Nuclear power in Louisiana? Turner Industries to bring 1,000 jobs, expand nuclear manufacturing

Turner Industries, the Baton Rouge-based industrial contractor, will relocate its nuclear fabrication business, including the jobs and equipment needed to build the “guts” of nuclear power plants, from Texas to two of its Louisiana locations.

The move will involve expanding Turner’s fabrication yards in Port Allen and New Iberia and will bring 1,000 permanent jobs with an average salary of $77,000. It underscores how companies are responding to Gov. Jeff Landry’s new strategy to make Louisiana a major player in nuclear energy.

Turner Industries CEO Stephen Toups made the announcement on Tuesday at a nuclear power summit that Landry convened at the Windsor Court in New Orleans. Industry leaders and regulatory executives gathered to discuss the state’s nuclear strategy and to promote development opportunities in the state.

“Turner Industries has been a cornerstone of our state’s industrial strength for decades,” Landry said in a prepared statement following the announcement. “This expansion puts Louisiana workers at the center of building the next generation of nuclear power.”

Landry unveiled his nuclear energy strategy at a global energy conference last month in Houston. The initiative seeks to position Louisiana at the center of the country’s nuclear supply chain and aligns with President Donald Trump’s focus on nuclear energy. The Trump administration has invested billions in nuclear energy and pushed to speed up the regulatory approval process for new and expanded nuclear power plants.

Among those at the summit Tuesday was U.S Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chair Ho K. Nieh, who was appointed by Trump in January and is overseeing the agency’s efforts to accelerate new reactor development.

“Turner Industries has a 65-year legacy of supporting the energy sector, and today we are leaning into the future of American energy independence,” Toups said.

It’s not clear how quickly Turner will ramp up production at the two fabrication yards or how much it will invest in the expansion. That’s largely because the nuclear power supply chain is just beginning to ramp up, Toups said.

“It will depend on how fast all this gets started,” he said. “No one knows until the first order comes in.”

Experience in the field

Turner Industries, founded in 1961 is one of the country’s largest industrial contractors with 9,300 employees and six offices across the state. It helped build several of the legacy nuclear power plants when they were under construction in the 1970s, Toups said.

In recent decades, as the country shifted away from nuclear power, much of that work dried up, though the company continued to maintain its certification in the highly specialized field and work on smaller projects, mostly from its fabrication yard in Paris, Texas.

Now, that work will be done in Louisiana.

At its 95-acre New Iberia facility and 75-acre site in Port Allen, Turner will produce piping and equipment for older nuclear power plants that are being upgraded or expanded.

It will also build components for Small Modular Reactors, or SMRs — portable nuclear power plants built onsite for large, industrial users that consume massive amounts of energy like chemical refineries, LNG export terminals and AI data centers.

“This expansion shows how our homegrown companies are evolving to meet new demand,” Louisiana Economic Development Secretary Susan Bourgeois said. “By building on what we do best, Louisiana is creating new opportunities, driving innovation and growing high-quality jobs that move our economy forward.”

Clean energy?

While the renewed focus on nuclear power may come as a surprise to those who remember high-profile disasters like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl in the 1970s and 1980s, energy experts say nuclear power is front of mind again because it is reliable and does not emit the greenhouse gasses that cause extreme weather.

Though Trump has ignored such risks with policies that promote fossil fuels, the rest of the world is looking for ways to mitigate climate change by reducing carbon emissions.

Environmentalists note that while nuclear power doesn’t produce carbon emissions and is cleaner in some respects than natural gas and other fossil fuels, its radioactive waste carries health and safety risks.

Industry experts says today’s nuclear power plants are safer and more reliable than in the past.

Turner Industries plans to partner with local community colleges on dedicated training programs to create a “nuclear-ready” workforce, the company said.