JUNE 2008 American Recycler Newspaper

Nucor Corporation has applied for a permit to build an iron-making facility in St. James Parish, Louisiana. The new company would be called “Nucor Steel Louisiana.”

Over the past two years, Nucor has evaluated multiple sites both in the United States and abroad. The competitiveness of Louisiana’s proposed incentive package, including significant infrastructure improvements, and the State’s ability to move quickly were very important in the analysis. After taking into account all of these factors, the only United States site still under consideration is a large site on the Mississippi River in St. James Parish, Louisiana. Sites outside of the United States are still under active consideration.

The project is not a certainty. Regardless of the ultimate site chosen for the project, permits have to be issued and Nucor’s board must approve the selection of the site and the capital investment. If the project is ultimately built in the United States, it would be the first greenfield pig iron facility built here in more than 30 years.

Nucor has selected advanced heat-recovery coke technology to be used in this facility. Unlike conventional coke facilities, this coke plant would capture waste heat and use it to produce power, making the operation self-sufficient in power.

The proposed facility would capture waste energy from the blast furnaces to produce power over and above their requirements. By the second phase of this project, the facility would be producing 500 MW of power, of which 250 MW would be supplied to the grid, completely offsetting the emissions that would have been released had a facility been constructed to generate this new source of power.

The facility will have slag granulation technology that produces a valuable by-product used by the cement industry, completely offsetting the emissions they would have created to manufacture the same product.

If the project is located in St. James Parish, Nucor would build a new high-capacity port on the river capable of handling ocean vessels, as well as barges of coal and pig iron. This project would create a lot of jobs and stimulate the economy. The project‘s first phase would require a $2 billion investment and would directly create 2,000 jobs during peak construction. Five hundred permanent Nucor jobs would be created, earning an average annual salary of $75,000, plus benefits; roughly twice the area’s median household income.

If the second phase is built, Nucor would invest an additional $1 billion for a second 3,000,000-ton blast furnace and increase permanent employment to 750.

It’s estimated that St. James Parish would earn an additional $3.3 million annually in sales tax receipts and new business sales in the Parish would rise by almost $1.2 billion annually.