B&W announces plan to invest in Bedford County facility

The Center for Advanced Engineering and Research in Bedford County has attracted a $10 million investment: $7.6 million from the Babcock & Wilcox Co. and $2.4 million from the Virginia Tobacco Commission.

On Thursday B&W announced its plans to establish a new facility at the research center, which is under construction at a county business park off U.S. 460. It was silent on most details, including the facility’s purpose and how many jobs it will create.

B&W spokesman Jud Simmons said the plan relates to a nuclear program, and the company will explain the project at a news conference at 2 p.m. Tuesday at the CAER site.

Bob Bailey, executive director of CAER, also would not expound on the project, but said it is a great success for the center.

“It’s exactly the type of opportunity that we wanted to be able to respond to,” he said.

Roger Cheek, the Bedford County Board of Supervisors chairman who represents the New London area, said he was glad the county was able to attract the project to the center. He referred to B&W’s presence there as a positive for the region that “gets us out front.”

“I think this is the seed that will start the growth of that business center,” on U.S. 460, Cheek said.

CAER broke ground on the research campus last year in the New London Business & Technology Center. A $7.6 million tobacco commission grant is paying for the construction.

The building will focus on research that solves problems for local companies in the wireless communications and nuclear energy industries.

The announcement Thursday said that the tobacco commission has approved “a multi-million dollar grant” to support B&W’s facility and the jobs associated with it.

In March the commission approved a grant of more than $2.4 million for a CAER project titled “B&W mPower Integrated Systems Test Program,” commission staff member Sarah Capps wrote in an e-mail Thursday.

B&W paired that grant with more than $7.6 million of its own money, Capps wrote.

MPower is the name of the new modular nuclear reactor B&W plans to deploy. It has engineers in Lynchburg and other cities working on the design.

The smaller reactor would let utility companies add power-generation capacity in small increments and would be less expensive than massive reactors, the company has said.

Last week, B&W announced a partnership with the firm Bechtel to design and build mPower reactors. They hope to have one built by 2020.

In June, the Bedford County Board of Supervisors voted to let the CAER facility build part of its structure to 110 feet in height, instead of the 45-foot limit previously allowed at the park, for B&W’s testing of alternative energy sources.

B&W employs more than 2,400 people in the Lynchburg area.

Bailey said the CAER research complex is on track to open in the first quarter of 2011. He said it is promising that the center has secured a major project from a private company before the center is open.

“This is one of several projects that we have in the works right now,” he said. “We’re certainly hopeful that this is just the beginning of other projects and other programs (that come) as a result of the facility being built here.” 

Staff writer Justin Faulconer contributed.