Susquehanna Steam Electric Station
The Susquehanna Steam Electric Station, a nuclear power station, is on the Susquehanna River in Salem Township, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. PPL operated the plant until June 2015 when Talen Energy was formed from PPL's competitive supply business; the plant has two General Electric boiling water reactors within a Mark II containment building on a site of 1,075 acres, with 1,130 employees working on site and another 180 employees in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Harrisburg-based Allegheny Electric Cooperative purchased 10% of the plant in 1977. Susquehanna produces 63 million kilowatt hours per day, it has been in operation since 1983. The prime builder was Bechtel Power Corporation of California. In the plant's first emergency, an electrical fire erupted at a switch box that controls the supply of cooling water to emergency systems. No injuries were reported following the 1982 incident. 10,000 gallons of radioactive water spilled at the Station's Unit 1 turbine building after a gasket failed in the filtering system in 1985.
In November 2009, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission extended the operation licenses of the reactors for an additional 20 years. In 2008, PPL filed an application with the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to build and operate a new nuclear plant under consideration near Berwick, Pennsylvania; the Bell Bend Nuclear Power Plant would be built near the company’s existing two-unit Susquehanna nuclear power plant. On August 30, 2016, Talen Energy formally requested the license application be withdrawn, the NRC accepted the application withdrawal on September 22, 2016 cancelling the project; the NRC defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of 10 miles, concerned with exposure to, inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination, an ingestion pathway zone of about 50 miles, concerned with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity. The 2010 U. S. population within 10 miles of Susquehanna was 54,686, an increase of 3.3 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U.
S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U. S. population within 50 miles was 1,765,761, an increase of 5.5 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include the larger city, Scranton; the NRC's estimate of the risk each year of an earthquake intense enough to cause core damage to the reactor at Susquehanna was 1 in 76,923, according to an NRC study published in August 2010. DoE Page
Nuclear power in the United States
Nuclear power in the United States is provided by 99 commercial reactors with a net capacity of 100,350 megawatts, 65 pressurized water reactors and 34 boiling water reactors. In 2016 they produced a total of 805.3 terawatt-hours of electricity, which accounted for 19.7% of the nation's total electric energy generation. In 2016, nuclear energy comprised nearly 60 percent of U. S. emission-free generation. As of September 2017, there are two new reactors under construction with a gross electrical capacity of 2,500 MW, while 34 reactors have been permanently shut down; the United States is the world's largest producer of commercial nuclear power, in 2013 generated 33% of the world's nuclear electricity. As of October 2014, the NRC has granted license renewals providing a 20-year extension to a total of 74 reactors. In early 2014, the NRC prepared to receive the first applications of license renewal beyond 60 years of reactor life, as early as 2017, a process which by law requires public involvement.
Licenses for 22 reactors are due to expire before the end of the next decade if no renewals are granted. The Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station was the most recent nuclear power plant to be decommissioned, on October 24, 2016. Another five aging reactors were permanently closed in 2013 and 2014 before their licenses expired because of high maintenance and repair costs at a time when natural gas prices have fallen: San Onofre 2 and 3 in California, Crystal River 3 in Florida, Vermont Yankee in Vermont, Kewaunee in Wisconsin, New York State is seeking to close Indian Point in Buchanan, 30 miles from New York City. Most reactors began construction by 1974. More than 100 orders for nuclear power reactors, many under construction, were canceled in the 1970s and 1980s, bankrupting some companies. Up until 2013, there had been no ground-breaking on new nuclear reactors at existing power plants since 1977. In 2012, the NRC approved construction of four new reactors at existing nuclear plants. Construction of the Virgil C.
