Whitman's New Nuclear Job [1]
Submitted by Diane Farsetta [2] on
At the Nuclear Energy Institute [3]'s (NEI's) recent conference [4], Penn, Schoen & Berland [5] pollster Craig T. Smith [6] said the industry would soon be emphasizing the employment opportunities created by building new nuclear power plants. On June 17, the NEI front group [7] "Clean and Safe Energy Coalition [8]" (CASEnergy) released a white paper titled "Job Creation in the Nuclear Renaissance [9]." CASEnergy co-chair [10] Christine Todd Whitman [11] said, "There's a reason why nuclear plant neighbors are so in favor of nuclear plants, and that's because they're economic generators for their communities." The white paper gives figures of "610,000 high-paying jobs," if "the U.S. builds 33 to 41 new nuclear power plants." But NEI estimates (pdf) [12] that -- under favorable conditions -- four to eight new nuclear plants may come online by 2016. A 2004 study (pdf) [13] by the Union of Concerned Scientists [14] estimated that deriving 20 percent of U.S. electricity from renewable sources by 2020 would create 355,000 "high-paying jobs."