Jan 25 - Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News - Patricia Sabatini Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Apparently feeling good about its prospects under Japanese ownership, Monroeville-based Westinghouse Electric Co. yesterday hoisted a big help-wanted sign, offering a $1,000 bounty to employees for referring successful job applicants for the 400 or more openings it expects to have this year.

The nuclear power plant designer, which employs almost 9,000 worldwide, is looking to hire at least 400 people a year corporate-wide over the next six to seven years, with many of the openings in the Pittsburgh region where it employs about 3,000.

The employee referral program was launched a day after Tokyo-based Toshiba Corp. was identified as the winning bidder to buy Westinghouse from British Nuclear Fuels Plc. Toshiba's reported $5 billion offer is expected to win final approval at a BNFL board meeting tomorrow.

Toshiba may have different ideas about hiring, of course. Still, the engineering and electronics giant yesterday indicated it envisioned a bright future for Westinghouse.

"We intend to grow the business, to retain Westinghouse's U.S. identity with Pittsburgh at the center of Westinghouse's U.S. and European activities, and to make continued investments for further growth," Toshiba said in a brief statement confirming its winning bid but declining to disclose the price.

Toshiba, which trumped bids by General Electric and Japan's Mitsubishi, builds and services nuclear reactors but uses a less popular technology than Westinghouse. Because Toshiba doesn't compete directly with Westinghouse, minimal overlap in the two companies' work forces is expected.

Westinghouse spokesman Vaughn Gilbert said the company is hiring in anticipation of a resurgence of nuclear reactor orders and to replace a bubble of employees, hired during the industry's boom years during the 1960s and early '70s, who are retiring. Westinghouse hired 800 people last year but ended up with a net increase of only 400 mainly because of retirements, Mr. Gilbert said.

Most of the openings are for nuclear, mechanical and electrical engineers to do design work, he said. There also are slots for service and repair technicians.

For Toshiba, buying Westinghouse is an attractive way to expand its nuclear power plant business outside Japan at a time the industry is gaining momentum in the face of high oil and natural gas prices, increased demand for electricity and growing environmental concerns about burning fossil fuels. Modern reactor designs also are viewed as safer than those used during the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl disaster eras.

Westinghouse's pressurized-water reactor technology is used in the majority of the world's nuclear power plants and is expected to become even more popular in the future. A Westinghouse-led consortium is one of two contenders vying for contracts to build four nuclear plants in China, the first of potentially two dozen or more the Chinese could seek in coming years. The consortium includes Mitsubishi and the Shaw Group of Baton Rouge, La.

Toshiba reportedly has approached Shaw Group about taking a stake in Westinghouse to try to soothe possible U.S. political concerns about a Japanese firm controlling Westinghouse. A spokesman for Shaw Group declined comment yesterday.

Toshiba reported net income of roughly $430 million in the latest fiscal year ended March 31 and $204 million for the six months ended in September.

The estimated $5 billion tab for Westinghouse is more than double Westinghouse's annual sales of about $2 billion, and more than twice what BNFL expected the company to fetch when it went on the sales block in July.

Besides its Monroeville headquarters and energy systems design center, where about 1,700 people work, Westinghouse's local operations include a research and development center in Churchill; a reactor repair and servicing business in New Stanton; a training and tool-making facility at Waltz Mill in Madison; and a nuclear fuel rod assembly plant in Blairsville, Indiana County.