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August 11, 2009
OAK RIDGE, TN - Babcock & Wilcox Technical Services Clinch River has notified all of its 220 employees in Oak Ridge that layoffs are likely in approximately 60 days.
The notifications were issued Monday.
"Certainly, it's difficult news for our employees," said Judd Simmons, the company's public relations manager. "But we wanted to give them a fair and formal notice that this was a possibility."
Additionally, he said, the layoffs could fall under laws that require specific notifications be given to employees.
Asked about how many actual layoffs are expected, Simmons said: "We just don't have that firm number (of layoffs) at this point."
"Really, in the coming weeks, B&W is going to work with USEC ... reviewing a range of scenarios in order to determine which operations (in Oak Ridge) will be continued, which ones will be adjusted, and which ones would be curtailed.
"And it's those decisions that will really determine how many employees we can retain and how many might have to be laid off," Simmons stated in a Monday afternoon phone interview.
The 220 B&W Clinch River employees work with U.S. Enrichment Corp. employees on the American Centrifuge Project at the former Boeing plant in Oak Ridge. USEC announced two weeks ago that "demobilization" of the project was under way, after the Department of Energy denied USEC's application for a $2 billion loan guarantee to finish building the American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon, Ohio.
Last week, DOE officials issued what sounded to some like a reprieve -- when they announced they'd delay for six months a final decision on the loan application. The additional time will allow USEC to address issues that DOE has identified relating to the readiness of the company's uranium enrichment technology.
The Department of Energy stated in the release that it sees promise in the American Centrifuge Plant technology, but USEC's application doesn't meet all the statutory and regulatory standards.
Approximately 500 people work at the USEC plant in Oak Ridge, according to company spokeswoman Elizabeth Stuckle. And that workforce includes both USEC and B&W Technical Services Clinch River LLC employees.
Simmons said the B&W Clinch River employees work in the areas of manufacturing, engineering, support work, and administration. He said B&W officials would also be working hard to find opportunities for those laid off within the Babcock & Wilcox company.
Stuckle, the USEC spokeswoman, said last week that some of its workers would also be laid off but the specific number isn't yet known. She said manufacturing work would be scaled back, but development work would continue.
USEC has been developing the project in Piketon, about 65 miles south of Columbus, Ohio, at the site of a former gaseous diffusion plant that enriched uranium during the Cold War.
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