Toshiba Shares Plummet After Warning of 'Billions' in Losses (cnn.com) 100
Toshiba's troubles keep piling up. From a report on CNN Money: The Japanese firm's shares plunged 20% on Wednesday, after the company warned it is expecting billions of dollars in losses from its takeover of a U.S. nuclear construction business last year. "We're still figuring out the exact numbers, but it could reach up to several hundred billion yen," CEO Satoshi Tsunakawa told reporters Tuesday. Toshiba's U.S. nuclear-power subsidiary Westinghouse acquired CB&I Stone & Webster late last year, when Toshiba was still struggling to recover from a $1.2 billion accounting scandal. Toshiba's shares dived in the months following that scandal, which led to a major management reshuffle after the Japanese conglomerate admitted it had doctored financial results for years. The company reported a loss of 460 billion yen ($3.9 billion) for 2015.
And yet Uber valuation keeps going up (Score:1)
And Uber is projected to lose 2.6 billion next year.
Funny how that works.
Toshiba Invented Flash Memory, So.... (Score:2)
It seems to me they'll always have that to fall back on. I assume they have all sorts of patent money coming in from that. But yeah, nuclear construction sounds expensive.
Link about Toshiba:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Flash memory is literally a commodity traded on the market like wheat or corn now. Your post is like saying "well at least Toshiba has wheat to fall back on"
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So is oil, and while they're not #1 right now, Exxon, Chevron, Shell, Aramco, Pemex, etc. are not exactly hurting too badly.
Toshiba's semi (Score:2)
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It seems to me they'll always have that to fall back on. I assume they have all sorts of patent money coming in from that.
Toshiba's original patents for flash were issued in the 1980s, and have long since expired. Sandisk has some current patents for NAND flash, but I don't think Toshiba is still getting any royalties for flash.
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> But yeah, nuclear construction sounds expensive
"Nuclear fission, continual business failures for 50 years!"
Siemens. Framatome. Westinghouse. Babcock and Wilcox. Toshiba. AECL. BNFL.
Not smart business (Score:1)
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I think the issue is the building as it is being designed and the poor engineering controls at Westinghouse. Add in the issues related to improper N&Ds by Westinghouse's quality engineering, it just means ballooned cost.The work is solid, but the rework due to poor engineering controls and wastage is MASSIVELY expensive from the people I know on the sites.
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poor engineering controls at Westinghouse
There were issues with quality at a modular unit manufacturing site in Louisiana, but otherwise there have only been the expected challenges when building a large first of a kind plant. Yes, it is expensive, but once built the plant can run for 80 to 100 years and pay for itself many times over.
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Most of the rebuild happen due to changes in design between the module being constructed and assembly on site. Who the hell subtracts the consideration of a bolt being in the way between the plan for the module when the marrying module been already placed? Why not make work packages cumulative, just showing the changes made in rev 1, rev 2, etc... not considering that some poor craft has to figure out what the hell to build? But hey, that is the Westinghouse way. How can you meet INPO principle 7 - Build as
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All manufacturing technology improves exponentially? (forever)
Moron.
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What point do you think you're making, dipshit? You're basically demonstrating you can't face the comment so you have to derp about something irrelevant. If you're going to talk about "forever ever", then nothing makes a difference, it's all the heat death of the universe. So kill yourself already and stop stinking up the place.
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All I've heard about nuclear so far is that it typically repays the cost to build it in 5 years. Which rather curiously is about as long as it takes to build a reactor.
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Yes, it is expensive, but once built the plant can run for 80 to 100 years and pay for itself many times over.
No. When you consider the interest payments on the capital investment, and the amortized cost of decommissioning, nuclear is not competitive with shale gas, and cannot operate without subsidies. Nuclear is no longer even competitive with wind. If current trends continue, solar will be more economical within a decade. While the cost of wind and solar are going down, the cost of nuclear is going UP.
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If current trends continue, solar will be more economical within a decade. While the cost of wind and solar are going down, the cost of nuclear is going UP.
Do you think that maybe, possibly, perhaps the costs of nuclear power has gone up because we've stopped building them for 40 years? The people that knew how to do this are all retired, senile, or dead now. We see this in every industry that prices go down as experience improves. This can even be seen as a single project, like a large building, progresses. The first ten stories take longer to build than the next ten, and the next ten take less time yet.
