Nuclear Plants Could Prove Bright Spot

February 19, 2009

McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Dave Flessner Chattanooga Times Free Press, Tenn.
In the worst economic slump in decades, manufacturers of nuclear
power equipment gathered in Chattanooga Wednesday to talk about how to expand their production and hire more workers to supply an expected
revival in nuclear power.
The Nuclear Energy Institute estimates at least 20,000
construction jobs will be added to eight plants the industry expects
will begin construction by 2011. If all 26 of the reactors proposed to
be built in the United States move forward, NEI projects at least
62,000 construction jobs will be created in the next decade, including
several thousand by the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Already, NEI estimates, more than $4 billion has been invested in
nuclear plant development, creating nearly 15,000 jobs.
"I really believe that you are in the right place at the right
time,"
TVA Senior Vice President Ashok Bhatnagar told more than 300 nuclear
industry vendors during a conference Wednesday at The Chattanoogan.
"Opportunity is knocking."
Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield told industry leaders that
Chattanooga is ready to answer the call and could be at the center of
the industry revival.
"This is a nuclear-friendly city," Mr. Littlefield said. "We are
a city that has an industrial past and a manufacturing future which,
to a great extent, will be built on energy."
Critics of nuclear power dismiss claims of a nuclear power
revival, noting that Wall Street was reluctant to finance new reactors
even before the recent credit crunch.
"The risks are just too huge with nuclear power and the only
renaissance we're seeing is the one built with the taxpayers'
money," said
Michael Mariotte, executive director for the Nuclear Information and
Resource Service, an anti-nuclear group based in Takoma Park, Md. "The
industry tried unsuccessfully in the stimulus package to get $50
billion of loan guarantees, but they still have $18.5 billion in
guarantees -- more than the entire auto industry has received -- and
they are yet to build a new reactor."
Doug Walters, senior director for new plant development at the
Nuclear Energy Institute, acknowledged that the economic slowdown and
credit crunch have combined to lessen the demand and raise the
difficulty to finance new reactors.
"But we do expect we'll see between four and eight units built by
2016," he said.
If the initial reactors are built on time and within budget, Mr.
Walters predicts up to 45 more reactors could be built by 2030 to meet
rising electrical demand and to replace aging fossil plants.
No new reactors have been ordered since 1973, although 17
utilities have applied for one of the streamlined licenses the NRC is
granting for the next generation of nuclear plants. TVA has applied
for a combined operating license to build two Westinghouse AP-1000
reactors in its Bellefonte plant in Alabama. Mr. Bhatnagar said TVA
will decide in about a year whether to proceed with the reactors.
"We're going to have ups and downs in our industry and right now
we're going through a down period (for energy consumption)," he said,
noting that TVA power sales are projected to drop about 5 percent this
year.
"But we still believe that nuclear power is the best option for TVA moving
forward."
Employment at TVA nuclear plants and Custom Engineering's
successor -- Alstom Power and Westinghouse Electric -- is now less
than one-third of what it once was, even with recent additions at
Alstom, Westinghouse and TVA's Watts Bar plant.
At TVA's Watts Bar Nuclear Plant near Spring City, Tenn., TVA has
1,600 workers employed at the Unit 2 reactor, including 680 contract
engineers, 390 union craft workers, 430 support personnel and 100 TVA
employees. By the end of 2010, more than 2,300 workers will be
employed building the Unit 2 reactor.
TVA also has spent $23 million on materials for the newest
reactor at Watts Bar as part of $200 million budgeted for equipment
and materials, Mr.
Bhatnagar said.
Will Jump, a manager at the South Texas Nuclear Generating
Station, which may add two new reactors in the next decade, said the
nuclear industry is far different today from what it was when the last
new reactors were begun three decades ago.
New technologies, management approaches and industry standards
should help bring the next generation of plants on line faster and for
less money than the costly units built when the industry used a
"construct as you go" approach, he said.
"We used a 'John Wayne' approach in the past and didn't learn
from one another," he said. "It's a different world today than it was
then."