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BWXT Launches New Era of Domestic Uranium Enrichment for National Security in Oak Ridge, Tennessee

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BWXT Launches New Era of Domestic Uranium Enrichment for National Security in Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Business

Business

BWXT Launches New Era of Domestic Uranium Enrichment for National Security in Oak Ridge, Tennessee

2026-01-26 20:32 Last Updated At:01-28 15:03

OAK RIDGE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan 26, 2026--

BWX Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: BWXT) announced today the opening of its Centrifuge Manufacturing Development Facility (CMDF) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, marking a major milestone in the company’s efforts to reestablish a fully domestic uranium enrichment capability in support of U.S. national security priorities.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260126595408/en/

In September, the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) awarded BWXT a contract valued at $1.5 billion for a comprehensive program that supports the NNSA’s strategy to ensure a secure and reliable supply of enriched uranium for defense fuel needs. The CMDF is a key element of that program.

“I am so impressed with the speed at which the BWXT team moved, from breaking ground in late June to standing up this facility just seven months later,” said Rex D. Geveden, BWXT president and CEO. “With the CMDF now operational, we are positioned to move centrifuge technology from development into production readiness while strengthening America’s sovereign nuclear supply chain.”

“This facility signifies the kind of speed, focus and capability our national security demands,” said NNSA Administrator Brandon Williams. “By restoring a fully domestic uranium enrichment capability for defense needs, we are ensuring the United States can meet its defense fuel requirements now and into the future, strengthening our nuclear deterrent and maintaining assured second-strike capability.”

“Oak Ridge and East Tennessee continue to be at the tip of the spear to create America’s New Nuclear Future that will secure our energy independence and strengthen our national security,” said Energy and Water Appropriations Chairman Rep. Chuck Fleischmann. “After years of deliberate decline, we are revitalizing our domestic nuclear industry and making America into the global leader in new nuclear. As Chairman of Energy and Water Appropriations and America’s Energy Congressman, I am proud to join BWXT to celebrate the opening of their first Oak Ridge facility that keeps Tennessee as the preeminent leader in new nuclear and ensures America is not reliant on foreign sources of enriched uranium that is essential for our national defense and energy needs.”

“BWXT’s decision to locate in Oak Ridge underscores why Tennessee is a national leader in advanced manufacturing and nuclear innovation,” said Deputy Governor and Tennessee Department of Economic & Community Development Commissioner Stuart C. McWhorter. “With more than 1,100 Tennesseans employed through BWXT’s operations in Oak Ridge and through its subsidiary, Nuclear Fuel Services, the company is creating high-quality jobs while strengthening our state’s role in national security. We are proud to celebrate the grand opening of BWXT’s first Oak Ridge facility and excited to see how the company’s continued investment in our state accelerates Tennessee’s momentum as the U.S. epicenter for nuclear energy.”

The CMDF serves as BWXT’s primary hub for the design, engineering, fabrication and testing of advanced gas centrifuge machines. The facility features precision manufacturing space, in-house quality assurance and testing capabilities and specialized infrastructure to support future centrifuge production. It will accelerate the transition of centrifuge technology from development to production readiness and aligns with national priorities for energy security, defense readiness and advanced manufacturing.

Located in Oak Ridge, a community with deep nuclear expertise, the facility builds on BWXT’s longstanding role in supporting U.S. defense, energy and space programs. Approximately 100 highly skilled professionals are currently working in support of the CMDF and project activities, with plans to expand the workforce as manufacturing activities scale.

The opening of the CMDF represents a key milestone in BWXT’s broader strategy to establish a secure, domestic uranium enrichment supply chain and reinforces the company’s commitment to U.S. national security and technological leadership.

Forward-Looking Statements

BWXT cautions that this release contains forward-looking statements, including statements relating to the performance, impact and value of the Centrifuge Manufacturing Development Facility (CMDF) and of the development and production work being undertaken at the CMDF. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including, among other things, the timing of technology development, our ability to obtain necessary regulatory approvals, licenses and permits in a timely manner and the enforcement and protection of our intellectual property rights. If one or more of these or other risks materialize, actual results may vary materially from those expressed. For a more complete discussion of these and other risk factors, please see BWXT’s annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024, and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. BWXT cautions not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this release and undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, except to the extent required by applicable law.

About BWXT

At BWX Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: BWXT), we are People Strong, Innovation Driven. A U.S.-based company with approximately 10,000 employees, BWXT is a Fortune 1000 and Defense News Top 100 manufacturing and engineering innovator that provides safe and effective nuclear solutions for global security, clean energy, nuclear medicine, space exploration and environmental restoration. BWXT owns and operates 15 manufacturing facilities globally, and its 14 strategic partnerships support the U.S. and Canadian governments at more than two dozen additional locations.

For more information, visitwww.bwxt.com. Follow us onLinkedIn, X, Facebookand Instagram.

The BWXT Centrifuge Manufacturing Development Facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

The BWXT Centrifuge Manufacturing Development Facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

NEW YORK (AP) — On a recent weeknight, three tenants of an aging Bronx building were trading apartment horror stories inside a packed ballroom lined with city bureaucrats.

The occasion was the third in a series of “rental rip-off hearings,” a new forum launched by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for disgruntled renters to air their complaints directly to housing officials — and in some cases, the mayor himself.

As she waited in line, Gulhayo Yuldosheva said she worried that noxious mold in her apartment had worsened her child’s asthma. Nearby, her downstairs neighbor, Marina Quiroz, was showing a video of rats scurrying through her kitchen to a representative of the city’s tenant protection office.

Ann Maitin, a longtime resident of the same building, had just met with the mayor.

“He let me go over my three minutes,” she said, holding up a spiral notebook’s worth of grievances.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist swept into office on a promise of zealous tenant advocacy, framed the event as a struggle session for renters, assuring the standing room only crowd that their stories would guide the city's efforts “to actually hold landlords accountable when they don’t follow the law."

To the residents of 705 Gerard Avenue, this raised a practical problem: No one seemed to know who actually owned their building.

“It feels like such a basic question,” said Maitin, a retired Verizon technician who recently organized the building’s tenant association. “You’d think we’d have the right to that information.”

Their situation is hardly unique. As corporate owners and investor groups have grown their share of the rental market in New York City, they are increasingly shielding their identities behind limited liability companies, or LLCs.

The practice, which has also been spreading nationally, is legal. But experts warn it could complicate Mamdani’s promised crackdown, making it harder for the city and tenants to track the chronically negligent owners whose buildings the mayor has vowed to target and even seize.

“There are these big slumlords that everyone knows are doing predatory investment, but pinning them down is going to be difficult, for the LLC reason,” said Oksana Mironova, a housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society. “That’s a problem for the administration, and it’s even worse for tenants.”

For Yuldosheva and her neighbors, finding their landlord is one of many problems afflicting their six-story building near Yankee Stadium.

Heat and hot water outages are regular enough that some tenants keep a thermometer on their fridge and the city’s complaint hotline on speed dial. Common areas are often filthy, and increasingly populated by drug users. Getting help with an urgent maintenance issue “feels like waiting for Christmas in July,” said Maitin.

During a monthslong elevator outage, a tenant who uses a wheelchair, Tommy Rodriguez, said he was forced to “slide down the steps, like a kid.” Calls to the building management about a repair timeline went unanswered, he said.

Growing up in the building in the 1980s, Rodriguez recalled the previous landlord as a friendly and responsive neighborhood presence.

“This felt like a home before,” Rodriguez said. “Now they treat us the same as the rats.”

A large rodent had recently chewed a hole through his couch cushion. He handled the extermination himself, with a two-by-four.

Recently, tenants received a clue about their landlord, following the partial collapse of another Bronx building. The man identified in news stories as the owner of that building, David Kleiner, shared a Brooklyn office with their building manager, Binyomin Herzl.

A handful of tenants visited each of the building’s 72 units, logging an array of decrepit conditions and unusual alterations.

“We didn’t want to become the next news story,” said Yuldosheva, pointing to a crack in the wall of a bedroom shared by her three children — a result, she feared, of the subway that rumbles just below her windows.

