Clean Energy Insight - Moving Energy Forward

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A long slow recovery of the economy with job growth tentatively scheduled on the back end has caused our government to spend nearly a trillion dollars on “stimulus.”   Job creation is supposed to be at the heart of this spending and the results are mixed at best.

As much as 50 billion dollars in federal loan guarantees were almost  included in the stimulus package this Spring which could have allowed for the construction of 7 to 10 new nuclear power plants all in different states across the country.   Unfortunately, the loan guarantee amount was reduced by Rep. Waxman (Dem, CA) at the last minute to 18 billion dollars, which would allow the construction of only 3 new plants.

A quick refresher of what a loan guarantee is: essentially, the government co-signs on a construction loan but pays no cash in the process. The reason this is done is to lower the risk of the loan, which lowers the interest rate.   The lowering of the interest rate makes the large investment more manageable for the utility and incentivizes them to start construction sooner.   In this instance it would be economic stimulus without spending. This cash free type of stimulus is a beautiful thing in this poor economy.

So, if EPRI (Electric Power Research Institute) and others say we need more nuclear plants to meet the nation’s energy needs and maintain clean air standards, and the economy is desperate for job creation, then loan guarantees are a no brainer.   The current three loan guarantees are not enough and we need more to add job creation into this economic recovery. Our congress needs a sense of urgency in the right direction on this issue, and currently the urgency is all going to other issues besides job creation.

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The ABC affiliate in San Diego is reporting that a replacement project at one nuclear power plant will temporarily employ 1,000 people and could generate business of more than $300 million.  If this is just a temporary project, think what a new plant could do in terms of jobs, external business, and tax revenue!  The news report also states that the $670 million project will save utility users as much as $1 billion in replacement energy!

Nuclear Project To Create SoCal-Area Jobs

SAN ONOFRE, Calif. — A massive construction project to replace integral parts of Southern California’s only nuclear generators will begin this month, Southern California Edison announced Monday.

The main phase of a $670 million project will create more than 1,000 temporary jobs and generate roughly $300 million in spending benefiting Southern California businesses, the utility announced. The two nuclear generators perched on the side of the Pacific Ocean, at the San Diego-Orange county line, will each get two new steam generators inside the containment domes in the project. Each new generator is 65 feet tall, 22 feet in diameter and weighs 640 tons.

The generators absorb heat from the nuclear piles, and transfer it to water, flashing it into steam. That steam is then routed through special pipes to turn massive turbines and generate about 20 percent of the region’s electricity on a normal day.

The four original steam generators are approaching the end of their service life, Edison said. The California Public Utilities Commission in 2005 approved a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis that concluded replacing steam generators would save utility customers as much as $1 billion during the next two decades, when compared to the likely cost of obtaining from other sources the 2,200 megawatts of power the plant generates. Edison has had to take special steps to plan to slice into the containment domes, which are built with concrete that encases cables that were stretched tight to keep the structure intact. Cutting those cables, without jeopardizing the domes, required engineers to practice on a similar dome at a decommissioned power plant near Sacramento. The largest pieces of the new generators arrived via barge at Oceanside last winter, and were creeped up the beaches of Camp Pendleton over a ponderous, months-long effort. SCE plans to replace the two steam generators in the northern unit this fall and those in the southern unit during the fall of 2010. Each generator will be off line about 100 days for the changeovers. The utility said San Onofre is one of the last plants in the U.S. nuclear power fleet to replace its steam generators. The process has been successfully carried out by 49 of the 58 U.S. plants of similar design without a serious safety incident, Edison said. The construction project will be reviewed and monitored by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Edison said.

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Apparently, Westinghouse read my last post on skilled labor job opportunities in the Nuclear field.  Coincidentally or not, they just announced a need for 100 new skilled labor positions at their new $21Million Chattanooga facility.  Read here:

Fission for new jobs

By Mike Pare

Westinghouse Electric could add another 100 employees at its new $21 million Chattanooga facility depending on business, an official for the company’s nuclear services division said Thursday.

