Last May, Public Utilities Fortnightly published an independent analysis by Navigant Consulting that provided some great comparisons between various energy technologies. One of the comparisons is the number of jobs created on an equivalent basis.
To analyze the economic and workforce contributions of various energy technologies, the authors began by reviewing the contribution of permanent direct local jobs per megawatt of installed electric capacity for the most common types of generation technologies…
On top of jobs, the analysis calculated the workforce impacts from each technology. Here’s what it said about nuclear:
Nuclear plants create the largest workforce annual income based on both large capacity and being a labor-intensive technology (see Figure 3). The average wages in the nuclear industry compare favorably with other power generation technologies. While nuclear power plant operator wages may approach $50 an hour, the large support staff and security force wages tend to lower the overall average below that of other technologies.
Comments
Jobs, jobs for everyone! Somehow, I don't think it would go over very well.
I don't see how it's bad, the numbers are what they are and your treadmill analogy doesn't convince me otherwise. Not only that, the types of jobs at nuclear plants vary substantially so it's not like workers are being bored to death on a labor intensive manufacturing line.
Touting lots of jobs is just pandering.
You call it pandering, I call it messaging. Maybe you haven't been following, but there is a lot of misinformation out there about the economic impacts of various technologies and quite a bit of it is exaggerated. The Navigant analysis is one of the first ever I've seen that actually aggregates the data on a comparative basis.
Jobs, jobs, jobs, yes, sometimes it may sound dorky. But there are almost 15 million people unemployed in the US and the outlook isn't bright yet. Creating jobs matters to a lot of folks right now. It would be a missed opportunity by us if we didn't provide the correct info when it mattered greatly.
Nuclear jobs are good-paying, high tech jobs that support an educated workforce, and present opportunities for advancement that you would not have shoveling biomass. There is something to be said for the quality of the jobs offered. I have nothing against good, honest manual labor jobs, but given a choice, I prefer the professional environment of engineering and plant operations to operating a rake out in the fields.
There's something wrong with this study. For one thing, installed capacity should be adjusted by capacity factor. Perhaps the whole fuel cycle needs to be considered, or perhaps the term "direct" jobs has been applied inconsistently.
Or another thought is that you have to consider the total costs of everything of the plant (workforce, materials, financing, fuel, etc) and divide it by the production. We already know new nuclear is competitive and existing nuclear is making good money. Maybe the argument you make is that while nuclear is labor-intensive, at least the money is spent on people instead of for fuel like other technologies...
"I would say nuclear would trump coal because it produces zero greenhouse gases, it provides power 24/7, and, probably most importantly, it probably produces more jobs than even solar or wind on a per-megawatt basis." - - Jim Rogers