Do you think that maybe, possibly, perhaps that sola
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Do you think that maybe, possibly, perhaps the costs of nuclear power has gone up because we've stopped building them for 40 years?
Why does that matter? If they are uneconomic, they are uneconomic. The reasons are irrelevant. Do you really believe that we should squander money subsidizing nukes because that is the "fair" thing to do? Fair to whom?
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Why does that matter? If they are uneconomic, they are uneconomic. The reasons are irrelevant.
Irrelevant? Nuclear power is uneconomic only because the government deemed it so. This is violation of a very basic freedom, the freedom to choose how we spend our money. This is not how a free nation or strong economy is built.
Do you really believe that we should squander money subsidizing nukes because that is the "fair" thing to do? Fair to whom?
I don't want anything subsidized. I just want nuclear power allowed.
Tell me something, is it fair that the government is talking about how we need to reduce our carbon footprint but denies us access to an energy source we know of that has a lower footprint to any other energy sou
Re: Not smart business (Score:1)
Oh sure. One of the most long lasting and devastating industries in the world and red tape is the problem. /s
No. You are the problem. Regulation is necessary for safety and competition. So tired of lazy right wingers and their "if we just got rid of the red tape" bullshit.
I believe in nuclear power. But corner cutting cannot be allowed. If you can't do it without putting everyone at risk for your own profits, then you don't get to do it.
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Oh sure. One of the most long lasting and devastating industries in the world and red tape is the problem.
Coal has red tape? But I believe in coal. Corner cutting cannot be allowed. If you can't do it without putting everyone at risk for your own profits, then you don't get to do it.
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How do you define what corner cutting is? Nuclear always has some non-zero risk. We can make it extremely unlikely, but that costs money. So you want the power plant operator to operate at break-even or even profit loss before you are satisfied?
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So you want the power plant operator to operate at break-even or even profit loss before you are satisfied?
I think it's rather obvious. They don't want the plant to operate at all. The concern over safety is just the pretext. Making nuclear plants too expensive to operate is the end goal.
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WhooPPSS! I see what you did there!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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How do you stop the next Fukashima from happening? It's a cost issue and people building nuclear reactors don't want to pay for larger margins of safety.
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You stop the next Fukushima by learning from the past. Don't put your emergency generators in a place where they can be underwater.
There, I fixed it.
No, this is the wrong answer. Nuclear plants are designed to withstand credible external events. You don't place a plant where it will experiences a credible event it is not designed for. When you design a nuclear plant to withstand an external hazard, you design it so that ALL of the safety systems are functional before, during and after the event, not just the emergency generators. Nuclear plants typically are designed for flooding up to a given level of their structures, you don't place them where flood
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You don't place a plant where it will experiences a credible event it is not designed for.
Fukushima has yet to experience a credible event it was not designed for. It is absurd to claim that Fukushima shouldn't be there just because the design was a bit inadequate for the credible event it experienced. There are two relatively simple fixes that would separately prevent further such accidents, a higher sea wall and better distribution of emergency power.
made worse by the destructive force of the tsunami (which is actually a different event altogether than simple flooding as it also comes with destructive force).
Simple flooding often does as well, sometimes considerably more than the tsunami brought to bear on Fukushima. And the existing sea wall would ha
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The engineering lesson learned is to not place the plant where it can be deluged by a Tsunami. If you want to count on a wall for that, you'd better get it high enough.
So why is the lesson move the plant rather than the more obvious build a higher wall that actually covers reasonable risks that the location has seen over appropriate time scales?
Every location with have something wrong with it.
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First you should distinguish the plant from the siting characteristics. GE designed the plant, not the site. GE will tell you plants of that design are not intended to withstand such a tsunami. They will show how they can withstand earthquakes of a given magnitude (with margin), tornadoes and tornadoes missiles (with margin), etc, but NOT tsunamis that suddenly deluge the plant with destructive force. It is the responsibility of the licensee to put the plant where it cannot experience such an event, or in other words they must determine that event is not credible at the location.
You're still doing it. Really what is so hard to grasp about a sea wall high enough to prevent a 1 in 500 year event, which incidentally would prevent the 2011 accident? Why are we to blame site location? It's irrational.
