PIKETON, Ohio -- It's official. An alliance of four American companies is forming to pursue the development of a new nuclear power plant at the U.S. Department of Energy's site in Piketon.
NBC 4 reported with the FAST FACTS.
“The time is right to put nuclear power on the American energy agenda,” Governor Ted Strickland said.
The Southern Ohio Clean Energy Park Alliance is comprised of Duke Energy, AREVA, USEC Inc., UniStar Nuclear Energy and the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative.
The plan is to transform the former weapons site into an energy production center with the potential to create thousands of construction jobs and 400 to 700 permanent operational jobs.
Strickland said the effort will revitalize this region's economy.
Duke Energy will manage the project as the alliance requests DOE funding for the project's initial phase, including an early site permit.
Strickland said Ohio generates and uses more electricity than all but four other U.S. states and only 18 countries use more electricity than Ohio.
“This is the new beginning we have all been waiting for,” Strickland said.
That revitalization may not come during Strickland's term, though.
The process for getting federal approval takes several years – that’s before construction could even start.
Construction could create as many as 3,000 jobs, and were the plant to become operational, between 400 to 700 full-time positions would follow.
“That's a lot of jobs, a lot of material going into the project that's going to benefit the whole five-, six-county area,” Ross County Commissioner Frank Hirsch said.
“To build a nuclear plant in the U.S., it takes at least a decade from the time you conceive it until the time you turn it on,” Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers said.
Rogers said the average nuclear power plant in America pays nearly $40 million a year in local labor costs. It generates approximately $430 million in local sales of goods and services and contributes nearly $20 million a year in local and state taxes.
“It's going to be the Renaissance of manufacturing in this country,” Senator George Voinovich said.
But as enthusiastic as elected officials were in touting the potential economic benefits, Rogers was equally as careful to caution that Ohioans were several years away from construction.
“The way to think about this is ... this is the beginning of the beginning,” he said.
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