Toshiba Corp shareholders agreed to split off its prized NAND flash memory unit on Thursday, paving the way for a sale to raise at least $9 billion to cover U.S. nuclear unit charges that threaten th... Toshiba gets go-ahead for NAND chip unit sale at angry shareholder meeting
I'm not an anti-nuclear person, but it seems like Western (and Western like countries) nuclear business is a dead horse already. I should know as the most pitiful example project has been going on in my home country for well over a decade without going online. It was supposed to be finished years ago and the price almost tripled along the way, making it already one of the most expensive building projects in Europe, which is highly ironic considering Finland's small population. As expected, the thing has spawned billion euro court cases as well. I wish small modular reactors saved the nuclear industry.
I still have faith in the future of Nuclear, it is so incredibly energy dense. ...Yet we are still using dangerous designs from the 50's which were only meant to be a stop gap for about 15 years or so... and "burn" one of the rarest elements on the planet at only about 0.5% efficiency while producing tonnes of dangerous nuclear waste LOL Newer designs (actually also from the 60's, but underfunded and shut down early due to more profitable moves by politicians and their soon to be even richer friends) being redeveloped atm can "burn" their nuclear fuels at over 97% efficiency and produce very little nuclear waste. They can even be fed processed old nuclear waste from past generations. oh... and they are also a much safer design + cheaper to build. I guess their Achilles heel was partly their huge fuel efficiency. The people in power owned the Uranium mines and would not sell very much with this type of reactor.
First I heard of their involvement, quite some years ago, in nuclear power was a collaboration with Bill Gates who was partnering with Toshiba to work on cheap nuclear power "batteries" for developing countries (think a 40 ft maintenance free container buried deep in concrete that provides power for about 100 years for a large town / city). I believe from memory they use nuclear waste that is still active enough for these so called nuclear batteries.