Clearly the wall did not make the event non-credible. Even a higher wall might not.
Actually, yes, it does because it shows that they were designing the defenses of the plant for large tsunami. That means, in your lingo, that the tsunami event is credible.
Nuclear plant safety systems are built with layers of protection and redundancy against design basis events. A single wall, even if high enough, does not meet that criteria. Done properly there would need to be assurance that the plant would remain safe even with a wall failure.
Now, we're moving the goal posts. Even if we were to take your concern seriously, there are several additional ways to
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I described the fundamental principals of nuclear safety which you seem to want to ignore.
You should too. That's why, for example, Fukushima received prior to the earthquake a significant extension on life despite because an older, less safe design. Those same "principles" prevented newer, safer nuclear plants from being constructed (a whole generation of Japanese nuclear plants in design or under construction were wiped out in 1995-2005) while requiring older plants to continue operating beyond their design lifespan. Similarly, those "principles" delayed reevaluation of the tsunami threat when
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No, the wall was designed to stop 5 meter tsunamis from hitting the plant, the reason was that the plant was not capable of withstanding it. Why is that so hard to understand?
Because it's an inane point to make. The seawall is part of the plant.
And I never said "the stark difference between a non-accident and multiple reactor meltdowns isn't "good enough"",
You should have written something else then.
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No, the seawall is not part of the plant. The plant was designed by GE and there was no sea wall in the design.
There is confusion here that shouldn't be. The nuclear plant is the overall local system, not merely the reactors themselves. So it naturally includes things like a seawall. The seawall is on plant property and solely present to further the needs of the plant. That makes it just as much a part of the plant as other routine elements like an access road, security fence, or grid access which aren't part of the reactor structures themselves.
Further, GE designed the reactors and as I recall oversaw construct
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Had they designed the plant to withstand a tsunami instead of depending on a wall to prevent one from hitting the plant,
Not even wrong. The wall was how they designed the plant to withstand a tsunami. The emergency generators were the backup.
Unless you have high enough confidence that you know a wall height that will cover any future tsunami
I don't have to. "Credible events" remember? We're not speaking of nearby asteroid impacts or other sources of vastly bigger tsunami which might have frequencies of once every few million years. There's a limit to how big the tsunami that an earthquake can generate.
and have considered every possible failure of that wall to function properly
Same.
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First you should distinguish the plant from the siting characteristics. GE designed the plant, not the site. GE will tell you plants of that design are not intended to withstand such a tsunami.
Here's what I think is particularly inane about this argument:
1) If a "credible" risk isn't explicitly anticipated in the plant design or ruled out by "siting characteristics", then the plant shouldn't be built there.
2) You decide a seawall is neither part of a plant design nor a siting characteristic and thus, can be outright ignored.
3) Thus, a plant shouldn't be built anywhere a seawall would be required.
The obvious problem with this chain of argument is that a good seawall can greatly reduce
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OK, if YOU want to play semantics and make the wall part of the "plant", then you must describe the event and the design for the event appropriately. In this case, the event is a massive tsunami breaching the wall. The design basis of the plant did not consider a massive tsunami breach of the wall a credible event. The "reactor building and associated structures" were not properly designed to handle this event. The entire "plant" was sited in place where this event could happen.
The massive tsunami didn't breach [oxforddictionaries.com] the wall, it overtopped [oxforddictionaries.com] it. Words have meaning.
And since the designers didn't consider overtopping the seawall to be a credible event, then by your logic, why should they design for it?
Had the entire plant properly considered the event, and designed for it using common nuclear safety practices, they would have hardened the "reactor and associated structures", flood proofed, raised generators and fuel supplies, added contingency fuel supplies to extend emergency diesel run time to account for lack of accessibility, added sealed doors in other locations and procedural requirements to keep flood doors closed, and a ton of other things. Then THAT would have resulted in certainly of not only nuclear safety but also generally saving the asset from tremendous remediation costs. That would have been quite acceptable.
And that's something that we can do now that we know that overtopping is a problem. That's the difference between learning from experience and merely deciding never to do something at a location because something preventable happened there.
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How do you stop the next Fukashima from happening?
