ARLINGTON, VA – Competing for workers with other nuclear projects around the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee is a concern, Centrus Energy CEO Amir Vexler said here this week.
Recently, Centrus announced plans to expand its Oak Ridge manufacturing facility to assist in its plans to expand its uranium enrichment in Piketon, Ohio. The company has said the expanded Oak Ridge facility is expected to create nearly 430 new jobs.
The manufacturing at Oak Ridge is important for Centrus, Vexler told Exchange Monitor’s Nuclear Deterrence Summit that attracting a workforce is hard due to many companies planning nuclear projects nearby.
“We are lucky or unlucky, depending on how you look at it, to be in Oak Ridge,” Vexler said. “It’s a great place to be in but everyone and their brother seem to be opening in the same place now,” Vexler said. “It is hard to attract people, and we find that we’re competing against a lot of folks who are after the same kind of talent.”
East Tennessee, particularly Oak Ridge, has become a hotspot for many nuclear companies in recent years. The region could become a nuclear hub, seeking investment in nuclear reactors and other nuclear-related capabilities in the area, several Tennessee state officials said at an October 2025 conference.
Centrus is competing with several other entities, such as the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Y-12 National Security Complex, for a workforce for labor and manufacturing for uranium purposes.
Vexler said Centrus is working on ways to separate itself from the pack on recruitment. Centrus, Bethesda, Md.-based uranium broker, is a “real company that is already building real things.” Being a public-traded company also could spur workers to choose Centrus over other entities, Vexler added.
Centrus’ Oak Ridge manufacturing center provides engineering and testing for its gas centrifuge uranium enrichment technology. The company works closely with DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to work on the centrifuge technology for energy and national security purposes, Centrus said.
Through the expansion at Oak Ridge, Vexler said the company plans to build out centrifuges at scale.
The centrifuges manufactured at Oak Ridge are installed at Centrus’ uranium enrichment plant at DOE’s Portsmouth Site in Piketon, Ohio. There in Piketon, Centrus enriches the uranium, both low-enrich uranium (LEU) and high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU).