Joseph Henry, president and chief operating officer of BWX Technologies’ Nuclear Operations Group, will retire June 30, the company disclosed Monday in a regulatory filing.
It was not immediately clear who would succeed the retired Navy admiral at the helm of the Lynchburg, Va.-based company’s nuclear manufacturing and fuel-enrichment business. “We will announce [Henry’s] successor when those plans have been finalized,” a company spokesperson said by email Tuesday.
Henry has been with BWX Technologies since 2008. He informed management of his decision to leave on April 17, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Henry has been has president of the Nuclear Operations Group since 2015. The group is the largest of BWX Technologies’ three U.S. business segments and accounted for some 75 percent of the company’s revenue in 2017. The group’s work includes building nuclear reactors and enriching uranium fuel for the Navy’s warships and submarines.
“I would like to thank Joe for his outstanding service to the company and his country,” Rex Geveden, president and CEO of BWX Technologies, wrote in a note to employees Monday. “On behalf of all BWXT employees, I wish him the very best in his retirement.”
Before running the Nuclear Operations Group, Henry was president of BWX Technologies’ Nuclear Fuel Services. The subsidiary, now part of the Nuclear Operations Group, refines and processes uranium fuel for the Navy. BWX Technologies is the sole source for U.S. nuclear naval reactors.
In 2014, Henry briefly became chief of nuclear safety operations of the BWX Technologies joint venture that was at the time managing the Department of Energy’s Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Henry was brought in to help tighten security after a nun-led trio of anti-nuclear activists breached the perimeter of the uranium-processing complex in 2013.
Before he joined BWX Technologies, Henry was chief operating officer and executive vice president of Columbia, Md.-based Duratek Inc.: a nuclear-cleanup company that was acquired in 2006 by EnergySolutions of Salt Lake City. Henry left EnergySolutions in 2007.
Henry retired from the Navy as a two-star admiral after 33 years of service. In the Navy, he was most recently director of personnel plans and policy. Before that, he commanded Submarine Group 10, which includes several East Coast-based ballistic missile submarines. Earlier in his Navy career, Henry commanded a pair of submarines, including the USS Kentucky ballistic missile submarine.
Separately, James Canafax, BWXT’s senior vice president and general counsel, will leave the company around Aug. 1, according to another recent regulatory filing.
The Harvard-schooled lawyer, who earned his J.D. in 1996, has been with the company since 2001: nine years before it was spun off from McDermott International. He will leave BWX Technologies “on or about August 1, 2018,” according to an 8-K the company filed March 12 with the SEC.
“I would like to thank James for his exceptional service to the company and wish him the very best in future endeavors,” Geveden said in a memo to employees about Canafax’s planned departure.
BWX Technologies has already started searching for Canafax’s replacement, the company spokesperson said Tuesday.
