Westinghouse Electric Company
🇺🇸 Cranberry Township, US · Active
Westinghouse Electric Company is a US nuclear technology company based in Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania, owned since November 2023 by Brookfield Renewable Partners and its partners (51%) and Cameco (49%). It says it built the first commercial pressurised water reactor at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, and that nearly half of the world's operating reactors use its technology. Its AP1000 pressurised water reactor is in service in China and at Plant Vogtle in Georgia, whose Unit 4 it now uses as the AP1000 reference plant in the US. It also supplies fuel and plant services and is developing the eVinci heat-pipe microreactor. Toshiba owned it from 2006 until after its Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2017. In October 2025 it announced an agreement with the US government on plans for $80 billion of new reactors, and in July 2026 it filed confidentially for an initial public offering.
- Sector
- Fission, Fuel cycle
- Technology
- Heat-pipe microreactor, Pressurised water reactor
- Fuel
- Low-enriched uranium
- Role
- Reactor developer, Supplier
Terms
- Heat-pipe microreactor
- Heat moved by sealed heat pipes rather than pumped coolant or forced convection. No primary pumps and no coolant loop, which suits very small transportable reactors. Heat-pipe describes how heat is moved, not the neutron spectrum. Moderator and fuel vary by design: some designs are fast and unmoderated, others use a graphite or beryllium oxide moderator, with TRISO or metal fuel, usually HALEU.
- Pressurised water reactor
- Ordinary (light) water kept under high pressure so it heats without boiling, transferring heat to a separate steam loop; the water is both coolant and moderator. Fuel is low-enriched uranium oxide pellets in zirconium-alloy rods. The most common reactor type in service worldwide.
- Low-enriched uranium
- Uranium enriched to 5% uranium-235 or less, typically 3 to 5%: the range almost all power reactors use. Formally, anything below 20% is low-enriched; this site holds the band from 5% to just under 20% separately as HALEU, with its 5 to 10% part also tagged as LEU+. A fuel above 5% uranium-235 belongs in one of those, never here, whatever a developer's own materials call it.
Designs
| Design | Developer | Approach | Electrical output per unit | Size class | Licensing stage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AP1000 | Westinghouse Electric Company | Pressurised water reactor | 1,110 MWe claimed | Large reactor | No milestone recorded |
| AP300 | Westinghouse Electric Company | Pressurised water reactor | 330 MWe planned | Large reactor | No milestone recorded |
| eVinci | Westinghouse Electric Company | Heat-pipe microreactor | 5 MWe planned | Microreactor | No milestone recorded |