It has been the policy of Nuclear Green to keep track of factors which contribute to new energy costs. Yesterday an NRG Energy press release on a labor contract contained important information:Nuclear Innovation North America LLC (NINA), the nuclear development company jointly owned by NRG Energy, Inc. (NYSE:NRG) and Toshiba Corporation, has announced an agreement for the Building and Construction Trades Department (BCTD) of the AFL-CIO to provide skilled union labor to construct the two new nuclear units at the South Texas Project (STP).
Approximately 6,000 people will work up to 25 million hours to build the new units, STP 3&4, which are located about 100 miles southwest of Houston in Matagorda County, Texas. Construction of the new units is expected to begin in 2012, once the expansion receives its Combined License from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and should last five years with unit 3 coming online in 2016 and unit 4 in 2017.Each of the two reactors in the project will be rated at 1.35 GWe. for a total of 2.7 GWe output from the project. Every hour of labor is expected to produce at least 108 watts of generating capacity and an average gross output of 100 watts per hour of labor.
Hat tip to NEI Notes.
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3 comments:
At $1.00/watt just for labor doesn't leave much room to get the capital cost under $2/watt -- which is what's needed to displace coal burning. We need new technologies such as the liquid fluoride thorium reactor.
Maybe less than $1/watt, Robert. Do we know the wage/benefit package for each of those man-hours of labor?
I suspect this package is a lot lower than in, say California or Illinois. I used to use a $60/hr for labor costs but in Texas you could probably knock a 1/3 of that. If it's $40/hr total then the 103 is less than 50 cents per watt.
Charles, can you parse this more?
$1/watt for labor? That's seems high but your math is straightforward. I've been following the installation costs of photovoltaics in Germany. It looks like they are around .30 euro/Watt for home installation and half that for multi-MW projects.
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