Lawsuits show that Herzl has been ordered to pay more than $100,000 for violations across at least six Bronx buildings, several of which were found by a judge to pose an imminent hazard.

Reached by phone, Herzl said he didn't own any of those properties, but simply acted as a middleman between tenants and the true owners, whom he declined to list. “There’s no one landlord,” he said. “It’s a group of investors.”

Kleiner, who was previously featured on the city’s “worst landlord” list, confirmed his partial ownership of 705 Gerard in a brief phone call, but declined further comment.

Herzl, meanwhile, attributed the tenants’ complaints to “normal wear and tear” of a nearly century old building. He said Mamdani should focus on improving the city’s public housing, rather than going after private landlords.

“Our buildings look like five star hotels against his,” he added.

When landlords refuse to address a serious violation, like heat or hot water outages, the city can step in and order repairs, then bill the owner directly.

In the last three years, inspectors have ordered emergency repairs at 38 buildings that list either Herzl or Kleiner as an owner, according to records provided by the city’s housing department. The men have been billed $446,521 for those repairs.

Mamdani has proposed using such fines as a vehicle to bring distressed rental properties under city stewardship, by aggressively pursuing liens on delinquent landlords and buying up their portfolios through foreclosure auctions.

Just as the city can shut down unsanitary restaurants, Mamdani has said, landlords that “repeatedly put New Yorkers at risk will not be allowed to operate in New York City — with no exceptions."

In reality, the process is resource-intensive and legally fraught. It is made more complex by the nest of LLCs often used by landlords to obfuscate the full scope of their portfolios, according to Cea Weaver, director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants.

“It’d be great to have a better sense of who owns the buildings that we are regulating and overseeing,” she said.

State legislation that would have made it easier to identify LLC owners was recently vetoed by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul amid pressure from landlords.

Kenny Burgos, the CEO of the New York Apartment Association, a landlord lobbying group, said Mamdani’s tenant proposals — including freezing the rent for regulated tenants — would force landlords to cut back on maintenance and services.

“That’s going to take away from the elevator budget, the boiler budget, the heating budget,” he said. “It’s a question of math: These buildings are crumbling because of policy, not because of bad landlords.”

He characterized the rental rip-off hearings as “show trials” that took a “tribal approach” to the city’s affordable housing crisis.

Despite the combative branding — “New Yorkers vs. Bad Landlords,” blares one promotion — the Bronx event mostly resembled a standard constituent service night: City officials fielded questions about local laws, helped residents with paperwork and connected them to service providers.

Maitin left feeling “glad to be heard by someone who can actually do something about the problem,” but felt it was too early to tell “if it’s all talk."

The next morning, she was surprised to find the building’s superintendent applying a fresh coat of paint to a staircase. Outside, workers were removing scaffolding that had been in front of the building for years.

“I think they caught wind of the rental rip-off,” Maitin said. “They’re scared.”

FILE - New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks to reporters during a news conference in New York, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

FILE - New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks to reporters during a news conference in New York, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

FILE - New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Rental Ripoff Hearing at Fordham University on Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)

FILE - New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Rental Ripoff Hearing at Fordham University on Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)

Gulhayo Yuldosheva's children get ready for school in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Gulhayo Yuldosheva's children get ready for school in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Francisco Medina, left, cleans his apartment next to his relative, Maria Frias, right, in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Francisco Medina, left, cleans his apartment next to his relative, Maria Frias, right, in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Gulhayo Yuldosheva, 33 , center right, Marina Quiroz, 65, top, pose for a portrait with other two residents in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Gulhayo Yuldosheva, 33 , center right, Marina Quiroz, 65, top, pose for a portrait with other two residents in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Tommy Rodriguez, right, talks to his relative, Francisco Medina, left, in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Tommy Rodriguez, right, talks to his relative, Francisco Medina, left, in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Marina Quiroz stands in her living room in a Bronx apartment building, where tenants report maintenance issues, pest infestations, Tuesday, March 17, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Marina Quiroz stands in her living room in a Bronx apartment building, where tenants report maintenance issues, pest infestations, Tuesday, March 17, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

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