Westinghouse Presents Nuclear Reactor Proposal to Lithuanian Prime Minister

PITTSBURGH, June 23, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Westinghouse Electric Company today presented its proposal for a new nuclear power plant at Visaginas to Lithuanian Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius and other senior officials in the country. The proposal is based around the company's state-of-the-art AP1000 nuclear power plant.

Speaking after the presentation, Westinghouse President for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Anders Jackson, said:

"I am delighted and honoured today to have had the chance to present our proposals for delivering the AP1000 nuclear power plant to the Lithuanian Government. The fact that the Prime Minister himself has taken such a leading role in this project shows how important this project is to Lithuania and indeed to the entire Baltic Region. That is matched by our own commitment to be a shareholder and partner to ensure its success.  

"I applaud the Lithuanian Government for their clear-sighted approach to energy policy and their recognition of the important role which nuclear energy plays in promoting energy security and in helping to reduce carbon emissions.

I was pleased to explain that AP1000 offers the highest level of confidence in two key respects.

"Firstly – we offer confidence in safety. By utilising 'passive safety' the AP1000 relies only on natural forces such as gravity and thermal convection to ensure the reactor is always in a safe condition. That means the plant is capable of withstanding any credible emergency event – including loss of all offsite power supplies.

"Secondly – we offer confidence in on-time, on-budget delivery. Our track record of construction of the AP1000 in China, where we currently have four of those plants being built on schedule, means we can be confident of delivering here to time and to budget, so the reactor can be producing electricity by 2020.

"Indeed, Westinghouse is so confident that this project will be successful that we are investing in it ourselves."  

Yasuharu Igarashi, Executive Officer, Corporate Executive Vice President, President and CEO of Power Systems Company of Toshiba Corporation, the majority owner of US-based Westinghouse, also met with the Prime Minister Kubilius today to stress Toshiba's support for the Westinghouse proposal.

Notes to Editors:

Westinghouse Electric Company, a group company of Toshiba Corporation, is the world's pioneering nuclear power company and is a leading supplier of nuclear plant products and technologies to utilities throughout the world.

Westinghouse supplied the world's first PWR in 1957 in Shippingport, Pennsylvania. Today, Westinghouse technology is the basis for approximately half of the world's operating nuclear plants.

The Westinghouse AP1000® reactor is a Generation III+ reactor design, and is well underway with licensing processes in the US (where final approval is anticipated later in 2011) and the UK (where the reactor is one of two designs close to the end of the Generic Design Assessment process). Contracts have been placed around the world for a total of ten AP1000 plants to date – 4 in China and 6 in the US. All four plants in China are well underway with construction, and all are on schedule, with the first plant, at Sanmen in China, due to produce electricity in 2013.

For more information on Westinghouse, visit:

http://www.westinghousenuclear.com

SOURCE Westinghouse Electric Company