IHI Corporation is a Japanese company which produces ships, aircraft engines, turbochargers for automobiles, industrial machines, power station boilers and other facilities, suspension bridges and other transport-related machinery.
Toshiba Corporation is a Japanese multinational conglomerate headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include information technology and communications equipment and systems, electronic components and materials, power systems, industrial and social infrastructure systems, consumer electronics, household appliances, medical equipment, office equipment, as well as lighting and logistics.
These two companies have been partners in the development and sale of nuclear equipment since the 1960s. IHI supplied important components to Toshiba which assembled them into finished systems. IHI wanted to expand sales in the nuclear business. In the first decade of the Twenty First Century, it looked as if the global nuclear industry was starting to expand again after decades of stagnation. Many countries were talking about building nuclear power reactors. Toshiba acquired Westinghouse Electric in 2006 in anticipation of this expanding market with investment assistance from IHI.
In January of 2011, Toshiba and IHI formed Toshiba IHI Power Systems. The joint venture was created to manufacture steam turbine parts for nuclear power plants for the domestic and overseas markets. They formed the JV with the intent of strengthening their partnership to take advantage of the renewed interest in nuclear power.
The JV was intended to allow IHI to extend its operations to major components of turbines, alongside the manufacture of nuclear reactor pressure vessels and containment vessels, while Toshiba would enhance its turbine manufacturing capacity and strengthen its nuclear power plant business supply chain.
Just two months after the joint partnership was formed, in March 2011, the Fukushima nuclear disaster happened. The bottom dropped out of the global nuclear power reactor market. The factory of the JV had to start making parts with no relation to nuclear reactors just to keep the lights on.
In December of 2016, it was revealed that Westinghouse had suffered huge losses and eventually filled for bankruptcy. This hit Toshiba hard and they sold of their shares in Westinghouse in 2018.
Now it has been announced that Toshiba and IHI are dissolving Toshiba IHI Power Systems. IHI will remain in the nuclear component business but they will move their operations towards biomass fuels and other renewable energy sources including hydrogen. Toshiba is currently considering the sale of its share of a nuclear power reactor project in the U.K. Toshiba hopes to be able to continue work on maintaining, repairing and decommissioning existing plants in Japan but will not be vigorously pursuing the construction of new nuclear power plants. This means that Toshiba and IHI will probably be less involved with each other in the future.
Although other Japanese companies continue to be involved in the manufacture of nuclear plant components and the construction of nuclear power reactors, the international market for nuclear power reactors is in decline. Russia and China are working hard to export nuclear power reactors to developing countries, but they are forced to offer very attractive financing terms including long term loans at low interest to attract customers. Some of these announced deals have recently been cancelled.
As I have repeatedly said, it will not be the danger of nuclear power plant accidents or the possible proliferation of nuclear weapons that will ultimately sink the use of nuclear power but the cold hard facts of international economics.