The US government hopes that a large number of nuclear plants will be built in the US over the next 20 years to cut the country's need for oil. But GE (NYSE: GE) CEO Jeffrey Immelt says they will not be built without incentives from the Feds.

According to the FT, "Immelt said only five to 10 US nuclear power projects were likely to go ahead unless there was a carbon-pricing framework to create incentives for utilities to build more." That may be true, but GE should be quiet about championing aid for building those facilities. GE and Hitachi (NYSE: HIT) have a joint venture to build nuclear plants, and the parties would not want to be seen as sell-serving.

The comments raise a difficult issue. The government and utilities both know that the long-term future of cheap oil looks bad. But building nuclear plants take years, is expensive, and requires passing government safety standards. Over the next decade it may actually be cheaper to continue to use fossil fuels even it the price of oil stays high.

GE will make a lot of money on the move to nuclear fuel, but that does not mean that its call for government help is wrong.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Toshiba Corp. (OTC: TOSBF) saw quarterly operating profit increase of 38% for its latest quarter, due to increases in the sale of flash memory chips and nuclear power plants, according to the Japanese electronics conglomerate. Toshiba is the world's second-largest maker of flash memory chips (the NAND design) behind South Korean competitor Samsung Electronics, and such a large quarterly increase be a telltale sign for the consumer electronics industry.

For example, the storage needs of the world continue to explode every year, but more and more of that insatiable need is being requested by consumers instead of corporate data centers. The form of storage, though, is required to be portable, energy-efficient and super-tiny (think Apple iPod Nano). The solution? NAND flash storage, where Toshiba is a huge player. Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPod line (not the larger, hard drive-based units) and almost every cellphone sold worldwide use some kind of NAND flash storage. As cellphones continue displacing landline phones and grow in capability with portable video and audio players, my guess is that NAND manufacturers will see even brighter days than they have already seen.

Now, here's the sticky part: Toshiba expects NAND prices to fall about 20% in the October-December quarter as the annual price decline continues in that market. Add an annual 50% price decline into the picture and it could strike some as odd. It's not -- this is standard operating procedure considering the supply-demand dynamic taking place. In addition to the red-hot NAND market, Toshiba's division responsible for nuclear reactor building (that's a change, no?) expects an operating profit for the year to come in at over $2.54 billion. Toshiba's largest competitor in that commercial space is General Electric (NYSE: GE).

Well this is probably not going to be promoted under GE's Ecomagination series: GE is expecting two new contracts to build nuclear power plants.

The company already has a series of nuclear power plants under management for Entergy Corp, so this will put GE in a position of being a nuclear plant leader, and part of an initiative by the current administration to invest more in nuclear power. GE will be working on building five new nuclear power plants.

The last nuclear power plant in the US had been finished in 1971, so GE is in position to become the forefront of this total sea change, prompted by fears of foreign oil dominance, high oil prices, and higher need for energy. Another example of GE looking forward.

And with Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore making an impassioned case that nuclear is the true green technology, maybe GE will be able to tout nuclear energy as part of their Ecomagination line of technologies. Or not...