ORNL Director Stephen Streiffer speaks during a panel discussion with University of Tennessee System President Randy Boyd and Tennessee Valley Authority President and CEO Don Moul that was moderated by Cortney Piper, executive director of TAEBC. Credit: Shawn Poynter Photography.
Leaders and stakeholders representing local, state, and national interest in energy, manufacturing, industry and education came together for the annual Tennessee Advanced Energy Business Council (TAEBC) Opportunities in Energy event in Knoxville to discuss new and emerging trends, businesses, technologies and innovations in the advanced energy sector.
Department of Energy Chief of Staff Carl Coe opened the event with a keynote fireside chat moderated by Marianne Wanamaker, dean of the University of Tennessee Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs. He praised the significant investments that have established Tennessee as a fulcrum of energy.
“There’s no other community like this,” Coe said. “You’re far ahead of any other region of the country.” Coe went on to underscore the importance of expanding domestic power capacity and developing a long-term national energy strategy.
Tennessee, and the Oak Ridge Corridor in particular, has a significant advantage toward producing abundant and secure energy for the nation: Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “The American citizens don’t know how incredibly valuable the national labs are,” Coe said. “They are able to pivot to [develop technologies that respond] to the trends that really matter.”
For decades, ORNL has pioneered nuclear innovation, from the Manhattan Project to the groundbreaking Molten Salt Reactor Experiment in the 1960s to today’s leadership in cutting-edge fusion technology. Throughout its long history, ORNL has welcomed new nuclear industry partners to East Tennessee, reinforcing the region’s reputation as a hub for reliable, secure energy and a local community that heralds the opportunities provided by nuclear power.
“The Manhattan Project was a public-private partnership,” said ORNL Director Stephen Streiffer during a panel discussion with University of Tennessee System President Randy Boyd and Tennessee Valley Authority President and CEO Don Moul that was moderated by Cortney Piper, executive director of TAEBC.
“That history is part of ORNL’s DNA,” Stephen said. “We have an incredibly strong private sector and an incredibly strong public sector. And at the lab, we can bring those sectors together to respond to the great challenges facing us as a nation.”
Conferencegoers listened as speakers celebrated the collaboration between industry, ORNL, and academia that has enabled the nuclear sector growth taking place in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains. While momentum is gaining, there remains a need to further expand the nuclear workforce and invest in infrastructure development to boost support for the nation’s energy priorities.
“The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, had the nation’s first nuclear engineering degree and first nuclear engineering department,” Boyd said. “We want to continue to lead, and we’re partnering with ORNL to develop the workforce of the future.”
Budding entrepreneurs with promising technology startup companies pitched innovative ideas and competed for an award presented by Brad Chadwell, TVA director of enterprise research and innovation. Among the competitors were members of Cohort 2025 of Innovation Crossroads, a DOE Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program at ORNL that offers a two-year fellowship for researchers working to address and solve energy and manufacturing challenges. The award was presented to NXT MFG, a Spark Incubator Program startup that simplifies large-scale metal 3D printing.
The conference concluded with the presentation of the 2025 Thomas B. Ballard Advanced Energy Leadership Award to Stuart McWhorter, deputy governor of Tennessee and Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development commissioner, for “exemplary leadership in expanding Tennessee’s reputation as a national powerhouse in advanced energy innovation, investment and job creation.”
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit energy.gov/science. – Brynn Downing