Summer Nuclear Generating Station Units 2 and 3 began on March 9, 2013 but was abandoned on July 31, 2017 after the reactor supplier Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy protection on March 29, 2017. On March 12, 2013 construction began on the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant Units 3 and 4, the target in-service date for Unit 3 is November 2021. On October 19, 2016 TVA's Unit-2 reactor at the Watts Bar Nuclear Generating Station became the first US reactor to enter commercial operation since 1996. There was a revival of interest in nuclear power in the 2000s, with talk of a "nuclear renaissance", supported by the Nuclear Power 2010 Program. A number of applications were made, but facing economic challenges, in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, most of these projects have been cancelled, as of 2012, "nuclear industry officials said in 2012 they expect five new reactors to enter service by 2020 – Southern's two Vogtle reactors, two at Summer in South Carolina and one at Watts Bar in Tennessee".
As of August 1, 2017, Watts Bar is operating, there are construction delays at Vogtle and construction at Summer has been abandoned. Unexpectedly high costs in the Second World War nuclear weapons program created "...pressure on federal officials to develop a civilian nuclear power industry that could help justify the government's considerable expenditures". Research into the peaceful uses of nuclear materials began in the United States under the auspices of the Atomic Energy Commission, created by the United States Atomic Energy Act of 1946. Medical scientists were interested in the effect of radiation upon the fast-growing cells of cancer, materials were given to them, while the military services led research into other peaceful uses; the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 encouraged private corporations to build nuclear reactors and a significant learning phase followed with many early partial core meltdowns and accidents at experimental reactors and research facilities. This led to the introduction of the Price-Anderson Act in 1957, "...an implicit admission that nuclear power provided risks that producers were unwilling to assume without federal backing."
The Price-Anderson Act "...shields nuclear utilities and suppliers against liability claims in the event of a catastrophic accident by imposing an upper limit on private sector liability." Without such protection, private companies were unwilling to become involved. No other technology in the history of American industry has enjoyed such continuing blanket protection. Argonne National Laboratory was assigned by the United States Atomic Energy Commission the lead role in developing commercial nuclear energy beginning in the 1940s. Between and the turn of the 21st century, Argonne designed and operated fourteen reactors at its site southwest of Chicago, another fourteen reactors at the National Reactors Testing Station in Idaho; these reactors included initial experiments and test reactors that were the progenitors of today’s pressurized water reactors, boiling water reactors, heavy water reactors, graphite-moderated reactors, liquid-metal cooled fast reactors, one of, the first reactor in the world to generate electricity.
Argonne and a number of other AEC contractors built a total of 52 reactors at the National Reactor Testing Station. Two were never operated. In the early afternoon of December 20, 1951, Argonne director Walter Zinn and fifteen other Argonne staff members witnessed a row of four light bulbs light up in a nondescript brick building in the eastern
James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant
The James A. FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant is located in the Town of Scriba, near Oswego, New York, on the southeast shore of Lake Ontario; the nuclear power plant has one General Electric boiling water reactor. The 900-acre site is the location of two other units at the Nine Mile Point Nuclear Generating Station; the power plant was built by Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation - FitzPatrick and half of the Nine Mile Point site were transferred to the Power Authority of the State of New York. It was named after Power Authority Chairman James A. FitzPatrick. On November 2, 2015, Entergy Corp. announced its plans to shut down FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant in Oswego County after the reactor runs out of fuel in 2016. To avoid closure, Exelon Generation agreed to purchase the plant from Entergy at the price of $110 million. On April 1, 2017, Exelon assumed operation of the plant; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of 10 miles, concerned with exposure to, inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination, an ingestion pathway zone of about 50 miles, concerned with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity.
The 2010 U. S. population within 10 miles of FitzPatrick was 35,136, an increase of 17.0 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U. S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U. S. population within 50 miles was 909,798, an increase of 3.2 percent since 2000. Cities within 50 miles include Syracuse. Canadian population is not included in these figures, such as Kingston, Ontario, 49 miles to the city center; the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's estimate of the risk each year of an earthquake intense enough to cause core damage to the reactor at FitzPatrick was 1 in 163,934, according to an NRC study published in August 2010. On November 2, 2015, Entergy Corporation announced that it intends to close the James A. Fitzpatrick Nuclear Power Plant because it is becoming too costly to operate; the nuclear industry's profits have been squeezed out by utilities who are buying cheaper energy from natural gas power plants. “Given the financial challenges our merchant power plants face from sustained wholesale power price declines and other unfavorable market conditions, we have been assessing each asset,” Chief Executive Officer Leo Denault said in the statement.
