Presumably nuclear reactor construction requires more skill than building houses or whatever. And this is for people with absolutely zero prior experience, so not counting experienced people, not counting management, not counting various overhead (payroll taxes, HR, etc., which is often significant).
I would not be surprised if components had a similar story to the workers: nuclear means extremely specialized, and that means the normal rules for commodity resources may not apply. For such a political project, it also would not surprise me if certain things were required to be purchased from US suppliers even if they aren't the lowest bidders.
I don't know exactly where all of the difference comes from, but the situation seems more complicated than simply hiring standard construction workers at average salary and buying commodity components from international suppliers.
Also, you probably want to double the salary figure to get an idea of the total compensation cost to the company doing the hiring. A $70k worker can easily have a compensation package that costs $140k to the company doing the hiring, depending on the exact benefits and what sort of discounts the employer can wring from insurance companies, if most employees have families, if there's relocation assistance, etc. Since there aren't a lot of qualified people to work in the nuclear industry I'd expect the packages to be pretty decent.
http://money.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2008/03/13/a-...
Presumably nuclear reactor construction requires more skill than building houses or whatever. And this is for people with absolutely zero prior experience, so not counting experienced people, not counting management, not counting various overhead (payroll taxes, HR, etc., which is often significant).
I would not be surprised if components had a similar story to the workers: nuclear means extremely specialized, and that means the normal rules for commodity resources may not apply. For such a political project, it also would not surprise me if certain things were required to be purchased from US suppliers even if they aren't the lowest bidders.
I don't know exactly where all of the difference comes from, but the situation seems more complicated than simply hiring standard construction workers at average salary and buying commodity components from international suppliers.