Westinghouse Electric Co., the U.S. nuclear arm of financially imploding Japanese conglomerate Toshiba, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Wednesday, raising questions about the storied company’s staying-power in the nuclear decommissioning business even as it pledged continuity of operations during the reorganization.
“We are focused on developing a plan of reorganization to emerge from Chapter 11 as a stronger company while continuing to be a global nuclear technology leader,” José Emeterio Gutiérrez, Westinghouse’s interim president, wrote in a prepared statement.
Westinghouse has secured $800 billion of debtor-in-possession financing, which the company will use to support its core business of “operating plants, nuclear fuel and components manufacturing and engineering as well as decommissioning, decontamination, remediation and waste management as the company works to reorganize around these strong business units,” according to the Wednesday press release announcing the Chapter 11 reorganization.
Other details were not available; the company’s Chapter 11 filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York in New York City was not available at press time for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
Westinghouse is mostly known for its work on the front end of the nuclear cycle — the utilities that own the nuclear reactors the company is building for plants in South Carolina and Georgia are among the Westinghouse’s major creditors — but the company also dabbles in nuclear decommissioning and legacy waste cleanup.
In the Energy Department’s weapons complex, Westinghouse is a junior partner on the Atkins-led Mid-America Conversion Services, which in February started work on a a five-year, $318 million contract with DOE’s Office of Environmental Management to process depleted uranium hexafluoride left over from Cold War uranium enrichment at the Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio, and the Paducah Site near Paducah, Ky.
Westinghouse is also rumored to be the junior partner on a Fluor-led team bidding on a 10-year liquid waste management contract at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., estimated to be worth between $4 billion and $6 billion.
