Hitachi : Japan's Tepco, Chubu, Hitachi, Toshiba to collaborate on nuclear plants
August 28, 2019 at 06:21 am EDT
Share
TOKYO (Reuters) - Tokyo Electric Power, Chubu Electric Power, Hitachi and Toshiba have agreed to consider cooperating on their nuclear plant businesses, the companies said in a statement on Wednesday.
The companies have agreed to consider together building a sustainable business that focuses on constructing and operating boiling water reactors (BWRs) similar to the ones that melted down at Tokyo Electric's Fukushima plant north of Tokyo after an earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
Japan shut down its nuclear plants nationwide in the wake of the 2011 disaster.
Neither Tokyo Electric or Chubu Electric have restarted any reactors since then, while Hitachi and Toshiba have pulled out of reactor construction plans overseas.
While nine reactors in Japan have been given approval to operate, all of the units have been pressurized water reactors, a different design than BWRs.
Tokyo Electric said on Monday it may start to decommission at least one reactor at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, the world's biggest nuclear station by capacity, within five years of restarting two of the newer reactors at the site.
(Reporting by Aaron Sheldrick; editing by Christian Schmollinger)
Hitachi specializes in manufacturing and marketing of electronic and industrial equipments. Net sales (including intragroup) break down by family of products and services as follows:
- social infrastructure and industrial systems (24.7%): elevators, escalators, industrial facilities, railway systems, power generation units, etc. The group also provides engineering and construction of nuclear, hydroelectric, and thermal power plants services;
- information and telecommunications products and services (20.1%): systems integration, cloud computing, software, servers, hard disks, PCs, ATMs, data communication base stations, payment terminals, etc.;
- materials and components (16.6%): semi-conductor materials, printed circuit cards, cables, copper and forged steel products, magnetic materials, organic and inorganic chemical products, etc.;
- construction equipment (10%) : hydraulic excavators, wheel loaders, mining equipment, etc.;
- automotive systems (9.4%): powertrain systems, control systems, etc.;
- electronic products (9.2%): fiber-optic components, screen tubes, testing and measurement equipment, medical equipment, equipment for manufacturing semiconductors, etc.;
- household appliances (4.7%): heating and air conditioning equipments, refrigerators, washing machines, etc.;
- other (5.3%): mainly transport, financial and logistical services.
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: Japan (49.2%), Asia (21.3%), North America (12.7%), Europe (10.8%) and other (6%).
HITACHI, LTD. 
