Toshiba Corp. said Tuesday its current business plan for nuclear power plant construction is likely to be delayed by a few years due to growing global caution against nuclear power plants.
Toshiba, a maker of the reactors at the Fukushima No. 1 plant, had planned to receive orders for 39 reactors by the business year to March 2016, which would bring roughly ¥1 trillion in sales to the company.
"It is possible it will take two to three years longer" to achieve the business target, President Norio Sasaki said at a news conference on Toshiba's three-year business plan.
"We'll need to see how the global trend of stricter safety regulations will affect" each country's nuclear energy policy.
However, Toshiba didn't change the target number of orders for reactors. Currently, most of its customers are overseas. It is constructing reactors in China and the United States, plans to build plants in Turkey and Vietnam, and has held negotiations with Finland and Britain.
"Without solving the problem in Fukushima, we won't be able to go forward," Sasaki said.
To speed up business growth in the future, Toshiba now plans to spend an additional ¥700 billion for mergers and acquisitions as well as capital investment in social infrastructure and electronic devices in the next three years.
Sasaki also stressed the importance of the renewable energy business.