“Market conditions require us to close the FitzPatrick nuclear plant.”In 2016, Cuomo directed the Public Service Commission to consider ratepayer-financed subsidies similar to those for renewable sources to keep nuclear power stations profitable in the competition against natural gas. In August 2016, Exelon agreed to buy the plant pending regulatory approval. Exelon formally acquired ownership and operation of James A. Fitzpatrick Nuclear Power Plant on March 31, 2017. Darlington Nuclear Generating Station — located on the opposite side of Lake Ontario List of nuclear reactors New York energy law Nuclear power Nuclear power plant Pickering Nuclear Generating Station — located on the opposite side of Lake Ontario "New York Nuclear Profile". Energy Information Administration. U. S. Department of Energy. 2010. Retrieved 2016-11-04. Conca, James. "If No One Wants The FitzPatrick Nuclear Power Plant To Close, Why Is It Closing?". Forbes
Texas
Texas is the second largest state in the United States by both area and population. Geographically located in the South Central region of the country, Texas shares borders with the U. S. states of Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the west, the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas to the southwest, while the Gulf of Mexico is to the southeast. Houston is the most populous city in Texas and the fourth largest in the U. S. while San Antonio is the second-most populous in the state and seventh largest in the U. S. Dallas–Fort Worth and Greater Houston are the fourth and fifth largest metropolitan statistical areas in the country, respectively. Other major cities include Austin, the second-most populous state capital in the U. S. and El Paso. Texas is nicknamed "The Lone Star State" to signify its former status as an independent republic, as a reminder of the state's struggle for independence from Mexico; the "Lone Star" can be found on the Texan state seal.
The origin of Texas's name is from the word taysha. Due to its size and geologic features such as the Balcones Fault, Texas contains diverse landscapes common to both the U. S. Southern and Southwestern regions. Although Texas is popularly associated with the U. S. southwestern deserts, less than 10% of Texas's land area is desert. Most of the population centers are in areas of former prairies, grasslands and the coastline. Traveling from east to west, one can observe terrain that ranges from coastal swamps and piney woods, to rolling plains and rugged hills, the desert and mountains of the Big Bend; the term "six flags over Texas" refers to several nations. Spain was the first European country to claim the area of Texas. France held a short-lived colony. Mexico controlled the territory until 1836 when Texas won its independence, becoming an independent Republic. In 1845, Texas joined the union as the 28th state; the state's annexation set off a chain of events that led to the Mexican–American War in 1846.
A slave state before the American Civil War, Texas declared its secession from the U. S. in early 1861, joined the Confederate States of America on March 2nd of the same year. After the Civil War and the restoration of its representation in the federal government, Texas entered a long period of economic stagnation. Four major industries shaped the Texas economy prior to World War II: cattle and bison, cotton and oil. Before and after the U. S. Civil War the cattle industry, which Texas came to dominate, was a major economic driver for the state, thus creating the traditional image of the Texas cowboy. In the 19th century cotton and lumber grew to be major industries as the cattle industry became less lucrative, it was though, the discovery of major petroleum deposits that initiated an economic boom which became the driving force behind the economy for much of the 20th century. With strong investments in universities, Texas developed a diversified economy and high tech industry in the mid-20th century.