Its simple. Don't put a plant that is not designed to operate underwater in a location where it can be hit by a tsunami. Its not about safety margin. They designed for earthquakes and there was plenty of safety margin. They did not design them to be suddenly deluged, add all the margin you want and it won't matter.
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They did not design them to be suddenly deluged, add all the margin you want and it won't matter.
You miss the obvious. Enough margin and the deluge doesn't happen.
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How do you stop the next Fukashima from happening?
First by understanding what went wrong. The reactor survived the tsunami, shutdown successfully from an automated system that detected the seismic activity. So, nothing in the reactor itself failed. What failed was the systems designed to dissipate the heat from the short lived fission products. At least one of the failed reactors was near the end of a fuel cycle and so it had a very large proportion of fission products in the fuel, meaning the core was going to get dangerously hot if cooling stopped.
Human nature (Score:2)
Let me help you with these parts.
The reactors that were in service there all suffered from design flaws, referred to as a 'Design Basis Issues'. They work around these issues by have operational and implementation processes so that suffering an accident from that flaw can be avoided. This requires strict adherence to the manufactuer and implementing the support systems the reactor requires.
In
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Let me help you with these parts.
Thank you for adding detail to my description.
No matter what reactor technology is being used it seems we haven't been able to avoid this characteristic of human nature as Fukushima shows that the nuclear industry learned nothing from Chernobyl.
I do not believe it is fair to say the industry learned nothing from Chernobyl. You can say the lessons learned were not implemented. You can say the wrong lessons were learned. The industry knows what went wrong but there are a lot of reasons why we are still at much higher risk than we should from a nuclear accident.
The hubris of the operators caused the destruction of the communities that surround them.
TEPCO was overconfident in their ability to prevent a meltdown. I have little doubt that they saw additional safety measures that were ordered
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You're welcome.
We can say, from what we know, is that TEPCO willfully ignored known lessons and colluded with the government regulator to prevent regulation being created. Therefore it is charitable to say the nuclear industry learned nothing.
You can say it was criminal negligence and
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We can say, from what we know, is that TEPCO willfully ignored known lessons and colluded with the government regulator to prevent regulation being created. Therefore it is charitable to say the nuclear industry learned nothing.
We also know that this collusion was irrelevant to the Fukushima accident. We also know that collusion with regulators wasn't the cause of the accident at Chernobyl either. So no, "learned nothing" is an empty assertion.
Unfortunately TEPCO also neglected to make improvements to the sea wall precluding that option to themselves and effectively neutering the triple redundancy you speak of.
What neglect? The research that indicated this was a problem was done in 2001. The regulatory agency didn't get around to determining that was something to look at until around 2006 and TEPCO did the research a couple years later which I gather concluded that that the Fukushima sea wall was
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Your opinion differs from the official report which states the nuclear industry "managed to avoid absorbing the critical lessons learned from Three Mile Island and Chernobyl" so, yes, it's an accurate assertion. Organizational failures led to the accident in both cases.
Cited
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Unfortunately doing so would reduce nuclear powers capacity factor significantly making nuclear power pointless.
No, it would increase capacity factor because right now the standard response is a shutdown. If the power is reduced, instead of eliminated, the reactor itself can provide the power needed for cooling. Also, if kept running the fission will "eat" some of the fission products which means that if a shutdown is called for later then there is less cooling required due to there being less fission products in the core.
I believe it is INSANE to point at those two reactor facilities and claim nuclear power is safe.
Sure, if you look at only those two then nuclear power does not look very safe. If you compar
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During an earthquake and Tsunami - that is insane idea. We are only discussing this as an option because of Fukushima and they may have had this option *IF* the seawall was protecting the reactor from flooding and damage. So this option wasn't available to Fukushima operators.
However, proposing running rea
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Incidentally, what is you position on nuclear disarmament?
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Fukushima shows that the nuclear industry learned nothing from Chernobyl.
That displays your ignorance of the fundamental differences between the two events.
Or your failure to comprehend them properly.
Chernobyl was a case of intentionally defeating safety systems and intentionally operating the plant in way that violated procedures and the design envelope. Fukushima was a case of
intentionally not operating the plant in a way that it would remain in its design basis.
of siting a plant where it could be hit by a tsunami when it wasn't designed to withstand one. (all those anecdotal issue become irrelevant if you simply don't have a tsunami hitting the plant).
