Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power • Hacker News Board

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#261

Post by iamacynic » Wed, Mar 29, 2017, 8:11 PM UTC

kesselvon wrote: post #258

iamacynic wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for westinghouse to file bankruptcy less than 90 days into a new republican administration with a focus on defense, nationalism, and domestic business is a pretty obvious move to get either a bailout or absorbed into DoD or DoE. and i'm pretty sure the secretary of defense "understands" the people who run his entire nuclear fleet are sort of important, the question is, does rick perry? magic 8 ball says: reply hazy.

Westinghouse is a Japanese subsidiary now. It's basically a move to GTFO out of the nuclear power market

so then, sounds like quickest and cheapest (bankruptcy) way to do that is to get that division absorbed by another defense contractor or the gubmint.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#262

Post by seanmcdirmid » Wed, Mar 29, 2017, 8:15 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #179

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #118

My dad worked for Westinghouse in the late 70s at Hanford. This really feels like an end of an era.

I'm sure it does, but doesn't Westinghouse go way back, to the start of the electric era? Didn't they built it, or lease most of it?

Yes, but somehow the name today only survives for their nuclear operation:

> Westinghouse purchased CBS in 1995 and became CBS Corporation in 1997. In 1998, CBS established a brand licensing subsidiary Westinghouse Licensing Corporation (Westinghouse Electric Corporation). In 1997/1998 the Power Generation Business Unit, headquartered in Orlando, FL, was sold to Siemens AG, of Germany. A year later, CBS sold all of its nuclear power businesses to British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL). Soon after, BNFL gained license rights on the Westinghouse trademarks and they used those to reorganize their acquired assets as Westinghouse Electric Company. That company was sold to Toshiba in 2007.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westinghouse_Electric_Corporat...

My dad was always in nuclear though (well, after a brief stint at Tektronix).

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#263

Post by seanmcdirmid » Wed, Mar 29, 2017, 8:18 PM UTC

fnj wrote: post #206

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables haven't scaled yet, even if they are making progress. Nuclear is interesting in that we have around 70-90 thousands years of fuel for the plants, which can only get cheaper/safer over time as the technology gets better. Currently, their capital requirements (they are expensive to build even if they are cheap to fuel) and waste problems make them fairly unviable. Couple that with being even less on demand t…

Oh come now. 70,000-90,000 years? If the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has accurately estimated the planet's economically accessible uranium resources, reactors could run more than 200 years at current rates of consumption. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-glo...

Not sure why you are being downvoted, since you aren't really wrong. At current technologies and known reserves, you are correct.

But their are many technologies that make that number skyrocket. Those numbers are in the 10ky range, and of course, if we ever get fusion going...

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#264

Post by masklinn » Wed, Mar 29, 2017, 8:18 PM UTC

kesselvon wrote: post #258

iamacynic wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for westinghouse to file bankruptcy less than 90 days into a new republican administration with a focus on defense, nationalism, and domestic business is a pretty obvious move to get either a bailout or absorbed into DoD or DoE. and i'm pretty sure the secretary of defense "understands" the people who run his entire nuclear fleet are sort of important, the question is, does rick perry? magic 8 ball says: reply hazy.

Westinghouse is a Japanese subsidiary now. It's basically a move to GTFO out of the nuclear power market

> It's basically a move to GTFO out of the nuclear power market

Except the losses come from the construction of new reactors (the AP1000 for the Vogtle and Summer plants), not the operation of them.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#265

Post by philipkglass » Wed, Mar 29, 2017, 8:19 PM UTC

pdeuchler wrote: post #251

philipkglass wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you have been following this saga over the past few years, but the reason that they're going bankrupt is they got several orders for new AP1000 reactors, but couldn't deliver on their planned budgets and schedules . (4 reactors under construction in China, 4 under construction in the United States, zero of them on schedule.) Was it a court injunction that put the Vogtle project behind schedule? Local…

I can't tell if your first sentence is implying that you did follow this saga over the past few years, but if so it's very strange that someone who professes to be intimate with the details here would leave out that the reason they couldn't deliver on planned budgets and schedules was massive accounting fraud, not a failure in their engineering or product management.

Yes, I have been following the progress of AP1000 reactor projects for years. The Toshiba accounting scandal surely doesn't help but I don't believe it is the proximate cause for Westinghouse's bankruptcy. Toshiba's accounting irregularities aren't even mentioned in the bankruptcy declaration.

From the bankruptcy declaration:

As described in more detail below, the Debtors’ need to avail themselves of the protections of the Bankruptcy Code arises primarily from a series of unforeseen challenges that significantly delayed and increased the cost of construction of the nuclear plants in Georgia and South Carolina (referred to as Vogtle and VC Summer, respectively). These challenges potentially expose the Debtors to billions of dollars either in (i) cost overruns to complete the projects or (ii) penalties and liabilities if they abandon the projects. The Debtors cannot afford either option. Notwithstanding that the Debtors’ other businesses are profitable and world-class, the Construction Business cost increases have led to a liquidity crisis that the Debtors can only solve in chapter 11.

...

