Energy Company News

BWXT Completes $56M Expansion of Its Cambridge Nuclear Plant

Summary not found.

BWXT has completed an 80 million Canadian dollar (about $56 million) expansion of its Cambridge, Ontario manufacturing plant, which the company already describes as the largest facility for commercial nuclear equipment in North America, World Nuclear News reported on November 13. The project, launched in 2024, adds 55,000 square feet of floor space and more advanced manufacturing equipment, and enlarges what BWXT calls the world’s largest commercial nuclear clean room by 40%.

Built for two different jobs at once

The expanded plant is meant to serve both ends of Ontario’s nuclear programme at the same time: extending reactors already running and building the next generation of them. BWXT is fabricating 48 new steam generators for the refurbishment of Ontario Power Generation’s Pickering station, work that keeps an existing fleet of CANDU units in service for years longer, and separately building the reactor pressure vessel for the first BWRX-300 small modular reactor planned at Darlington — a project whose own timeline and cost OPG said this month it expects to revise. Cambridge’s added clean-room space and machining capacity are designed to let BWXT make large-scale components for reactors “of all sizes,” from conventional CANDU equipment to SMR vessels, without the bottlenecks that can come from running both programmes through the same limited floor space.

Jobs now, more jobs promised

BWXT says the expansion has already created 200 long-term, skilled manufacturing jobs in Cambridge and that it intends to hire 200 more at the site within the next year — doubling the new headcount tied to this single project once that round of recruitment is complete. “It is a major step to solidify our company’s place in the global nuclear resurgence,” said John MacQuarrie, president of BWXT’s commercial operations. Canada’s federal and Ontario provincial governments both framed the expansion in policy terms: federal Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson called it “exactly the kind of progress our Nuclear Energy Strategy is designed to catalyse,” while Ontario’s Minister of Energy and Mines, Stephen Lecce, said the province’s early investment in nuclear manufacturing capacity was “positioning Ontario’s supply chain at the centre of the global nuclear buildout.”

A supply chain under pressure

That framing points to a real constraint across the nuclear industry right now: large forgings, steam generators and reactor-grade components are made in a small number of qualified factories worldwide, and demand for them has climbed as countries from Canada and the UK to Turkey and South Korea pursue new reactors — whether large conventional units, refurbishments of existing fleets, or first-of-kind SMRs backed by their own fuel-supply deals. BWXT’s bet is that having already expanded its Cambridge capacity ahead of firm orders for most of the SMR projects now being studied globally gives it a head start in supplying whichever designs move from paper to construction first.

One plant, many customers

BWXT’s nuclear business extends well beyond Cambridge. The company also makes components for the reactors that power US Navy submarines and aircraft carriers, produces medical isotopes, and supplies fuel and reactor parts to utilities in both Canada and the United States — giving it exposure to nearly every part of the nuclear fuel and construction chain short of uranium mining itself. That breadth is part of why the Cambridge expansion matters beyond Ontario: the same clean rooms and machining lines capable of building Darlington’s BWRX-300 vessel could, in principle, supply components for other SMR designs now competing for orders across North America, from the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Clinch River project to the wave of US utility interest in small reactors that has followed data-centre-driven demand for firm, carbon-free power.

Sources

World Nuclear News, “BWXT manufacturing facility expansion complete,” November 13, 2026 — investment figure, floor space, clean-room expansion, jobs created, quotes from John MacQuarrie, Tim Hodgson and Stephen Lecce. Link
World Nuclear News, “OPG set to revise timeline and cost of first SMR unit,” November 11, 2026 — context on the Darlington BWRX-300 project BWXT is supplying. Link