You mean, carving away 25-30 metres of the hillside to bring the whole facility closer to the water, then not having an adequate sea wall to protect the reactor they sited there.
Fukushima is also a much much smaller accident when it comes to release than Chernobyl. We learned that containment systems are critical for these types of reactors, (something already being implemented in most designs), and that proved to be very beneficial at Fukushima.
Both accidents are INES 7 rated accidents, just for different reasons.
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It's not regulatory red tape, it's cheap fossil fuels. US natural gas spot prices dropped from $14 / MMBTU in 2006 to around $2.60 in 2016. Over the same period nuclear plants under construction were completed, but
Prior to that nuclear had to weather a 66% drop in coal prices from the 1970s to 2001 and a 8% drop in oil prices from 1980 to 1998.
There is really one and only one compelling economic argument for nuclear at this point: the climate change costs of fossil fuels are externalized, amounting to an i
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There are more arguments for nuclear depending on where you are. Energy independence can be one. The fuel market is a lot less volatile than the oil market and it's trivial to stockpile fuel.
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Another (Russian) nuclear plant that is under construction is expected to produce more expensive MWh's than most of the competing energy sources. In pr
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Its funny how you fail to mention the lower cost, faster construction of many plants by the Chinese and Koreans. You just pick a few worst case first of a kind builds.
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Solar power...in Finland?
Going to be a few years before that is economic. But Finland is an edge case...edge if the Arctic ocean.
Just hand bottles of vodka in front of treadmills and let the citizens generate the power.
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Just hand bottles of vodka in front of treadmills and let the citizens generate the power.
Drunken Rage Against the Machine?
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Did you bother reading the article? The chart title is "Fuel Prices in Heat Production".
http://www.stat.fi/til/ehi/201... [www.stat.fi]
Do you even know the difference between MWt and MWe?
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I was reading the links you provided colordev, however the ft link is paywalled. Do you have another link or a paste so I can read it please?
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However, due to the regulatory red tape and NIMBY/enviro freakout factions in the US, investing in reactor construction in the US seems like a very expensive and extremely risky proposition.
Well, Trump did say that he wants to increase out nuclear capacity, so I guess he's planning for Atomic Boy Scout reactors in everyone's backyards . . .
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investing in reactor construction in the US seems like a very expensive and extremely risky proposition
They didn't invest, they bought out a competitor. Toshiba is already the largest operator and service supplier and second largest engineering and construction company in the nuclear industry. (Google Westinghouse Nuclear)
It's a butterfly on the shoulders of a giant (Score:1)
Media just likes to blow things out of proportion as usual. Toshiba is doing fine, and will keep doing fine.
Serves them right (Score:2)
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nuclear plants spend months offline for maintenance and reconditioning, and take months more to fully go online. .
Wow, how clearly wrong. Nuclear plants have the highest capacity factor of any other source, around 90% availability. They only shut down for short periods for refueling and maintenance, and this is scheduled for low electricity demand windows in the spring and fall.
Yes, shale gas has made other sources less profitable and challenging, and renewable market subsidies have exacerbated pricing challenges. But some states are started to realize that nuclear's societal cost is much lower when you consider the hi
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A CANDU reactor can be refueled without being put offline.
Wrong. (Score:3)
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Toshiba was utterly foolish to make this purchase without considering the fact that nuclear power plants are inexorably more expensive...
You do realise this isn't Toshiba the manufacturer of your DVD player but Toshiba the parent of Westinghouse the worlds second largest nuclear construction and engineering form and the worlds largest nuclear operator and service supplier right?
I'm sure they have no idea about the economics of the nuclear industry and they are lucky to have your incredible vision to guide them.
No loss if they go under (Score:2)
Bleep the whole bleeping company. Absolutely the worst customer service for retail products I've ever run across. If only I'd read some of the forum columns about their refusal to honor warranties before I'd bought a TV set, I could have saved myself a lot of pain.
I wish I could lose $3.9B in one year (Score:2)
Buy, Mortimer, buy!!! (Score:1)
These are bargain prices, Mortimer!
Toshiba (Score:2)
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I think they still manufacture Flash and hard disks.
not an accounting scandal (Score:2)