Photo: Bloomberg News
Bloomberg: Samurai-Sword Maker's Reactor Monopoly May Cool Nuclear Revival
From a windswept corner of Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, Japan Steel Works Ltd. controls the fate of the global nuclear-energy renaissance. There stands the only plant in the world, a survivor of Allied bombing in World War II, capable of producing the central part of a nuclear reactor's containment vessel in a single piece, reducing the risk of a radiation leak. Utilities that won't need the equipment for years are making $100 million down payments now on components Japan Steel makes from 600-ton ingots. Each year the Tokyo-based company can turn out just four of the steel forgings that contain the radioactivity in a nuclear reactor. Even after it doubles capacity in the next two years, there won't be enough production to meet building plans...The Japan Steel factory's rusting, corrugated-metal warehouses, blackened by soot, belie the precision and patience required to fashion a 600-ton steel ingot into a tube with walls 30 centimeters (12 inches) thick. Blue-clad workers, some wearing balaclavas to keep warm, draw on knowledge built up when Japan Steel made the 18-inch gun barrel -- the world's largest at the time -- for the World War II battleship Yamato..."Our accumulated technology for cannon barrels helped us make this technical breakthrough in forging,'' plant manager Sato said. The company's basic product, steel of the highest quality, has the same enduring appeal as the samurai swords still fashioned in limited quantities by craftsmen at the plant...more...
