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A financial crisis at Toshiba has cast doubt over the future of the Moorside nuclear plant in Cumbria after the Japanese conglomerate revealed it is reviewing its nuclear operations.
The Toshiba group is facing an undisclosed write down amounting to “several billion US dollars” on the acquisition of US nuclear construction firm CB&I Stone & Webster by its subsidiary Westinghouse.
“Going forward, we will revise the positioning of the nuclear business as our main focus business in the energy sector, and review the future of nuclear businesses outside Japan”, said Toshiba president and chief executive Satoshi Tsunakawa at a press conference on Friday.
Tsunakawa said the group was considering separating the nuclear business from the rest of its energy division – the Energy Systems and Solutions Company – and putting it under direct control of its president and chief executive. Toshiba will seek to strengthen its financial position by “cutting out risk” and is “re-examining its relationship” with Westinghouse.
Alongside French firm Engie, Toshiba is the joint owner of the NuGen consortium which is developing Moorside. Last week it was reported that Toshiba was seeking public financing for the nuclear plant because of its financial woes.
The plans for Moorside feature three AP1000 reactors supplied by Westinghouse, with a combined capacity of 3.4GW. Toshiba bought Westinghouse in 2006 from the UK government owned company British Nuclear Fuels at a price of $5.4 billion.
A spokesman for Toshiba told Utility Week: “At this moment, we can only say that we are reviewing the future of our nuclear power business outside Japan, but nothing has been decided at this time, including the impact on our Moorside nuclear project.
“We are reviewing broadly about our nuclear power business, and we think we can be more specific after 14 February, when we plan to announce our third quarter business results that also include the amount of goodwill and its write-down related to Westinghouse’s acquisition of CB&I Stone & Webster in 2015.”
NuGen declined to comment.
In December it was reported that Hitachi was in talks with the UK government over public financing for the Wylfa Newydd plant being developed by Horizon Nuclear Power.
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