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.
Westinghouse is mostly known for its work on the front end of the nuclear cycle — the utilities that own the nuclear power plants the company is building in South Carolina and Georgia are among the Westinghouse’s major creditors — but also dabbles in nuclear decommissioning and legacy waste cleanup.
The company in 2015 established a multiyear partnership with Bechtel for decontamination, decommissioning, and remediation servcies for U.S. nuclear power plants. The team was one of the bidders for the decommissioning contract for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station; the partnership of AECOM and EnergySolutions in December was named general contractor for the project.
Last year, Westinghouse incorporated Westinghouse Government Services LLC to bid on Energy Department contracts, including those for work on the Cold War nuclear-cleanups managed by the agency’s Office of Environmental Management (EM). Westinghouse Government Services is not one of the debtors identified in the company’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York in New York City.
Westinghouse Government Services owns a 33-percent share of the Atkins-led Mid-America Conversion Services, which in February started work on a a five-year, $318 million EM contract 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 a 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.
A spokesperson for Atkins, the Mid-America parent company that owns the largest share of that joint venture, declined to comment about the bankruptcy’s effect on the work. A Fluor spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment this week.
On the other hand, Fluor quickly issued a statement Wednesday that it would continue working with Westinghouse on the four new Westinghouse AP1000 reactors being installed at the Vogtle nuclear plant in South Carolina and the V.C. Summer plant in Georgia.
In a bit of silver lining, nuclear regulators in the United Kingdom on March 30 — a day after the bankruptcy announcement — ruled the AP1000 design was suitable for construction in that country. The decision marked the end of an application that began in 2007.
