Toshiba: Where nuclear power meets flash drives

Japanese-based Toshiba is probably best known to EDN readers as a semiconductor vendor: Its biggest success has been in flash memory and flash memory drives, where it accounts for over half the market. The rest of its semiconductor offerings are mostly commodities. Although not a brand name for heavy equipment in the US, it’s a major player in that market in Japan, although again with commodity-type products.

In 2006, it bought the US-based Westinghouse Electric with an expected debt-repayment period for the reactor-making unit of 17 years. The nuclear reactor business is growing much faster than planned however, as indicated by Toshiba’s shortening the repayment period first to 14 years, and recently to 13 years. If you’re seeking to avoid a commodity-type market, nuclear reactor construction and installation are definitely a good choice.

The business and electronics trade press gives a lot of coverage to the upswing in alternative energy installations such as solar and wind, but nuclear is also very strong, with Toshiba expecting to win contracts for 33 power plants by 2015.

The picture is of Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant near San Luis Obispo, CA, which has [Update] two 1,087-MW Westinghouse nuclear reactors, online since 1985.

 Via Dow Jones.