BWXT doubles its Jonesborough workforce with $714.5M defense-uranium expansion
The investment more than doubles BWXT's local workforce and positions Jonesborough as the only active U.S. site refining high purity depleted uranium for the government.
On Friday, the state signed an agreement supporting the expansion of BWX Technologies at its Jonesborough facility. The company said the expansion will create 181 jobs, doubling its workforce in Washington County, and bring a $714.5 million investment to the local community.
According to a release from the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD), the expansion is backed by a grant from Tennessee’s $95 million Nuclear Energy Fund and will support the production of high-purity depleted uranium (HPDU) metal for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
BWXT officials said that once the site is complete, it will be the only active plant capable of performing the process for the federal government.
The project follows a 10-year, $1.6 billion NNSA contract awarded to BWXT in September 2025 to build an HPDU plant at the Jonesborough site.
This is the company’s third project to receive support from the state’s Nuclear Energy Fund. The first two were projects at its Oak Ridge and Erwin sites. The BWXT Jonesborough facility is the 12th project the fund has supported overall. To date, TNECD said it has sparked nearly 4,000 jobs and more than $10 billion in capital investment.
The move extends a run of BWXT investment across East Tennessee.
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