The Construction Business division delivers both new-plant projects and major projects for new and already operating nuclear power plants globally. It consists of two business segments: (1) engineering, procurement, and construction (“EPC”) services for customers around the globe, primarily offering the AP1000 technology; and (2) engineering and procurement (“E&P”) services, such as design, equipment, and site installation and startup support, to both AP1000 and non AP1000 projects. While some portions of the Construction Business are profitable, the main portion of the EPC business, which constructs the Vogtle and VC Summer projects, has damaged the profitability of the entire Construction Business. As a result, the Construction Business generated EBITDA from FY2013 to FY2015 of negative $343 million. As described in detail below, these losses have accelerated in the past 15 months following the Company’s purchase of CB&I Stone & Webster, Inc. (“S&W”).

https://pdf.inforuptcy.com/pacer/nysbke/273388/dockets/4/1-C...

(Thanks to mikikian for linking this declaration elsewhere in the discussion. All of Part III, "Events Leading to Chapter 11", is worth reading.)

EDIT: if you're talking about the valuation dispute around the Chicago Bridge & Iron acquisition, pg 22, that is presented as a $2 billion problem. The construction projects have another $6 billion worth of expenses now estimated necessary to complete before 2020 (pg 23-24). It's not clear that Westinghouse could dig itself out of this hole even if the money pit was only $6 billion deep instead of $8 billion.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#266

Post by acidburnNSA » Wed, Mar 29, 2017, 8:21 PM UTC

nbanks wrote: post #221

The two new Westinghouse Vogtle pants are too expensive, at $14 billion for 2.5GW of power. If you purchased $14 billion of Tesla powerpacks, you could get 35GWh of storage--enough storage to supply 2.5GW of power for 14 hours....

14 billion is a lot. For your storage alternative though, you'd still have to buy something to fill the storage up reliably in the other 10 hours of a day to be an even comparison.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#267

Post by hwillis » Wed, Mar 29, 2017, 8:21 PM UTC

hackuser wrote: post #20

dalyons wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After reading years and years of discussions like this, it seems like the citizen opposition and (somewhat unfair) demonisation of nuclear power is endlessly repeated as the reason we don't have nukes anymore, despite them being a great source of clean(ish) energy. However it seems the real reason, as in all things, is economics. They're just too damn expensive to build and run, and the expected returns on investment…

> it seems the real reason, as in all things, is economics The economics might be different if we paid for the real cost of carbon-based energy, instead of imposing that cost on the world as an externality.

At this point it seems like that would just mean nuclear losing to solar instead of natural gas. In both cases it's an extremely large investment and slow return, but solar PV juuuust seems to edge out nuclear. The numbers look like nuclear has a slight advantage, but that's skewed by underestimates of nuclear costs (or estimates that it'll come down in the future), as well as the rapid cost declines in solar power. Solar has a very wide price variation but the newest, cheapest stuff is better than nuclear.

I find myself in conflict with people a lot regarding nuclear online. I used to be one of those LFTR reactor guys but the facts are that nuclear reactors are always some newer, untested design that will require new untested innovations. On the other hand solar has an easily predicted, easily met roadmap to cheap power with existing tech. We know for a fact that solar can power the entire world's needs cheaply for many decades to come, but we are just guessing that the same can be done with nuclear. Why make that bet when we have a sure thing?

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#268

Post by acidburnNSA » Wed, Mar 29, 2017, 8:23 PM UTC

brilliantcode wrote: post #27

I believe the nuclear power industry largely started out as a way to justify world's largest nuclear warhead stockpile. I believe it was on a show from Netflix that discussed the history of nuclear power. It worked remarkably well.

Really!? You don't think that people were honestly excited about the most energy dense fuel known to man as a low footprint clean energy source? Your lifetime of energy in 1.5 soda cans of fuel! To me this is extremely exciting and totally unrelated to weapons.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#269

Post by masklinn » Wed, Mar 29, 2017, 8:23 PM UTC

barkingcat wrote: post #2

There was massive financial fraud at Westinghouse. Even though the nuclear industry is in a downturn, the troubles at Westinghouse are self inflicted - Toshiba bought them, but found out almost all of the unit's profits are misreported, leading to them spending money on "nothing" basically. The unit earned no money and was threatening to sink Toshiba the entire keiretsu. This is Toshiba trying to save itself by closi…

It doesn't seem like S&W is all of the trouble, the bankruptcy seems to be blamed on Westinghouse's inability to deliver its AP1000.

Re: Westinghouse Files for Bankruptcy, in Blow to Nuclear Power

#270

Post by astrodust » Wed, Mar 29, 2017, 8:34 PM UTC

teraflop wrote: post #242

astrodust wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have magical pixies to transport the nuclear material there that can ensure it won't be stolen in transit? Can you create a secure facility in one of the most hostile climates in the world? If not, that will never work.

The suggestion doesn't seem so obviously ridiculous that it should be dismissed that easily. Bear in mind that the total quantity of material we're talking about is relatively small: a few thousand tons a year, which is far less than the capacity of a single typical container ship. The economic value of nuclear waste is basically zero, so you only really have to worry about theft for purposes like terrorism. And even…

> ...so you only really have to worry about theft for purposes like terrorism.

That's a pretty big worry. This stuff is super dirty and in the wrong hands could cause a lot of problems. Unlike a pressure cooker bomb which either kills you, maims you, or doesn't do anything to you, a radioactive bomb might kill you anywhere from now to twenty years from now and everyone exposed to it will be left wondering when their number comes up.

The smarter thing is to come up with better ways of reburning the fuel and storing it long-term on-site at the reactor which is already a secure facility. The total amount is small. They don't need tons of space to deal with it. The less you move this stuff around the better.

The risks there are more Fukishima in nature where if they lose power (at a power plant!) then they need some mechanism to circulate water in the cooling tanks to prevent a boil-off.