Michael Whedbee stands in the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville Monday night as Gov. Bill Lee acknowledges his family’s nuclear legacy during the 2026 State of the State address.
In his State of the State address Monday night, Gov. Bill Lee called Tennessee a “new frontier” for nuclear energy, while also honoring its history – calling out Oak Ridge National Lab’s Michael Whedbee as an example.
Lee recognized Whedbee, who was present at the address, and his family as part of generations of East Tennesseans who have kept the state’s nuclear legacy alive and will secure America’s nuclear energy future.
“In the 1940s, a pipefitter from Oak Ridge helped build the K-25 (gaseous diffusion plant to enrich uranium), and his wife rode the bus to work at the Secret City every day,” Lee said. “In the ’70s, their son became an engineer at Oak Ridge − and today, their grandson, Michael Whedbee, works at Oak Ridge National Laboratory developing the next generation of nuclear power. That kind of legacy story is why Tennessee leads the nation.”
Whedbee is technical project manager for the Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE), which is developing and demonstrating the next generation of small centrifuges, technology that will restore U.S. ability to enrich uranium for defense-related missions for the first time since 2012.
Whedbee, an engineer, did early work with the gas centrifuge program in 2002 at Y-12 National Security Complex. When U.S. Enrichment Corp. Inc. was awarded a contract to deploy a small cascade as part of a research, development and demonstration program, Whedbee helped build the machines, ultimately serving as manufacturing manager for the facility.
He came to ORNL in 2014 as a contractor supporting the then-Nuclear Science and Engineering Directorate’s enrichment science and engineering programs, then joined the lab full-time in 2016.
Whedbee was the first person hired to work on DUECE specifically.
“DUECE is a big deal; it’s very similar to the original Manhattan Project,” he said. “The government has a need, and they had to put people together to deliver that need. Failure is not an option.”
Lee went on to laud progress at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Clinch River site, “where five years ago we set out to be the first state in America to build a Small Modular Reactor,” he said. “Now it appears that Tennessee will be that state.”
He said Tennessee’s Nuclear Fund, established two years ago with $50 million, has recruited $8 billion dollars in investment from companies around the world, “creating thousands of new jobs – and more are on the way!” Most of that money has been invested in projects in Oak Ridge.
Lee said this year, he will propose adding $25 million to the fund.
He also announced the launch of a statewide initiative to position Tennessee as a national leader in quantum energy, infrastructure and workforce development.
“We have a vision that Tennessee will both power America and be the catalyst for solving America’s most complex problems,” Lee said.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. DOE’s Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit energy.gov/science.
