Toshiba

Toshiba Corporation (株式会社東芝 Kabushiki-gaisha Tōshiba?) is a Japanese multinational engineering and electronics conglomerate corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.

Nuclear interests

Westinghouse majority owner

In October 2006 BNFL sold Westinghouse to Toshiba and its partners The Shaw Group and IHI. Toshiba later sold 10 percent of its interest to Kazatamprom, a company based in Kazakhastan. In September 2011 Toshiba bought out the Shaw Group's 20 per cent stake in Westinghouse and now controls 87 per cent of the firm.

Nearly half of all nuclear power plants operating globally, and nearly 60 percent in the United States, are based on Westinghouse technology. In 2006 Westinghouse’s AP1000 became the first Generation III+ pressurised water reactor to receive Design Certification from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Fukushima non-liability

Toshiba, General Electric and Hitachi were responsible for designing, building and servicing the reactors which directly contributed to the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plantwhen a massive earthquake and tsunami struck on 14 March 2011.

Two years after the disaster, Greenpeace accused all three firms of continuing to dodge their responsibilities over Fukushima.

...companies deeply involved in the design, construction and running of the reactors involved in the triple meltdown are not being held accountable. Shockingly in some cases, they are making more profits out of the disaster recovery. These companies, namely GE, Hitachi, and Toshiba who designed and built reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, have special rights under the Nuclear Damage Liability Law that protect them from product liability should there be a nuclear disaster. Essentially this means they can profit without worrying about the risks of a meltdown, since the public pays the damage should an accident happen.

The estimated cost of the nuclear disaster is $250 billion US, an impossible figure for any single company - even TEPCO, one of the largest power companies in the world. It is why compensation and life support for the people affected is not what it should be, and why 3.2 trillion yen ($43.7 bn) of Japanese taxpayers money has been injected into the company.

We have been talking with GE, Hitachi and Toshiba, however, when it comes to a question of their responsibility, they simply point to their existing Corporate Social Responsibility webpage or report, where they present their charitable activities in response to the earthquake and tsunami. They have avoided explaining their responsibility in the Fukushima nuclear disaster as a supplier of critical equipment.

As the executive director of Greenpeace International explained in a March 2013 Guardian article calling for the 'creation of a real nuclear liability system, one that makes both nuclear operators and their suppliers pay all the costs of their failures, not taxpayers', such as exists in India:

Big energy giants, such as General Electric, Toshiba and Hitachi, pay nothing if one of their reactors causes a disaster. All three built reactors based on GE's flawed Mark I reactor design. Concerns that the reactor containment would fail during a major accident proved correct – this is exactly what happened. The flaw was revealed decades earlier, but the problem wasn't fixed.

But the protection system means that GE, Hitachi and Toshiba and other big companies with enormous wealth are not held liable when their equipment contributes to a disaster.

...Absurdly, the powerful nuclear industry has greater protection and rights than the public – the ones at risk of radiation in a disaster. It's high time for that liability to be given back to the industry.

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