added operating hours to combined-cycle
plants that have seen limited service during
the past few years. Both hydroelectric and
gas-fired plants cut into coal-fired generation in 2009, as did off-peak wind generation
in some regions of the U.S. In the midst of
this uncertainty, nuclear power steadfastly remained the industry’s lowest-price generator
and most reliable source of baseload electricity (Table 2).
One key reason for the solid performance
of the nuclear power industry over the past
decade is the quality of the plant staffs and
their dedication to the safe use of nuclear energy to produce electricity. There is no single
statistic available to compare the quality of
employees across the nuclear industry, or any
industry for that matter, so benchmarking
plant staffing is the next best statistic. It’s a
numbers game with the winner being those
plants that can most efficiently use their limited pool of talent.
clear Committee as an association of utility
professionals representing all 104 nuclear
plants in the U.S. as well as those located
in China, Canada, France, Japan, Romania,
and Spain. The committee’s primary goal
is to benchmark plant metrics for nuclear
plant operating cost, staffing, and performance data. Having previously reported on
plant operating cost benchmarks, this article
continues with U.S. nuclear power industry
staffing benchmarks.
Before jumping into the data, a few ca-
veats are required. POWER has exclusive
access to the EUCG nuclear committee da-
tabase, but that access has limitations. For
example, the data presented do not differ-
entiate between nuclear power technologies,
such as pressurized water or boiling water
reactors. Also, none of the data have any
uniquely identifying information and are as
submitted by each plant. Finally, plant staff-
ing data in this article are limited to three
categories of workers, although the database
has a much more comprehensive breakdown
of job categories.
Plant Staffing Trends
Average plant staffing at U.S. nuclear power
stations peaked in the 1970s and 1980s with
A New Set of Benchmarking Data
Our first nuclear benchmarking article,
“Benchmarking Nuclear Plant Operating
Costs,” was published in the November
2009 issue of POWER with the cooperation
of the EUCG Nuclear Committee (see sidebar), and we promised more would follow.
In that article we introduced the EUCG Nu-
1. Total U.S. nuclear industry average staffing by plant (2004–2008).
Staffing includes on-site and off-site employees and baseline contractors. The split between
worker groups has remained reasonably constant over the past five years of reported data.
Source: EUCG
Baseline contracters Utility off-site employees Utility on-site employees
70,000
60,000
EUCG Nuclear Commit-
tee Meets in April
The nuclear committee of the EUCG
meets twice a year to share data and
industry practices collected through
membership surveys. The extensive peer
network gives members the opportunity to raise questions or survey other
member utilities on key issues between
meetings. Standard benchmarking reports are made available to members
beginning with the “Early Exchange,” a
high-level view of industry cost trends
released in January of each year. That
report is followed by plant and unit
performance and by nuclear operating
costs, capital, and staffing reports released throughout the year.
The next committee meeting is scheduled for April 11–14, 2009, in St. Louis,
Missouri. For more information about the
EUCG and the meeting’s agenda, contact Executive Director Pat Kovalesky at
623-572-4140 or Chair of the Nuclear
Committee David Ward (
dr.ward@duke-energy.com), or visit www.eucg.org.
Number of FTE staff
50,000
40,000
30,000
20,000
10,000
0
2004
2005
Year
2006
2007
2008
2. Industry average number of workers at U.S. nuclear power plants
(2004–2008). Average plant staffing, including on-site and off-site employees and baseline contractors, has changed less than 1% over the past five years of reported data. Source:
EUCG
Baseline contracters Utility off-site employees Utility on-site employees
1,200
Average FTE wokers per plant
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
2004
2005
Year
2006
2007