As of 2015, it is second on the list of the most Fortune 500 companies with 54. With a growing base of industry, the state leads in many industries, including agriculture, energy and electronics, biomedical sciences. Texas has led the U. S. in state export revenue since 2002, has the second-highest gross state product. If Texas were a sovereign state, it would be the 10th largest economy in the world; the name Texas, based on the Caddo word táyshaʼ "friend", was applied, in the spelling Tejas or Texas, by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves the Hasinai Confederacy, the final -s representing the Spanish plural. The Mission San Francisco de los Tejas was completed near the Hasinai village of Nabedaches in May 1690, in what is now Houston County, East Texas. During Spanish colonial rule, in the 18th century, the area was known as Nuevo Reino de Filipinas "New Kingdom of the Philippines", or as provincia de los Tejas "province of the Tejas" also provincia de Texas, "province of Texas", it was incorporated as provincia de Texas into the Mexican Empire in 1821, declared a republic in 1836.
The Royal Spanish Academy recognizes both spellings and Texas, as Spanish-language forms of the name of the U. S. State of Texas; the English pronunciation with /ks/ is unetymological, based in the value of the letter x in historical Spanish orthography. Alternative etymologies of the name advanced in the late 19th century connected the Spanish teja "rooftile", the plural tejas being used to designate indigenous Pueblo settlements. A 1760s map by Jacques-Nicolas Bellin shows a village named Teijas on Trinity River, close to the site of modern Crockett. Texas is the second-largest U. S. state, with an area of 268,820 square miles. Though 10% larger than France and twice as large as Germany or Japan, it ranks only 27th worldwide amongst country subdivisions by size. If it were an independent country, Texas would be the 40th largest behind Zambia. Texas is in the south central part of the United States of America. Three of its borders are defined by rivers; the Rio Grande forms a natural border with the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Nuevo León, Tamaulipas to the south.
The Red River forms a natural border with Arkansas to the north. The Sabine River forms a natural border with Louisiana to the east; the Texas Panhandle has an eastern border with Oklahoma at 100° W, a northern border with Oklahoma at 36°30' N and a western
Watts Bar Nuclear Plant
The Watts Bar Nuclear Plant is a Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear reactor pair used for electric power generation. It is located on a 1,770-acre site in Rhea County, near Spring City, between the cities of Chattanooga and Knoxville. Watts Bar supplies enough electricity for about 1,200,000 households in the Tennessee Valley; the plant, construction of which began in 1973, has two Westinghouse pressurized water reactor units: Unit 1, completed in 1996, Unit 2, completed in 2015. Unit 1 has a winter net dependable generating capacity of 1,167 megawatts. Unit 2 has a capacity of 1,165 megawatts. Both units are the newest operating civilian reactors to come online in the United States, Unit 2 is the first and only new reactor to enter service in the 21st century; the construction began on 23 January 1973, suffered from many delays. After construction was halted on both units in 1985, construction resumed on Unit 1 in 1992. First criticality was achieved on 1 January 1996 and commercial operation began on May 5, 1996.
Unit 2 was 80% complete when construction on both units was stopped in 1985 due in part to a projected decrease in power demand. In 2007, the Tennessee Valley Authority Board approved completion of Unit 2 on August 1, construction resumed on October 15; the project was expected to cost $2.5 billion, employ around 2,300 contractor workers. Once finished, it was expected to employ 250 people in permanent jobs; the final cost of the plant is estimated at $6.1 billion. A year after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and subsequent Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued 9 orders to improve safety at domestic plants. Two applied to Watts Bar Unit 2 and required design modifications: "Mitigation Strategies Order" and "Spent Fuel Pool Instrumentation Order". In February 2012, TVA said the design modifications to Watts Bar 2 were responsible for the project running over budget and behind schedule; the second unit cost a total of $4.7 billion bringing the total cost of the plant to more than $12 billion.
