William & Mary is expanding its role in the AUKUS submarine partnership as the university works to build a pipeline of talent and strengthen the allied submarine industrial base.
The university, designated the U.S. academic home for an AUKUS Center of Excellence, signed a five-year agreement with Adelaide University this summer and received grants to develop the center and support U.S.-U.K. cooperation on defense industrial resilience, according to a university press release. The effort will focus on submarine production, advanced manufacturing, supply-chain resilience and workforce development.
William & Mary students also worked with the Navy’s Submarine Industrial Base Program and a defense supplier supporting submarine production, gaining experience in efforts to expand allied undersea capabilities.
In another sign of East Tennessee’s growth as a nuclear hub, Kiewit Nuclear Solutions announced Wednesday it is planning a major office expansion in Knoxville.
The expanded office at 1431 CenterPoint Boulevard, Suite 150, will gradually be renovated to accommodate another 300 employees, up from 50 currently, according to Kiewit. It will provide a base for Kiewit to expand its support for various nuclear work, including operations by the Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), and commercial nuclear projects. The existing office space for the company at Knoxville will undergo renovation in phases, Kiewit said in the release. Kiewit expects to show off the new digs during an open house sometime in the spring of 2027.
DOE’s Oak Ridge Site, home of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12 National Security Complex, is roughly 25 miles or a 35-minute car trip from Knoxville. Just a couple of weeks ago, Amentum opened a new office headquarters in Oak Ridge.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is recommending Congress consider clarifying the roles of the Department of Energy and its regulators when remediated lands from Cold War and Manhattan Project sites are transferred to local communities.
In a report released this month, GAO also urged DOE to “direct cleanup sites to evaluate cleanup costs and schedule based on multiple potential future land uses as part of its cleanup decisions,” according to the congressional watchdog.
Such an approach could help DOE’s Office of Environmental Management in its work on future land issues, GAO went on to say.
Years after the Department of Energy cancelled the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina, a company based in France is making ambitious plans for MOX at the nuclear complex.
The original multi-billion-dollar MOX project, meant to convert weapons grade plutonium into mixed-oxide fuel that could be used in commercial reactors, was terminated in 2018.
But in a September appearance before the South Carolina Governor Nuclear bAdvisory Council, Dustin Greenwood, the vice president of operations for Paris-based newcleo, said the company submitted earlier this year to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission initial paperwork for a reactor that could use MOX.
