Toshiba opens new engineering facility
02 November 2009
Toshiba has begun operations at its new engineering facilities at its main nuclear power engineering centre in Yokohama, Japan. The company expects the facilities to play a key role in the global expansion of its nuclear business.
.jpg "New Isogo facility (Toshiba)")
The new facility at the Isogo Nuclear
Engineering Centre (Image: Toshiba)
"The new facility integrates highly advanced IT systems and will establish a close network with domestic and overseas clients, construction sites and R&D and engineering centres," Toshiba said in a statement.
It added, "As the nuclear renaissance continues to unfold, this IT will also support Toshiba in shaping an engineering structure able to respond to increased demand for nuclear power plant and equipment in domestic and overseas markets, notably North America, Europe and Asia, and to provide continuous engineering support of the highest quality." As an example, Toshiba said the new facility will be responsible for engineering work to construct two advanced boiling water reactors (ABWRs) at the South Texas Project in the USA.
Toshiba said the new facility is equipped with state-of-the-art engineering tools, including advanced computer-aided design (CAD), high-speed massively parallel processing computers and highly secure information networks. The five-storey facility is earthquake-resistant and designed to withstand quakes of up to magnitude 6.8 on the Richter scale.
Construction of the facility at the Isogo Nuclear Engineering Centre (IEC) began in October 2008. With the addition of the new facility, more than 3000 people will be employed at IEC.
The IEC facility was built in 1982 and has since been Toshiba's core facility for promoting nuclear power plant engineering work for boiling water reactors (BWRs), fast breeder reactors (FBRs) and the nuclear fuel cycle.
In February 2008, Toshiba opened a new facility at IEC equipped with a high-temperature liquid-sodium test loop for conducting advanced research on fast reactor technology. The company said that the test loop is one of the largest operated by any Japanese manufacturer in terms of flow rate and the heating and cooling capacity of liquid sodium.