New Kesselring contractor expects to keep most employees

PHOTOGRAPHER: Stephen Williams

The new nuclear reactor maintenance contractor at the Kesselring naval training site expects to employ about as many people as the 165 employees Electric Boat has had at the site.

While Electric Boat announced it will be eliminating 165 jobs after losing the contract, Newport News Shipbuilding hopes to retain much of the existing workforce, said Barry Fletcher, vice-president of nuclear engineering for Newport News Shipbuilding. The company will be explaining its plans to workers starting next week.

Newport News, a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries of Newport News, Va., announced Friday that Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory has awarded it a five-year, $195 million contract for maintenance of the Kesselring site’s two small nuclear training reactors, effective Jan. 1.

At the same time, Electric Boat, a division of defense contractor General Dynamics, filed paperwork with the state Department of Labor saying it will eliminate 165 jobs at Kesselring, where it has done reactor maintenance for the last 24 years.

Fletcher said existing union contracts will be honored, and new employees “will be treated as though they were Newport News employees all along.”