TVA declared construction complete in August 2015 and requested that NRC staff proceed with the final licensing review. On December 15, 2015, TVA announced that the reactor was loaded with fuel and ready for criticality and power ascension tests. In March 2016, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission described the project as a "chilled work environment," where employees are reluctant to raise safety concerns for fear of retribution. On May 23, 2016, initial criticality was achieved; as of August 31, 2016, a transformer fire had delayed the start of commercial operation past the late summer goal. Commercial operation started in October 2016, once the affected transformer was replaced, operators completed the inspection on the switchyard affected equipment and the final full power testing was completed. On October 19, 2016 the Watts Bar 2 was the first United States reactor to enter commercial operation since 1996. Due to failures in its condenser, TVA took it offline on March 23, 2017; the condenser, installed during the original construction phase of the plant in the 1970s, suffered a structural failure in one of its sections.
On August 1, 2017 the unit was restarted after four months of repairs to the condenser. It will be the last Generation II reactor to be completed in the US; the NRC operating license for Watts Bar was modified in September 2002 to allow TVA to irradiate tritium-producing burnable absorber rods at Watts Bar to produce tritium for the U. S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration; the Watts Bar license amendment permits TVA to irradiate up to 2,000 tritium-producing rods in the Watts Bar reactor. TVA began irradiating tritium-producing rods at Watts Bar Unit 1 in the fall of 2003. TVA removed these rods from the reactor in the spring of 2005. DOE shipped them to its tritium-extraction facility at Savannah River Site in South Carolina. DOE reimburses TVA for the cost of providing the irradiation services, pays TVA a fee for each tritium-producing rod, irradiated; as the tritium is used for military purposes, Watts Bar unit 1 is fuelled by uranium which does not have peaceful only use non-proliferation restrictions as is normal for commercial reactors.
The NRC defines two emergency planning zones around nuclear power plants: a plume exposure pathway zone with a radius of 10 miles, concerned with exposure to, inhalation of, airborne radioactive contamination, an ingestion pathway zone of about 50 miles, concerned with ingestion of food and liquid contaminated by radioactivity. The 2010 U. S. population within 10 miles of Watts Bar was 18,452, an increase of 4.1 percent in a decade, according to an analysis of U. S. Census data for msnbc.com. The 2010 U. S. population within 50 miles was 1,186,648, an increase of 12.8 percent since 2000. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's estimate of the risk each year of an earthquake intense enough to cause core damage to the reactor at Watts Bar was 1 in 27,778, according to an NRC study published in August 2010; the 2018 Southern Appalachian earthquake's epicenter was located two miles east of the facility. The TVA reported that their facilities are designed to withstand seismic events and were not impacted by the earthquake, but personnel would conduct further inspections as a precaution.
Watts Bar Dam Watts Bar Steam Plant List of the largest nuclear power stations in the United States List of power station
Pressurized water reactor
Pressurized water reactors constitute the large majority of the world's nuclear power plants and are one of three types of light water reactor, the other types being boiling water reactors and supercritical water reactors. In a PWR, the primary coolant is pumped under high pressure to the reactor core where it is heated by the energy released by the fission of atoms; the heated water flows to a steam generator where it transfers its thermal energy to a secondary system where steam is generated and flows to turbines which, in turn, spin an electric generator. In contrast to a boiling water reactor, pressure in the primary coolant loop prevents the water from boiling within the reactor. All LWRs use ordinary water as both neutron moderator. PWRs were designed to serve as nuclear marine propulsion for nuclear submarines and were used in the original design of the second commercial power plant at Shippingport Atomic Power Station. PWRs operating in the United States are considered Generation II reactors.
Russia's VVER reactors are similar to U. S. PWRs. France operates many PWRs to generate the bulk of its electricity. Several hundred PWRs are used for marine propulsion in aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and ice breakers. In the US, they were designed at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory for use as a nuclear submarine power plant with a operational submarine power plant located at the Idaho National Engineering Lab. Follow-on work was conducted by Westinghouse Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory; the first purely commercial nuclear power plant at Shippingport Atomic Power Station was designed as a pressurized water reactor, on insistence from Admiral Hyman G. Rickover that a viable commercial plant would include none of the "crazy thermodynamic cycles that everyone else wants to build."The United States Army Nuclear Power Program operated pressurized water reactors from 1954 to 1974. Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station operated two pressurized water reactor plants, TMI-1 and TMI-2; the partial meltdown of TMI-2 in 1979 ended the growth in new construction of nuclear power plants in the United States for two decades.
