The need for infrastructure investment
What happens if the financial market meltdown does eventually solidify yet remains flat for some months, even into a new administration? My guess is the new president and Congress will begin pumping huge amounts of money into the economy to prevent stagflation. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s approach was to pump money into the U.S. economy (which was isolationist at the time rather than global, as it is today), by putting people to work on major infrastructure projects that we continue to enjoy. If "spend, spend, spend" becomes the government’s mantra, then spend it on infrastructure development.
This scenario may be a buzzkill for our 401k accounts, but it just might be the breakthrough our manufacturing sector needs to rejuvenate nuclear power. In the 1980s, there were about 400 nuclear suppliers and 900 nuclear-certified companies in the U.S. Today, those numbers have shrunk to fewer than 80 suppliers and 200 certifications. Furthermore, Japan Steel Works (JSW) is the only global supplier (other than Russia) for forgings greater than about 350 tons, and it’s limited to five or six of these forgings a year. JSW expects to increase production to eight or nine forgings by 2010, but it already has a full order book through 2016. There are unconfirmed reports that buyers are paying a premium of $100 million for a booking.
The question may become: Will our new president and Congress stand tall like FDR and invest in infrastructure that will support future economic competitiveness, such steel mills that can produce these necessary forgings and other key nuclear components? Or will they merely mail out another series of "stimulus checks" that will be soon spent and quickly forgotten?
Desperately seeking qualified workers
The U.S. graduates about 70,000 engineers each year, yet only 1,900 of those were enrolled in a nuclear engineering degree program in 2007, up from a low of 500 in 1999, according to a recent workforce study by the American Physical Society. The NRC recently made grants totaling $20 million to 60 schools that are reconstituting their nuclear engineering curriculums, so that’s a start. In contrast, that same study found that about 35% of the current nuclear workforce will reach retirement age in the next five years, which is consistent with data describing the entire power generation industry.
I am deeply concerned about our diminishing nuclear infrastructure and how declining markets will slow the development of new nuclear plants. As for keeping a qualified workforce, who still thinks the senior staff are retiring anytime soon?
--Dr. Robert Peltier, PE, Editor-in-Chief
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