Toshiba’s nuclear mess: shareholders hurl abuse at Toshiba managers

‘You’re trash’: Investors hurl abuse at Toshiba managers after nuclear debacle, SMH, Pavel Alpeyev and Takako Taniguchi, 31 Mar 17, Toshiba shareholders have lashed out at management and lamented the downfall of the Japanese icon before approving the sale of its memory chips division to cover the billion-dollar costs resulting from its disastrous foray into nuclear energy.

Incensed investors took turns to hurl abuse at executives during a Thursday meeting convened to take a vote on the intended disposal of its prized semiconductor business. Toshiba is looking to sell a majority stake in the unit to mend a balance sheet ravaged by billions of dollars in writedowns related to cost overruns at its nuclear subsidiary Westinghouse Electric.

Westinghouse, which Toshiba bought for $US5.4 billion in 2006, filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday. The Japanese company said it may now book a loss of as much as 1.01 trillion yen ($11.8 billion) in the year ending March, a record for a Japanese manufacturer.

“Toshiba is now a laughing-stock to the whole world,” one shareholder said during a question-and-answer section, raising his voice. “I think all of you are incompetent as managers. Do you even know what’s happening?”

Another shareholder addressed the executives as “trash.”……. http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/youre-trash-investors-hurl-abuse-at-toshiba-managers-after-nuclear-debacle-20170330-gvah2j.html

1.This Month

PETITION

Free Julian Assange, before it’s too late. Sign to STOP the USA Extradition

United Nations: demasking the Torture of Julian Assange. Rico Brouwer and Nils Melzer

Three Mile Island (& Fukushima) Lies & Cover-Ups w/ Gundersen & Wasserman

Energy efficiency – theme for July 2019

Energy efficiency represents the single largest potential contributor to global emissions reduction, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA 2017). It should be a key part of the global energy strategy, for several reasons:

It could reduce global electric demand by more than 20 per cent, based on current rates in the U.S. power sector, while maintaining high levels of services such as heating and lighting.
It avoids the need for increased energy, capacity and grid services, making it the least expensive way to decarbonise at scale.
It can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by billions of tonnes.

A dramatic example of the power of energy efficiency is lighting. In 2017 the United States passed the milestone of 1 billion LED and CFL lights installed, avoiding 142 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide emissions, at a cost of about $7 per ton of avoided carbon dioxide. In contrast, the cumulative installed capacity of rooftop solar reached 8,000 MW in 2017, saving 8 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide, at a cost of $360 per ton. Lighting efficiency thus yielded almost 18 times the avoided carbon dioxide, at about 2 per cent the cost per ton of rooftop solar.

Google provides another example of the power of energy efficiency. Its data centers now use 50 per cent less energy than the average data center, according to the company. Google also developed an improved chip, the TPU, which performs 83 times better than standard CPUs. The new chip allowed Google to reduce power consumption at its data centers by a factor of 30—far exceeding the effect on Google’s carbon footprint of all of the company’s renewable energy purchases. ” – John Woolard, Eco Business, 10 June 2019

nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope