How many jobs would be created under a re-vamped nuclear power industry?

It depends on when you ask.

Today, President Obama announced $8.33 billion in federal loan guarantees for the construction of two new 1,100-megawatt nuclear reactors, at a single power installation in Georgia.

"Compared to a similar sized coal plant, the new ... units will avoid significant greenhouse gas emissions each year: 16 million tons of carbon dioxide, 3,900 tons of nitrogen oxides, and 5,500 tons of sulfur dioxide," states a Department of Energy press release about the loan guarantees.

Speaking today in Maryland at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 26 headquarters, President Obama said that the new plants will create thousands of "well-paying, permanent jobs in the years to come."

I do my best to report agnostically on the potential of nuclear power as a climate change solution. But I do have to call foul on what seem to be very optimistic jobs predictions on President Obama's part...just as I did last October, when then-presidential candidate Senator John McCain said at a debate that building "a whole bunch" of new nuclear power plants could create "millions of new jobs."

Here's what my research at that time uncovered:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Industry-Occupation Employment Matrix, 11,538 people were employed in 2006 as nuclear engineers, nuclear power reactor operators, and nuclear technicians.

According to the Department of Energy's Energy information Administration, there were 104 nuclear power plants operating in the U.S. at the end of 2007.

Since no new nuclear power plants have come online in the U.S. since 1996, and none have closed since the late 1970s, that works out to around 111 skilled workers per plant, on average.

Allowing for a generous supply of support staff -- security, accounting, administrative support, etc. -- we could estimate around 1,000 employees per plant, or 104,000 jobs total at present.

A recent study by Oxford Economics, a global economic forecasting consultancy, concluded that if the U.S. nation built 52 new nuclear reactors -- in other words, increased our nuclear power infrastructure by 50% -- it would create around 47,000 permanent, full time plant jobs by 2030.

There would be roughly another 7,000 jobs created in "enrichment plants" and "recycling plants," according to this study -- for a total of 54,000 permanent nuclear facility jobs.

Add in jobs created indirectly, and Oxford Economics estimates around 96,000 permanent jobs total, from 2027 onwards. (That's divided by 52 new plants, remember.)

As for non-permanent jobs:

At the peak of construction, each plant would create 2,350 construction jobs, with another 2,750 (1.17 per construction worker) created in the wider economy, according to Oxford Economics -- upwards of around 143,000 jobs total.

Add in jobs for building "recycling and enrichment" facilities, and Oxford hikes the number to 268,000. Again, this would be at the peak of the construction cycle; most years would employ fewer people.

Using this analysis, for an expansion of nuclear power to create over 1.5 million jobs at any one point, we would have to be building upwards of 300 new plants simultaneously.

So coming back to the present, let's say a wholly new nuclear plant would create around 1000 permanent jobs -- the bulk of them support rather than skilled labor -- and maybe five times that many during construction.

How many will two new reactors at an existing facility create?