Due to recent legislative incentives and a general change in the public eye towards environmental and energy issues, a renewed interest in building nuclear power plants has taken place in the U.S. The Nuclear Regulato...Due to recent legislative incentives and a general change in the public eye towards environmental and energy issues, a renewed interest in building nuclear power plants has taken place in the U.S. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has also recently given approvals to build four nuclear reactors in two southeast states, which further indicates the resurging interest in nuclear power in the U.S. Such approvals, however, do not specifically address the impact on having a constrained labor force when manufacturing and constructing multiple reactors. Key findings include the comparison of a constrained and unconstrained workforce on construction and manufacturing completion times, the identification of peak labor requirements based on different construction schedules, and the development of training estimates to ensure the workforce and industry are prepared for the new jobs being created. Results suggest that a shorter planned construction timeline is effective when the workforce is moderately constrained to unconstrained. However, with a severely-constrained starting workforce, a longer construction timeline is preferred. For multiple reactor plans, spreading out the construction start dates outperforms all other construction start date schedules. In particular, heavily compressed start dates could effectively kill a resurgent nuclear industry, especially if workforce expansion is not pursued simultaneously.展开更多
文摘Due to recent legislative incentives and a general change in the public eye towards environmental and energy issues, a renewed interest in building nuclear power plants has taken place in the U.S. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has also recently given approvals to build four nuclear reactors in two southeast states, which further indicates the resurging interest in nuclear power in the U.S. Such approvals, however, do not specifically address the impact on having a constrained labor force when manufacturing and constructing multiple reactors. Key findings include the comparison of a constrained and unconstrained workforce on construction and manufacturing completion times, the identification of peak labor requirements based on different construction schedules, and the development of training estimates to ensure the workforce and industry are prepared for the new jobs being created. Results suggest that a shorter planned construction timeline is effective when the workforce is moderately constrained to unconstrained. However, with a severely-constrained starting workforce, a longer construction timeline is preferred. For multiple reactor plans, spreading out the construction start dates outperforms all other construction start date schedules. In particular, heavily compressed start dates could effectively kill a resurgent nuclear industry, especially if workforce expansion is not pursued simultaneously.
