Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Energy on Monday released “Coal-to-Nuclear Transitions: An Information Guide,” a resource for energy communities investigating the “economic impacts, workforce transition, and policy and funding considerations associated with coal-to-nuclear transitions,” according to the information guide’s executive summary.
- The information guide is based on a technical study, “Stakeholder Guidebook for Coal-to-Nuclear Conversions,” prepared by researchers at Idaho, Argonne and Oak Ridge national laboratories.
- The study and information guide found that “transitioning from a coal plant to a nuclear one would create additional higher paying jobs at the plant, create hundreds of additional jobs locally and spur millions of dollars in increased revenues and economic activity in the host community,” DOE said in a news release.
Dive Insight:
A DOE study released in 2022 identified more than 300 active or recently retired U.S. coal power plants suitable for hosting advanced nuclear reactors. Though it said more rigorous evaluation is needed to evaluate suitable sites, the coal plants identified in the study met basic human and environmental safety parameters such as local population density, seismicity and flooding potential.
The 2022 study projected 650 net new permanent jobs following the replacement of a large coal plant with an equivalent-sized nuclear plant powered by NuScale Power reactor technology.
Those estimates align with NuScale’s own 60-year economic impact projections of 270 operations jobs and 677 “induced/indirect jobs” for a coal plant site repurposed to host a 12-module, 924-MWe VOYGR-12 facility, according to a NuScale fact sheet shared with Utility Dive.
The DOE information guide released this month projected net direct employment gains between about 30 to 100 full-time workers following a coal-to-nuclear transition, depending on generating capacity. A 900-MWe nuclear plant could add 102 permanent jobs, the guide said.
Such a deployment could also create “in excess of 1,200 construction jobs over three years with significant needs for heavy equipment operators, welders, electricians, pipefitters, plumbers and other workers,” NuScale Power Chief Commercial Officer Clayton Scott told Utility Dive in an email.
Other advanced reactor technologies could also result in jobs added near retiring coal facilities. The coal-fired Naughton Power Plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming, slated for retirement next year, currently employs about 110 union workers, TerraPower Director of External Affairs Jeff Navin told Utility Dive in an interview. The first-of-its-kind Natrium molten salt reactor TerraPower is building nearby will require about 200 permanent employees when it comes online early next decade, Navin said.
“We’ve said that any of those [Naughton] workers who want to continue their work in energy will have the opportunity to do so” at the new nuclear facility, he said.
An existing workforce with “high energy IQ” was the top consideration for TerraPower as it evaluated the Naughton site, ahead of existing transmission and water infrastructure, Navin added.
TerraPower has a memorandum of understanding with PacifiCorp to assess the feasibility of deploying Natrium reactors at three other coal plant sites in Wyoming and two in Utah, Navin said. In 2022, Utility Dive reported that those additional reactors could be deployed by 2035. However, PacifiCorp has canceled those plans, according to an April 1 update to its integrated resource plan.
The DOE information guide notes that many coal plant roles have nuclear analogues. For example, both coal and nuclear plants need a similar number of electrical and electronics engineers, electricians and mechanics, according to the guide. Both generator types also require a similar number of power plant employees, though the number of employees classified as “power plant operators” is far lower at nuclear plants while coal plants have no employees classified as “nuclear reactor operators.”
“A transition to nuclear means we can continue to use the expertise of coal workers and infrastructure developed over decades to achieve our climate goals while delivering well-paid, highly skilled jobs in coal communities,” Benton Arnett, senior director of markets and policy at the Nuclear Energy Institute, told Utility Dive in an email.
The DOE information guide suggests that nuclear safety or the technology itself account for much of the anticipated employment increase following a coal-to-nuclear transition. The guide estimates a 500-MWe nuclear plant would require 20 nuclear engineers, 14 nuclear technicians and 14 security guards, whereas the coal plant it replaced would have required none of those positions.
These nuclear technology jobs are lucrative for jobs that don’t require postgraduate degrees. Nuclear engineers’ and technicians’ median pay was $122,480 and $100,420, respectively, in 2022, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
