The Globe and Mail reports in its Friday edition that Brookfield Asset Management is leading a $4.6-billion (U.S.) deal to purchase nuclear power giant Westinghouse Electric Co., which was forced into bankruptcy nearly a year ago owing to massive cost overruns at construction projects in the United States.
The Globe's Alexandra Posadzki and Shawn McCarthy write that BAM's Brookfield Business Partners LP said on Thursday that, along with unnamed institutional partners, it has reached an agreement to acquire 100 per cent of Westinghouse from its current owner, Japan's Toshiba.
"The moral of the story for Westinghouse, and for anybody else who is watching, is that new reactor construction is just not commercially viable any more," nuclear expert M.V. Ramana said.
When Toshiba acquired Westinghouse in 2006, it was widely expected that a nuclear renaissance would lead to a wave of new projects around the world.
Instead, the nuclear industry found itself struggling to sell new reactors as it faced competition from low-cost natural gas and increasingly cheap renewable power in the United States.
Meanwhile, regulators started demanding more stringent and costly safety features after the Fukushima disaster in 2011.
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