Westinghouse Electric filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, as the nuclear energy leader focuses on reorganizing.
The Pennsylvania-based company ran up a hefty debt of $9 billion in liabilities for its parent company, Toshiba Corp., according to the Charlotte Business Journal.
This comes as a major blow to the nuclear industry, considering the company’s impact on the development of nuclear energy among other aspects of the trade.
“This is a fairly big and consequential deal,” said Richard Nephew, a researcher for the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, according to The New York Times. “You’ve had some power companies and big utilities run into financial trouble, but this kind of thing hasn’t happened.”
Westinghouse’s troubles are said to have stemmed from cost overruns on four nuclear reactors that are currently under construction, Reuters noted.
Westinghouse said in its filing that it bankruptcy would “isolate them from the one specific area of their businesses that is losing money: their construction of nuclear power plants in Georgia and South Carolina.”
The bankruptcy could impact the U.S. as well, considering its government guaranteed $8.3 billion in loans for the construction of the reactors.
The reactor under construction in Georgia is nearly halfway finished, but Stan Wise, who leads Georgia’s Public Service Commission, said the bankruptcy could mean an abandonment of the project.
“There is a reason Westinghouse is exiting the process and bankrupt,” Wise said, according to Reuters. “Something told them the pain for them can only get worse. I hope there is a way for this process and contract to continue.”
With liabilities totaling $9.8 billion, Westinghouse's bankruptcy is considered one of the industry's most costly in recent history, Reuters noted.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.