The pressurized water reactor has three new Generation III reactor evolutionary designs: the AP-1000, VVER-1200, ACPR1000+, APR1400. Nuclear fuel in the reactor pressure vessel is engaged in a fission chain reaction, which produces heat, heating the water in the primary coolant loop by thermal conduction through the fuel cladding; the hot primary coolant is pumped into a heat exchanger called the steam generator, where it flows through hundreds or thousands of small tubes. Heat is transferred through the walls of these tubes to the lower pressure secondary coolant located on the sheet side of the exchanger where the coolant evaporates to pressurized steam; the transfer of heat is accomplished without mixing the two fluids to prevent the secondary coolant from becoming radioactive. Some common steam generator arrangements are single pass heat exchangers. In a nuclear power station, the pressurized steam is fed through a steam turbine which drives an electrical generator connected to the electric grid for transmission.
After passing through the turbine the secondary coolant is cooled condensed in a condenser. The condenser converts the steam to a liquid so that it can be pumped back into the steam generator, maintains a vacuum at the turbine outlet so that the pressure drop across the turbine, hence the energy extracted from the steam, is maximized. Before being fed into the steam generator, the condensed steam is sometimes preheated in order to minimize thermal shock; the steam generated has other uses besides power generation. In nuclear ships and submarines, the steam is fed through a steam turbine connected to a set of speed reduction gears to a shaft used for propulsion. Direct mechanical action by expansion of the steam can be used for a steam-powered aircraft catapult or similar applications. District heating by the steam is used in some countries and direct heating is applied to internal plant applications. Two things are characteristic for the pressurized water reactor when compared with other reactor types: coolant loop separation from the steam system and pressure inside the primary coolant loop.
In a PWR, there are two separate coolant loops, which are both filled with demineralized/deionized water. A boiling water reactor, by contrast, has only one coolant loop, while more exotic designs such as breeder reactors use substances other than water for coolant and moderator; the pressure in the primary coolant loop is 15–16 megapascals, notably higher than in other nuclear reactors, nearly twice that of a boiling water reactor. As an effect of this, only localized boiling occurs and steam will recondense promptly in the bulk fluid. By contrast, in a boiling water reactor the primary coolant is designed to boil. Light water is used as the primary coolant in a PWR. Water enters through the bottom of the reactor's core at about 548 K and is heated as it flows upwards through the reactor core to a temperature of about 588 K; the water remains liquid despite the high temperature due to the high pressure in the primary coolant loop around 155 bar. In water, the critical point occurs at 22.064 MPa.
Pressure in the primary circuit is maintained by a pressurizer, a separate vessel, conne
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. is a Japanese multinational engineering, electrical equipment and electronics company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. MHI is one of the core companies of the Mitsubishi Group. MHI's products include aerospace components, air conditioners, automotive components, forklift trucks, hydraulic equipment, machine tools, power generation equipment, printing machines and space launch vehicles. Through its defense-related activities it is the world's 23rd-largest defense contractor measured by 2011 defense revenues and the largest based in Japan. On November 28, 2018, the company was ordered by the South Korea Supreme Court to pay compensation for forced labor which the company oversaw during the Japanese occupation of Korea. In 1857, at the request of the Tokugawa Shogunate, a group of Dutch engineers began work on the Nagasaki Yotetsusho, a modern, Western-style foundry and shipyard near the Dutch settlement of Dejima, at Nagasaki; this was renamed Nagasaki Seitetsusho in 1860, construction was completed in 1861.
