Japanese manufacturer fears red tape will hit profits after TEPCO confirms meltdowns at three Fukushima reactors.

Toshiba has announced it will push to expand sales in renewable energy rather than nuclear, as workers fighting to contain radioactive spills at the Fukushima Daiichi plant admitted three of the reactors have now suffered meltdowns.

The manufacturing giant had planned to expand nuclear sales to 1 trillion yen (£7.5bn) in four years, but now fears that heightened safety procedures sparked by the ongoing crisis will lead to delays.

Company president Norio Sasaki told reporters yesterday that Toshiba would aim for sales of 350 billion yen (£2.6bn) in solar, hydroelectric, geothermal and wind power; 800 billion yen (£6.1bn) in energy-efficient motors, inverters and batteries; and, after announcing its planned purchase of Landis+Gyr, 900 billion yen (£6.8bn) in smart grid products.

As a result, Toshiba expects to improve its operating profit two times over, rising from 240.3 billion yen (£1.8bn) in March this year to 500 billion yen (£3.8bn) by March 2014.

“If everyone around the world is against nuclear power, there is no point in us saying it is a pillar of our strategy,” Sasaki said. “But it is going to take some time to work out exactly what the environment is.”

Toshiba sent a 1,900-person team to help operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) bring the Fukushima plant under control after it was hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami in March.

The plant suffered at least one known meltdown in Reactor 1, around 16 hours after the earthquake and tsunami struck, but TEPCO today confirmed that a review of its data suggested Reactors 2 and 3 had also been affected.

The company said a “major part” of the fuel rods in Reactor 3 could have melted and fallen to the bottom of the pressure vessel within the first 60 hours of the disaster, while the same thing is likely to have happened in Reactor 2 around 40 hours later.

However, TEPCO spokesman Takeo Iwamoto said the fuel rods are submerged and therefore remained at a safe temperature.

“It is unlikely the meltdowns will worsen the crisis because the melted fuel is covered in water,” Iwamoto said.

The company’s claim that it had not revealed the additional meltdowns until now because it had not fully analysed the data was greeted with scepticism.

“In the early stages of the crisis, TEPCO may have wanted to avoid panic,” Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University, told news agency Reuters. “Now people are used to the situation. Nothing is resolved, but normal business has resumed in places such as Tokyo.”

TEPCO’s efforts are likely to be brought into the spotlight with the arrival of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IEAE) team, which will spend two weeks assessing the situation before presenting its findings in June.

Work continues to cool the fuel rods by pumping water into the reactors, but teams have experienced a series of setbacks.

For example, containers holding the contaminated water are reportedly almost full, and the company has yet to deploy a system to reprocess the water, raising fears of leaks.

Meanwhile, prime minister Naoto Kan is expected to step up efforts to develop a new energy strategy and is reportedly preparing to unveil plans to fit all new buildings with solar panels by 2030 at the G8 summit in France later this week.