Westinghouse unveiled its boiling water reactor training center and welding institute at Centre South Riverport. The 65,000-square-foot facility is aimed at training employees and customers on the safe maintenance and refueling of the reactors in nuclear power plants.

Nick Liparulo, Westinghouse’s senior vice president of nuclear services, said the company is up to about 130 people in the city and could add another 100 workers within a year or so if business opportunities come through.

When Westinghouse first announced its Chattanooga expansion in March 2008, it had about 75 workers.

Mr. Liparulo said the company, a division of Toshiba Group, already has orders for 10 new nuclear power units. Six are in the United States and four in China, he said.

Mr. Liparulo cited the city’s available work force as a reason why Chattanooga was picked by the company for the expansion.

Hamilton County Mayor Claude Ramsey called the facility “a big win.”

Mr. Ramsey said potential workers need to be trainable.

“If you’re not educated, you’re going to miss the boat,” he said.

According to Westinghouse, its service technicians can earn $60,000 a year or more.

David Howell, Westinghouse’s vice president of field services, said company officials believe nuclear power is necessary for the energy strategy for the United States and world.

“Safe, clean, reliable nuclear power is essential for the future and we are going to be a part of it,” he said.

The welding institute has the capacity to certify 288 students a year to work in nuclear and non-nuclear plants.

The company has had a facility off Riverfront Parkway near the Alstom plant. It bought the former Metals USA building at the riverport and undertook a large-scale upgrade and addition.

The building is equipped with a full-scale, 85-foot-deep reactor and pool mockup serviced by a refueling bridge and overhead cranes. Westinghouse officials noted that digging such a deep hole into the ground next to the Tennessee River “was not an easy task.”

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Dan Yurman at Idaho Samizdat recently posted this insight into upcoming job opportunities in the nuclear industry on CoolHandNuke.com (nuclear job recruiting website).  As Dan states on his Idaho Samizdat post, this article is targeted at new college grads looking for jobs. This has been one of the driest seasons for new college grad hiring rates recent history. It is important that the industry gets out there and makes the job opportunities in the industry known to this demographic.

I, for one, as a young civil engineering student had no idea of the opportunities that the nuclear field had to offer to civil engineers.  Everyone I went to school with had grandiose plans of designing bridges, roads, and skyscrapers.  I just wanted to design something big.  When I stumbled upon a nuclear engineering company at a university career fair, I found that the nuclear industry was a fit for me.

Another demographic that is hardly acknowledged is skilled laborers.  When was the last time you heard of programs targeted at high school students encouraging them to go to vocational school and become skilled laborers?  Less than 15% of my high school graduating class in Southwest Virginia attended a four year university.  It is really frustrating for me to hink of the missed opportunities for some of those kids.  It’s not their fault that the politically correct message to send to high school students is that they must attend college.  The nuclear industry poses a great opportunity for thousands of skilled laborers to become trained and employed.

Let’s hope that the message gets out.

Targeting nuclear job growth opportunities

And how to avoid a few potholes in the road to employment

By Dan Yurman, Idaho Samizdat

The nuclear energy industry has two major growth sectors which should be commanding the attention of job seekers with backgrounds in mechanical, electrical, chemical, and nuclear engineering. The sectors that are ramping up are design and construction of new plants and license renewals for current operating plants.

New college graduates should pay particular attention to plants with Early Site Permits (ESP). The reason is that they grant the utility building the reactor limited authority to begin some work at the plant site while the full license is still in review.

A good example is the Vogtle site being expanded by the Southern Company (NYSE:SO). The NRC is expected to issues an ESP by the end of August. It clears a number of safety and environmental issues and with it the NRC gives the utility a green light to start site preparation work. Also, it is a boost in confidence for investors and ratepayers and it bolsters public support for the entire project.

It is a clear signal to the utility and the engineering procurement contractors (EPC) building the plant to start hiring engineers and skilled crafts. Assuming the plant gets a license in 2011, it could generate 3,000 construction jobs and several hundred permanent plant jobs for the twin Westinghouse AP1000 reactors. They are scheduled to enter revenue service in 2016-2017 and have operational lifetimes of at least 60-years.

