Bottlenecks may hurt nuke builds: NRG CEO

By Lisa Lee

NEW YORK (Reuters) - NRG Energy Inc (NRG.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Chief Executive David Crane said on Tuesday bottlenecks in labor and equipment could hurt U.S. companies that miss out on the early rush to build new nuclear power plants.

"It's actually going to be riskier to build the fourth or fifth nuclear plant rather than the first one to three," Crane told the Reuters Global Environment Summit.

Last week, NRG Energy became the first company in nearly three decades to file a complete licensing application to build a new nuclear reactor since the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania.

"In a sense whether you are talking about labor or key widgets that there's enough capacity in this country to do the first three," Crane said, adding that the shortage in labor and equipment will probably impact the next round of nuclear construction if they are undertaken concurrently.

U.S. nuclear regulators estimate power companies are readying federal applications to build about 30 new nuclear reactors across the nation.

Crane also said building a nuclear plant as a merchant company, which sells power at competitive prices, rather than at a fixed rate set by regulators, may help with the financing of these expensive projects.

"The idea any individual state rate payers can bear all the risk of a project, history will tell whether states will be willing to take that risk," Crane said.

Crane also stood by the company's cost forecast for the two 1,350-megawatt reactors proposed for south Texas. The price tag of $6 billion to $7 billion for both fell below many cost projections estimated by rival power companies.

"I can't explain why they think it's so expensive," Crane said.

(For summit blog: summitnotebook.reuters.com/)

(Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)