They are on the road to pulling our plug and drying our nozzles.
Posted on 10/05/2005 5:15:21 AM PDT by kidd
Westinghouse, GE, and their nuclear rivals are chasing $50 billion in Chinese power-plant deals Power to the People's Republic! That could easily be the slogan of the nuclear power executives winging their way to Beijing these days to pitch next-generation reactor designs, downplay rivals' plans, and woo the Communist Party leadership. President Hu Jintao's government is committed to spending $50 billion to increase nuclear power generation capacity from 8.7 million kilowatts today to 40 million kilowatts by 2020. That's one of the largest buildouts in the industry's history. And by the time that $50 billion is spent, some 30 new reactors will be pumping power to China's most important cities, in addition to the nine operating today....
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
Since China doesn't have the regulatory restrictions that US utilities have, they will be 3-5 years ahead of us in power generation. And an adequate power supply is one of the keys to economic success.
They are on the road to pulling our plug and drying our nozzles.
Governments, by their very nature, cannot help but mis-allocate economic resources. The Chinese hold hundreds of billions of dollars of US government and agency debt. If they are going to mis-spend them, let them throw our dollars back at US companies. Meanwhile, this funding helps to further the development of nuclear power that is more safe than the plants we have that are currently in service, plants that we will soon have to start mothballing when their safe operation can no longer be assured.
Given the balance of trade, the administration should be in a good position to pressure the Chinese to go with a US company. A deal could be cut where GE buys Westinghouse on the condition that that they get strong backing from the President. $50 billion would go a long way to restarting a nuclear industry in the U.S.
Dick Cheney is reportedly been a big advocate of supporting Westinghouse. Westinghouse may be foreign owned, but 99.9% of its work force is composed of United States citizens.
We'd (the USA) better get on the nuclear bus, too.
Westinghouse is foreign owned?
Yes we need to re-start nuclear power building; just make sure the mob is kept out of the contract bidding (remember china syndrome?). No fudging on weld x-rays now.......
Yes. Presently owned by BNFL (British Nuclear Fuels LTD).
BNFL has been very good to Westinghouse (has managed it properly) and consequently Westinghouse has been very profitable to BNFL.
Previously Westinghouse was owned by CBS. CBS didn't have a clue how to run a Nuclear Services company (lots of lawyers in nearly every aspect of operations).
There was a push a couple of years ago to make BNFL a privately owned company, but that was rejected by Parliment. Since then Parliment decided that it was outside of BNFL's charter to have an autonomous United States based firm in a state-run company. Consequently, Westinghouse is being sold.
Most of the interested buyers are either entirely American held or have an American partner.
The Chinks are being smarter than we are. WE should be increasing our power output by building reactors and sending envirofascists to Northern Canada to freeze in the dark.
They are actually for sale again right now (the Blair government decided that it shouldn't own private foreign companies) so hopefully some US group will purchase Westinghouse back from the Brits (who bought it in 1998 from CBS. But having them being owned by the Brits was one hell of a lot better than being owned by the dick-heads at CBS.
If we can't get them built here, it will be almost as good to get them built there. Their existence anywhere in the world takes pressure off oil.
Can't blame this one entirely on the Left, although they are primarily responsible for all of the anti-nuclear propaganda. The enemy is us, since the public has opposed the building of nuclear power plants since TMI.
$1-2 billion per reactor seems absurdly low.
"$1-2 billion per reactor seems absurdly low."
It's a fire sale: Buy 1, get 1 free.
Lucky Chinese! Why don't we send all our environmental extremists over there to try to stop them?
Not when you factor in China's cheap labor plus the fact that they will not have to deal with any environmental impact issues in building the reactors there.
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