After staking its future on its pricey 2006 acquisition of nuclear-power firm Westinghouse Electric Co., Toshiba Corp. (TOSYY, 6502.TO) says the gamble is starting to pay off with projections for a steady increase in orders and revenue.

The Japanese electronics conglomerate has positioned nuclear-power systems as a stable counterweight of earnings to its more volatile memory-chip business, which dragged Toshiba deep into the red when the global financial crisis sapped demand for consumer electronic devices.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Toshiba President and Chief Executive Norio Sasaki said the nuclear market is potentially huge, with a need for as many as 1,280 reactors over the next 40 years, or an average of 32 reactors a year, based on forecasts by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

(This story and related background material will be available on The Wall Street Journal Web site, WSJ.com.)

"There is tremendous potential in the business," said Sasaki, who took over the helm at Toshiba in June. A former engineer who started designing piping systems for Toshiba's nuclear-power plants nearly 40 years ago, Sasaki was the point person in its record $4 billion acquisition of a 67% stake in Westinghouse.

Sasaki said the Westinghouse deal has already brought in more revenue than initially projected. Toshiba is targeting 39 new orders for reactors by 2015 while generating one trillion yen, or $10.7 billion, in revenue in the fiscal year ending March 2016 compared to 600 billion yen in the fiscal year just ended.

Nuclear-power systems are a critical element of Toshiba's spending plans over the next three years. It unveiled a plan on Tuesday to invest a total of 1.3 trillion yen in capital expenditures by March 2013, a 4% rise from the prior three-year period, with the bulk of the spending earmarked for semiconductors and its infrastructure business.

Under its three-year business plan, Toshiba said it is also targeting an operating profit of 450 billion yen in the year ending March 2013, up from 117.2 billion yen in the most recent fiscal year. It plans to raise its revenue by 25% to 8 trillion yen over the next three years with a plan to boost its overseas sales ratio to 63% during that period from about 55% in the just-ended fiscal year.

To take the next step in its nuclear business, Toshiba is asking for Japanese government support to win orders for nuclear-power projects in emerging markets. Japanese rivals Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (7011.TO) and Hitachi Ltd. (HIT, 6501.TO) are also eager to land big-ticket projects in developing countries hungry for more electricity.

The majority of current nuclear-power reactors under construction already come from Asia and the Middle East , with more expected in the future, according to the IAEA.

"The emerging markets will be the battleground for new nuclear projects," said David Motozo Rubenstein, an equity research director at MF Global FXA Securities in Tokyo .

However, Japanese firms have lost out on recent deals to bids coordinated by government bodies. Last year, a South Korean consortium claimed a $20 billion nuclear-power project while Vietnam awarded its first nuclear-power project to Russia 's state atomic-energy firm.

As Toshiba and other Japanese firms look to upcoming projects in India and another in Vietnam, Sasaki says the government is starting to play a key role in bidding on new projects, which includes assisting countries with setting up regulatory laws for nuclear power as well as providing financial assurances.

"It was a little late but Japan is getting a support system in place," said Sasaki. "The government support is very critical."

While Toshiba remains committed to keeping up with Samsung Electronics Co. (SSNHY, 005930.SE) in the flash-memory market, Sasaki says it will be more cautious with how it invests in new factories and equipment, even though it expects demand to be boosted by smartphones and solid-state drives, a potential replacement for hard-disk drives.

One major investment is a plan to boost its flash-memory production capacity by building a fifth manufacturing facility at its Yokkaichi plant in central Japan . Construction of the new facility is scheduled to begin in July and be completed in the spring of 2011.

It plans to invest 400 billion yen to 500 billion over the next three years to its chip business, compared to roughly 700 billion yen in the prior three years.

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