One Toshiba Lesson - Organizations With Venerable Corporate Names Can Be Risky Acquisitions 1

6 Comments

  1. “…a nuclear plant design that is certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as being safe is not the same thing as a blueprint-level manufacturing and construction design sufficiently detailed to successfully build and assemble a working power plant.”

    That’s for sure!

    If a large LWR is ever built in the US in the next few decades, it will most likely be the Korean APR-1400. They have a working design, construction management experience and the financing.

    Still believe the future rides on NuScale.

  2. For Japanese companies defeated in world war II there is no greater achievement than owning one of the American companies that contributed in that defeat. Within that culture there is no greater prestige.
    The age of Light Water Reactors has come and gone in the commercial power world. Economies of scale never materialized. Utilities without wise management fell for the pretty pictures and empty promises without looking for the underlying design calculations. Construction was initiated by individuals without the skills and expertise to complete it.

  3. Rod,
    I like this report better than the last one I read. I’m still thinking of sending you some additional input re Danny Roderick. Thanks for this article.

  4. This is very enlightening as a former contract employee of Westinghouse Nuclear PCI and the Shaw group that was trying to get certified as builder of the AP1000 framework out of Lake Charles LA. I only lasted for a few years at PCI due to a mess of management and at Shaw for a few mo the as the same issues arose that management was oblivious to the issues involved and the idiot that I had to work for was a former Okie that had been displaced by the plant closing and was riding on his abilities to suck ass so bad that the department I was in was a joke and now the truth is out that Shaw was incapable of keeping that new plant running on its own without a bailout…

  5. An old adage says, “good, cheap, fast; pick two.” Another says, “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

    Rod says, “… the clean, reliable, affordable technology… ”

    He should add, pick one, but as he admits, in many more words, he wears only rose-colored glasses when it comes to nuclear technology. And it shows.

    Speaking of MIT, there is another recent example in the news – Transatomic Power. About 2 years ago, Rod’s insights were here: ( atomicinsights.com/transatomic-power-anatomy-next/ )

    Now, or actually in late 2015, only a year later. Oops. An error of a factor of, let’s call it around 30 or 40 in predictions. “I said this is obviously incorrect based on basic physics,” said Kord Smith.

    ( http://www.technologyreview.com/s/603731/nuclear-energy-startup-transatomic-backtracks-on-key-promises/ )

    1. @Pu239

      My “insights” on Transatomic was simply a post reporting on the company’s existence and its claims.

      The tendency to over promise and under deliver isn’t limited to a start-up company with big aspirations led by a couple of young MIT grads.

      Adages are not destiny. Besides, nuclear energy has been demonstrably clean, reliable and affordable from real plants in real operating service for the past 40 years.

      Note: Affordable does not mean “cheap”. It does not even mean the lowest price in the market.

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