I'm willing to bet we see a big change in the nuclear industry come out of this.
The nuclear facility fueling and maintenance business is a profitable, but dying business, as most of the nuclear plants are aging out. It's sort of like being the most profitable mainframe vendor -- not very relevant.
To make money on nuclear, you need to build more facilities to replace the declining stock, and Westinghouse/Toshiba cannot seem to manage doing that anymore given the market conditions.
End of the day, these big nuclear plants are an albatross. The capital investments required to build them are too big to survive without heavy ratepayer subsidies in an era where energy prices are volatile. In New York, energy ratepayers are plowing a half billion a year into direct subsidy of a few plants because they are uncompetitive compared to gas and hydro for meeting base demand and wind/solar for peak demand.
It sounds like a weird way to spend money for fun in my opinion. The only other explanation is that they actually need this. Keep in mind that power generation in the UAE is nearly 100% oil-based.
Considering the geopolitical aspects of nuclear power along with dual use knowledge and technology, it is probably not a weird way to spend money from their perspective.
They paid X billion dollars for an asset (Nokia's devices unit). The asset was recorded as being worth X billion dollars on Microsoft's balance sheet (this is called "goodwill" -- the value is what they paid, not an objective assessment).
When they shut down the unit, that asset obviously ceased to have any value, and all the goodwill that was on the balance sheet materialised as a loss. But in fact the money had been paid out years earlier (when the acquisition completed), so at this point the loss was only on paper.
It's sort of like if you pay $400 for an Apple Watch assuming you'll be using it all the time to improve your health. Two years later, you still haven't gone to the gym and you find the watch collecting dust in a drawer, so you must admit to yourself that the device was not an investment and your $400 were lost.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rodadams/2017/02/14/toshiba-cha...