WASHINGTON  The United Steelworkers union has complained that a government-backed plan to build two nuclear reactors in Georgia will create jobs overseas that should go to American workers.  Erik S. Lesser/European Pressphoto Agency  The Vogtle nuclear power plant in Waynesboro, Ga. A new project would create construction jobs at the plant.  Erik S. Lesser/European Pressphoto Agency  Construction vehicles at the Vogtle nuclear power plant in Waynesboro, Ga. Southern Company hopes to operate new reactors.  President Obama announced the government’s approval of an $8.3 billion loan guarantee for the construction of the reactors on Tuesday, saying that one benefit of the project would be to create jobs.  But in a letter sent to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the international president of the union, Leo W. Gerard, said that he was concerned about “the potential foreign sourcing of components for these reactors,” which he said “limits our nation’s ability to address our unacceptably high unemployment rate.”  In the letter, Mr. Gerard also expressed concern that if the parts were manufactured in China, substandard quality might pose a safety issue. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission oversees the safety of nuclear reactors.  The reactor project will create thousands of construction jobs at the site, near Augusta, Ga. And Mr. Obama said that building the reactors would create about 800 permanent jobs.  But according to Westinghouse, the company that designed the reactors’ central components  including the reactor vessel and part of the giant heat exchangers called steam generators  can be obtained only from steel mills in Japan and South Korea, which are certified for the work.  The company said design changes it was already considering would, if adopted, allow American steel makers to compete for contracts. Westinghouse is based in Pittsburgh, but is owned by a Japanese company, Toshiba.  Thomas M. Conway, vice president for the steelworkers union, said that American taxpayers should not bear the burden of loan guarantees that would create jobs abroad. The Energy Department now has $18.5 billion to offer in guarantees for the construction of new nuclear plants. Mr. Obama is seeking to triple that number.  “If we’re going to start shoveling a lot of money at nuclear, and nuclear is part of America’s plan to get less oil-dependent, then we need to build it ourselves,” Mr. Conway said.  Because the construction of nuclear power plants involves heavily unionized workers, labor unions have been mostly supportive. And the president needs that support because the Democratic Party is divided on nuclear power.  Nuclear power is a global industry, and most designs for reactors have been developed by foreign companies or foreign-owned companies, and involve some components that are manufactured only overseas.  Southern Company, which hopes to have a license in hand by the end of next year to build and operate the new reactors in Georgia, has not said what the project will cost. But based on the 70 percent that the loan guarantee is supposed to cover, it would appear to approach $12 billion. Westinghouse said at least 20 percent of that would be spent abroad.  The Westinghouse design includes a freestanding steel structure, about an inch and three-quarters thick, called a containment vessel. The current design calls for the containment vessel to be made of strips of steel, 13 feet wide and 130 feet long, with 11 strips stacked one atop the other. American steel mills are not equipped to manufacture the 13-foot strips, Westinghouse said.  But because the company would like to encourage American companies to compete for the contracts, it is considering changing the design so that it uses strips 11 feet wide, stacked 13 high, said Vaughn Gilbert, a spokesman for Westinghouse.  The law under which the loan guarantees were made, the Energy Policy Act of 2005, does not have a “buy American” clause. But even the Tennessee Valley Authority, which as a federal agency does have such a preference, was forced to buy 20 percent of the components for its Watts Bar Unit 2 reactor from overseas because they were not available in the United States, said Ashok S. Bhatnagar, the authority’s senior vice president for nuclear operations, at a Platts nuclear energy conference in Washington this week.  The fastest-growing nuclear power industry in the world is in China, which has built a factory near Qingdao just to produce extra-large containment vessel plates of the sort needed by Westinghouse. With plans to build up to three-quarters of the world’s new reactors in the coming decade, China needs that factory’s capacity for its own projects, said William P. Poirier, the Westinghouse vice president who oversees the company’s operations in China.  “China is moving very aggressively in all of the areas of clean energy  clean coal, wind, solar and nuclear,” he said.  Matthew L. Wald reported from Washington and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong.
The Obama administration says building a nuclear plant in Georgia would create jobs, but steelworkers said the parts would come from foreign manufacturers.