| Sumario: | This paper proposes to examine two aspects of learning by doing by examining the output produced by a sample of U.S. and foreign nuclear plants over time. First, authors have examined how cumulative plant experience allows a firm to utilize a particular piece of equipment more efficiently, in the case of nuclear power plants how the annual output from a particular piece of equipment increases as experience is gained with it. For a complicated piece of equipment like a nuclear power plant this type of learning includes the identification and correction of particular technical bugs as well as increasing ability of workers to use and maintain the equipment more effectively. Second, authors have examined how suppliers of nuclear power plants learn to produce plants that require shorter break-in or learning periods as cumulative experience in building plants and learning about problems experienced by purchasers of early plants increase. Studies by economists A.D. Searle, Armen Alchian and Werner Hirsch related the amount of labor needed to produce a unit of output to the cumulative number of units produced over time. This study is analogous in that the plant capacity factor and as a result the input of capital to the production of a unit of electricity.
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