Following the Meiji Restoration of 1868, the shipyard was placed under control of the new Government of Meiji Japan. The first dry dock was completed in 1879. In 1884, Yataro Iwasaki, the founder of Mitsubishi, leased the Nagasaki Seitetsusho from the Japanese government, renamed it the Nagasaki Shipyard & Machinery Works and entered the shipbuilding business on a large scale. Iwasaki purchased the shipyards outright in 1887. In 1891, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries - Yokohama Machinery Works was started as Yokohama Dock Company, Ltd, its main business was ship repairs, to which it added ship servicing by 1897. The works was renamed Mitsubishi Shipyard of Mitsubishi Goshi Kaisha in 1893 and additional dry docks were completed in 1896 and 1905; the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries - Shimonoseki Shipyard & Machinery Works was established in 1914. It produced industrial merchant ships; the Nagasaki company was renamed Mitsubishi Shipbuilding & Engineering Company, Ltd. in 1917 and again renamed as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in 1934.
It became the largest private firm in Japan, active in the manufacture of ships, heavy machinery and railway cars. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries merged with the Yokohama Dock Company in 1935. From its inception, the Mitsubishi Nagasaki shipyards were involved in contracts for the Imperial Japanese Navy; the largest battleship Musashi was completed at Nagasaki in 1942. The company housed the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works, the Akunoura Engine Works, Mitsubishi Arms Plant, Mitsubishi Electric Shipyards, Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works, Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works, which employed 90% of the city's labor force, accounted for 90% of the city's industry; these connections made Nagasaki a legitimate target for strategic bombing during World War II by the Allied air forces, which dropped an atomic bomb on the city on August 9, 1945. This attack, followed by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima three days earlier, dealt a devastating blow to the Japanese leadership, contributing to the surrender of Japan six days later.
The Kobe Shipyard of Mitsubishi Goshi Kaisha was established in 1905. The Kobe Shipyard merged with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in 1934; the Kobe Shipyard constructed the ocean liner Argentina Maru, the submarines the I-19 and I-25. Following the dissolution of the zaibatsu after the surrender of Japan at the end of World War II, Mitsubishi divided into three companies. Mitsubishi Nagasaki became Ltd.. The Nagasaki Shipyard was renamed Mitsubishi Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. Ltd. in 1952. The Mitsubishi Kobe Shipyard became Central Japan Heavy Industries, Ltd. in 1950. In 1964, the three independent companies from the 1950 break-up were merged again into one company under the name of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd; the Nagasaki works was renamed the Nagasaki Engine Works. The Kobe works was renamed the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries - Kobe Machinery Works. In 1970, MHI's automobile parts department became an independent company as Mitsubishi Motors. In 1974, its Tokyo headquarters was targeted in a bombing.
MHI participated in a ¥540 billion emergency rescue of Mitsubishi Motors in January 2005, in partnership with Mitsubishi Corporation and Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group. As part of the rescue, MHI acquired ¥50 billion of Mitsubishi Motors stock, increasing its ownership stake to 15 percent and making the automaker an affiliate again. In October 2009, MHI announced an order for up to 100 regional jets from the United States-based airline Trans States Holdings. MHI entered talks with Hitachi in August 2011 about a potential merger of the two companies, in what would have been the largest merger between two Japanese companies in history; the talks subsequently were suspended. In November 2012, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Hitachi agreed to merge their thermal power generation businesses into a joint venture to be owned 65% by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and 35% by Hitachi; the joint venture began operations in February 2014. In June 2014 Siemens and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries announced their formation of joint ventures to bid for Alstom's troubled energy and transportation businesses.
A rival bid by General Electric has been criticized by French government sources, who consider Alstom's operations as a "vital national interest" at a moment when the French unemployment level stands above 10% and some voters are turning towards the far-right. MHI has aerospace facilities in Nagoya, Komaki and Mississauga, Canada. In the 1950s the company began to re-enter the aeros