Currently, the nuclear industry has 17 applications pending with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for new reactor combined construction and operating licenses. Of these more than half, including, reactors in Maryland, North & South Carolina, Florida, and Texas, are most likely to be under construction by 2012. A new reactor project will involve 3,000-5,000 construction workers and a permanent workforce of 400-700 people once in operation.

The reactors in the southeastern U.S., all Westinghouse AP1000s, will be built by the The Shaw Group which has a 20% equity stake in Westinghouse. To support this massive scale of construction, the two firms are building a $300 million nuclear reactor manufacturing facility in Louisiana.

The two firms announced in 2008 that the companies will build the first module fabrication and assembly facility focused on constructing components for new and modified nuclear reactors in the United States. The facility will be located at the Port of Lake Charles, LA.

In addition to constructing components for new and modified nuclear reactors, the new Lake Charles facility will have the capability to manufacture modules for chemical sites and petrochemical plants round the world. It will create at least 1,400 jobs in Lake Charles over the next five years. Starting salaries for undergraduates with engineering degrees range are about $50-60,000/year.  If you have a taste for working overseas, Westinghouse is building four new reactors in China.

Last month Areva and Northrup Grumman announced plans and broke ground in July to build a similar facility in Newport News, VA, at a similar scope and scale and with similar job opportunities.  Similarly, Areva is building new reactors in Finland, France, India, and China.   Areva will also build reactors in the U.S. in Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio. The firm says it will hire 15,000 new workers in the next few years.

Additionally, the engineering procurement contractors such as Bechtel, URS, and similar firms found in the top 20th percentile of the Engineering News Record 500 are also hiring to work in the nuclear industry.

Work on reactor relicensing is just as intense

As of summer 2009 more about half of the nation’s 104 nuclear reactors have gone through relicensing by the NRC for another 20 years. Currently, 12 more are pending and are likely to make it all the way through the NRC process. The relicensing process is just as demanding as a new license. The NRC holds the utility’s feet to the fire since it will be issuing a permit good for 20 years.

A related work area is the “uprate” path for some reactors which boosts its power output by changes to the reactor, turbines, and balance of plant. All of these functions require highly skilled engineering talent.

Most of the relicensing activities have been trouble free, but two bear watching to see how things develop at these sites. They are Indian Point in New York and Vermont Yankee both of which are beset by anti-nuclear elected officials and citizens groups who support them.

While both plants have good odds to be relicensed, the hostile political environments in both states toward nuclear power makes these plants unattractive for recent graduates entering the industry. These two sites are the exception as the majority of renewals go according to plan.

Common areas for job opportunities

All three areas share common areas where new jobs can be found. Here are a few of them.

• New plant design & construction
• Operating plant services
• Safety analyses
• Nuclear procurement and construction quality assurance
• Pipe & pump fabrication and systems
• Electrical, instrumentation, and plant control systems

In summary a candidate with a recent engineering degree has many opportunities for long and beneficial employment in the nuclear industry.

( By Lisa Peterson )

Nuclear power is on the brink of a renaissance. New nuclear power plants are planned to be built; which means the nuclear industry has the potential to provide thousands of people with jobs, in fields such as construction and engineering, to name a few. This will create major positive impacts on the economy.

The nuclear industry is, therefore, in need of new talent. Charlotte, NC has been named the supposed “hub” for this nuclear renaissance in the United States, drawing scores of people to the area to work in the nuclear industry. Companies like Shaw, Westinghouse, Areva, URS/Washington, and Toshiba all have offices in Charlotte.  Utilities who employ many nuclear power plants in their fleets such as Duke Energy, Progress Energy, and The Southern Company are nearby as well.  Listen to this radio program that aired on Wednesday, May 6, (WFAE 90.7 FM) that discusses the positive impact that nuclear power can have on the overall national economy, the environment and the influx of jobs it can bring to the Charlotte area.

http://www.wfae.org/wfae/18_93_0.cfm?do=detail&id=10002