Junk Toshiba Nuclear Fuel Factory in South Carolina

How in the world could you trust Toshiba to own a nuclear fuel factory in the USA?

2015 accounting scandal[edit]

Toshiba announced in 2015 that it was investigating an accounting scandal.^[25] Toshiba said that it might need to mark down profits for the previous three years.^[26]
On 21 July 2015, CEO Hisao Tanaka announced his resignation amid an accounting scandal at the company that Tanaka called "the most damaging event for our brand in the company's 140-year history." Profits had been inflated by $1.2 billion over seven years.^[27] Eight other senior officials also resigned, including the two previous CEOs.^[28] Chairman Masashi Muromachi was appointed acting CEO.^[29] Following the scandal, Toshiba Corp. was removed from a stock index showcasing Japan's best companies. That was the second reshuffle of the index, which picks companies with the best operating income, return on equity and market value.^[30]
In September 2015, Toshiba sales fell to their lowest point in two and a half years. The firm said in a statement that its net losses for the quarterly period were 12.3 billion yen ($102m; £66m). The company noted poor performances in its televisions, home appliances and personal computer businesses.^[31]
In December 2015, Muromachi said the episode had wiped about $8 billion off Toshiba's market value. He forecast a record 550 billion yen (about US $4.6 billion) annual loss and warned the company would have to overhaul its TV and computer businesses. Toshiba would not be raising funds for two years, he said. The next week, a company spokesperson announced Toshiba would in early 2016 seek 300 billion yen ($2.5 billion), taking the company's indebtedness to more than 1 trillion yen (about $8.3 billion).^[32]

No doubt they have been throttling funding to the SC fuel factory in order to save Toshiba and  it caused the employees to be   

 

Japan conglomerates seek to merge loss-making nuclear fuel operations: sources (Toshiba, Hitachi and Mitsubishi)

There just is no doubt congress and political contributions sets up the NRC to be reactionary, not proactive. It intimidates all good employees caught up in the corruption's wake.




I have to disabuse you of the idea today this has anything to do with American JOBs. It is all controlled by foreign governments. Westinghouse is owned by the very untrustworthy Japanese giant Toshiba and most of the actual source fuel(>95%)comes from Russia and other countries.

It sounds like a whistleblower provoked the reporting?

 Columbia nuclear incident prompts federal warning

By SAMMY FRETWELL
sfretwell@thestate.com

COLUMBIA, SC The recent discovery that radioactive material had built up in a Columbia nuclear fuel factory has prompted federal warnings to other plants about the hazards of failing to properly monitor their facilities.
In a public notice issued this week, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said accidents can occur when uranium is allowed to accumulate in fuel plants over time.

The agency urged other fuel factory operators to “consider actions, as appropriate, to avoid similar issues.’’ The NRC’s notice said the “long-term accumulation of uranium’’ has been a recurring issue in the nuclear fuel industry.
The notice went to about a half-dozen plants across the country, a day after the NRC held a public meeting in Columbia to discuss an investigation of the Westinghouse factory southeast of town.
“Other licensees need to know about this,’’ NRC spokesman Joey Ledford said.

At Tuesday’s meeting, NRC regional administrator Catherine Haney called the uranium buildup at Westinghouse a “serious event.’’ Top Westinghouse officials conceded the company had fallen down on the job in not properly keeping track of the uranium.
Over the summer, the NRC learned that uranium had accumulated in an air pollution control device, called a scrubber, to levels three times the federal safety standard. The agency and Westinghouse found other buildups inside the plant after looking more carefully.
Low-enriched uranium, like that used at Westinghouse, is not considered as dangerous as highly enriched uranium, but it can still be hazardous if not properly monitored.
When uranium accumulates to levels that exceed the safety standard, it increases chances of a “critical’’ event, a nuclear accident that can send out a burst of radiation. In the Westinghouse case, nearby workers could have been injured from the uranium buildup, agency officials said in a preliminary investigation report this past week.

Among the fuel factories notified of the Westinghouse problems were facilities near Wilmington, N.C. and Richland, Wash., both of which also make atomic fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.
A spokesman for the Wilmington-area plant said it has not had buildups of uranium above federal safety limits, but the facility’s owner was aware of the problems in Columbia and has taken steps to make sure similar problems do not occur in North Carolina.
“As soon as we learned about the events there, we conducted a self-assessment related to this specific area and found that all controls are working as expected,’’ Jon Allen, a spokesman for G.E. Hitachi Nuclear Energy, said in an email.
Westinghouse officials said this week they are taking steps to improve safety at the plant. The company has brought in new personnel, instituted new safety procedures and updated equipment to help, among other things.

