assets
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday March 31 2017, @06:26AM (1 child)
No innovative design implemented for half a century... boiling water and pressurized water reactors since the '50-ies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Informative) by Zinho on Friday March 31 2017, @04:10PM
No innovative design implemented for half a century... boiling water and pressurized water reactors since the '50-ies.
Hey, don't go bashing boiling water! The steam cycle [engineersedge.com] has been a mainstay for converting heat energy into torque for centuries, so there's gobs of societal knowledge on how to make it work well. Even if you somehow managed to turn the Neutron emissions directly into electricity you'd still need to handle the waste heat from the fission, and a steam cycle turning a dynamo is the best way to efficiently turn that waste heat into work.
You have a great point about pressurized water as the heating medium for the boiler, though; there are lots of better ways to do that. Molten salt/metal loops are great for this, and you don't have to worry about accidental release of high-energy radioactive steam from the coolant loop. Honestly, anything that won't make a phase transition over the coolant loop's operating temperature range would be better than water for the coolant loop. Keep the steam on the boiler side where it belongs.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin