Fueling Pittsburgh- Westinghouse Says Best Option Is Nuclear

PITTSBURGH,None — There's a lot of talk about solar, wind and Marcellus shale as options for clean-burning fuels of the future.

But locally-based Westinghouse said the best option remains nuclear.

Inside Westinghouse Electric Co.'s new headquarters in Cranberry, you'll find engineers hard at work designing nuclear power plants.

Fifty years ago, the company helped build the first nuclear power plants in the U.S., and now their technology is used worldwide.

Instead of knobs and gauges, operators use sophisticated software to control the nuclear reactor, which has an advanced warning system.

The AP1000 was the first reactor of its kind to win approval from the nuclear regulatory commission, and now Westinghouse has contracts to build four of these plants in China and six in the U.S., beating French, Canadian and Russian competitors.

"These are really big contracts. This is high-stakes, real international competition, and so we're right in the middle of it here in western Pa., which not everybody knows about," said Dan Lipman.

Lipman is the senior vice president of operations. Using a model, he explained how the parts are prefabricated and then assembled on site, like a set of Legos.

"If all goes as scheduled, the first plant in China will be up and running in three years. Our folks are working really hard."

A decade ago, it looked as if nuclear energy was a dying industry, but concerns about global warming and energy independence have lead to what company executives call "the nuclear renaissance."

"We have made the plants simpler, easier to maintain, easier to operate," Lipman said.

The renaissance has led to jobs, and lots of them. Westinghouse hired more than 1,000 workers last year and will hire another 750 this year.

"We have people here from all over the world. They come not just from the nuclear industry, but from other industries to participate in this growth."

And they're tapping into the wealth of local brain power coming from the region's universities.

"We've been blessed here in western Pa. because there are some superb educational institutions," Lipman said.

But the growth is not just in high-paying, white collar jobs, it's also in manufacturing, equipment and supplies that are coming from local companies.

"So there's job creation, not just working for Westinghouse but in our supply chain, and other companies are able to hire and improve their employment picture."

Half of the company's job growth is outside the U.S. Lipman said it helps to be bilingual or even trilingual. Over the years he's done a lot of traveling and speaks Chinese, Italian and Spanish.

"One of the exciting things, and for myself included, is the opportunity to live and work overseas, but we always come back to Pittsburgh, western Pennsylvania. It's our home."

Westinghouse is among the largest electronics companies in the country.

It was established in Pittsburgh in 1886 and employees 120,000 people.

Nearly 50 percent of the nuclear power plants in operation worldwide, and nearly 60 percent in the U.S., are based on Westinghouse technology.

WPXI