"It is true that our subsidiary Westinghouse is holding negotiations with the aim to get final contracts but no decision has been made at the moment," Toshiba said in a statement.

The comment followed a report by the Nikkei economic daily that the group was set to win deals worth a combined 1.4 trillion yen (13.7 billion dollars) to build four nuclear power plants in the United States.

The orders are from utilities Scana Corp. and Southern Co. to build two plants in South Carolina and two in Georgia, the daily said.

The deals would bring the value of orders that the Toshiba group has won for the past year to more than three trillion yen. It won another order in the United States last month as well as deals in China in mid-2007, it said.

Toshiba invested almost 4.16 billion dollars to take 77 percent of US nuclear power plant maker Westinghouse Electric in 2006 from British Nuclear Fuels.

The sale fetched more than twice as much money as expected amid a renewed interest in nuclear energy in the United States as international energy firms are competing to secure nuclear fuel amid growing energy demand.

Toshiba's stake in Westinghouse fell to 67 percent from 77 percent last year as it sold 10 percent shares to Kazakhstan's state-run energy company Kazatomprom for 540 million dollars.

The facilities, in the US under the new deals, are slated to go on-stream between 2016 and 2019.

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