The buzz is back. Five years after the collapse of Enron ana failed California deregulation put the entire electric utility under an all consuming cloud, there is finally talk about building new baseload capacity. While natural gas is now disfavored because of high prices and a too close association with the last boom and bust cycle, more than 100 new coal plants are supposedly in the works. Eight utilities, TVA, GE and Westing-house have formed NuStart Energy to promote resurgent nuclear power, with some observers boldly predicting five new nukes by 2015,12 by 2020, and 50 by 2050. Clean coal has captured the imagination of major industry players like AEP, Cinergy and Southern, which are planning IGCC plants even absent new environmental legislation. After years of layoffs, bad jobs, and vanishing backlogs, the energy construction industry is preparing for a comeback.
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