While the company works to address the issue, it has shut down part of its production line and temporarily laid off more than 100 workers. The plant, between Congaree National Park and Interstate 77, employs about 1,000 people. Nuclear fuel assemblies are sold worldwide to power plants.
“Our leadership and workforce intend to earn back the trust and confidence of the NRC, the community and our customers,’’ company executive Michele DeWitt said.
The federal safety notice, issued Wednesday lays out new details in the unfolding Westinghouse story.
Westinghouse has had buildups of material in air pollution scrubbers since at least 2002, but the company did not accurately document how much uranium was in the material, according to the NRC. As a result, it is difficult to say whether Westinghouse exceeded safety limits in the past, an agency official said Friday.
The NRC information notice also said that for seven years prior to this year’s discovery of excessive uranium, the company did not thoroughly inspect and clean parts of the scrubber system. Some problems appear to have continued this year.
After Westinghouse analyzed the material from the scrubber, one division of the company learned that uranium levels exceeded the safety limit. But that division did not immediately share the information with the Westinghouse safety staff, said Omar Lopez, a NRC inspector who led the probe in Columbia.
“There was a break in communications between the operations group and the safety department,’’ he said.

Japan conglomerates seek to merge loss-making nuclear fuel operations: sources (Toshiba, Hitachi and Mitsubishi)

Japan conglomerates seek to merge loss-making nuclear fuel operations: sources

 Thu Sep 29, 2016 | 6:19am EDT

By Makiko Yamazaki and Kentaro Hamada | TOKYO

TOKYO Three Japanese conglomerates are in talks to combine their loss-making domestic nuclear fuel operations, people with direct knowledge of the matter said, as the outlook for restarts of reactors following the Fukushima nuclear crisis remains bleak.

Hitachi Ltd (6501.T), Toshiba Corp (6502.T) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd (7011.T) aim to merge the operations as early as spring 2017, one of the people said, declining to be identified as the discussions were confidential.

The person added that the three companies may eventually consider merging their nuclear reactor businesses, although nothing specific has been discussed so far.

Only three of Japan's 42 reactors are currently operating after they were idled in the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that destroyed Tokyo Electric Power Co's (9501.T) Fukushima Daiichi power station. Public opposition, safety and other regulatory obstacles has made the outlook for further restarts extremely unclear.

The move has also likely been encouraged by General Electric's (GE.N) growing interest in the market for fuel for pressurized water reactors (PWRs), said an executive at a Japanese utility. GE has a controlling stake in a joint venture with Hitachi and Toshiba called Global Nuclear Fuel, which provides fuel for boiling water reactors (BWRs).

The traditional dividing line in the U.S. nuclear industry with GE specializing in fuel for BWRs and Toshiba's Westinghouse focusing on fuel for PWRs is no longer applicable, he said.

"The merger of Japan's nuclear fuel businesses will to a large extent take its cues from GE," said the executive, declining to be identified as he was not part of the discussions.

PWRs have been growing in popularity, particularly in emerging economies like China. As of December 2015, PWRs accounted for more than 80 percent of 66 nuclear reactors under construction.

The three Japanese conglomerates are aiming to reach a preliminary agreement by the end of the year, the person with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The companies said they were considering options for their domestic nuclear fuel businesses but no decisions had been made.

The conglomerates are likely to first form a joint holding company for their fuel businesses before merging them into one entity, the Nikkei business daily reported.

Industry sources said the government has been pushing the firms to integrate their fuel businesses, raising the chances that any merger plan will not run into any anti-trust issues.

Until the Fukushima disaster, the nuclear fuel business had been a stable source of profits for the domestic nuclear power industry.

Toshiba, which has overseas nuclear fuel operations through its U.S. unit Westinghouse, forecasts that fuel will generate 17 percent of the estimated 870 billion yen ($8.56 billion) in revenue from its nuclear power business for this financial year.

Hitachi has a global nuclear power alliance with General Electric Co (GE.N) while Mitsubishi Heavy has one with France's Areva SA (AREVA.PA).

Hitachi's shares gained 2.4 percent and Mitsubishi Heavy advanced 2.3 percent on Thursday. Toshiba's stock rose 0.2 percent while the broader market climbed 1.4 percent.

(Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki and Kentaro Hamada; Additional reporting by Tim Kelly in Tokyo and Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru; Editing by William Mallard and Edwina Gibbs)

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/news/local/article105299606.html#storylink=cpy