DOE cleanup chief: Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative project is ‘very exciting’

April 16-- Apr. 16--The Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative -- a long-awaited venture slated for USC Aiken -- has earned some public praise from a U.S. Department of Energy executive.

Anne Marie White, the leader of the DOE Office of Environmental Management, last week described the AMC project as "very exciting." White was speaking at a U.S. House Armed Services Committee hearing regarding President Donald Trump's fiscal year 2020 budget request.

Trump's budget blueprint includes $50 million for AMC design and construction.

White later said the AMC project allows "us to make some investments" in the Savannah River National Laboratory, "which will be very important."

"That is EM's only lab," she continued, "and EM operates it."

The AMC represents a convergence of SRNL, education, industry and workforce development.

The AMC -- if built, completed and opened -- will "provide some laboratory space, testing kinds of space, available both for industry and academia," Savannah River Site deputy manager Thomas Johnson Jr. has said.

The planned facility, first pitched about three years ago, will cover 60,000 square-feet, according to federal budget documents. Renderings and drawings of AMC depict engineering, cyber, robotics and metal labs as well as office spaces, break rooms and meeting hubs.

"The AMC will not only allow experts in emerging technologies to collaborate with industry, academia and government to improve manufacturing, but also assist the DOE complex by accelerating technology development for the cleanup mission," U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., said during the committee hearing.

The AMC has been hailed as an economic catalyst by those closely involved or affected.

White last week said AMC is "exactly the kind of facility that is going to attract next-generation workers."

That's good news, she continued, for Environmental Management, the SRS landlord.

Dr. Sandra Jordan, the USCA chancellor, has said South Carolina built its economy around skilled labor. It would only make sense then, Jordan continued, for the AMC to come to fruition.

"This is a knowledge-based economy that we're in," Jordan said in a previous interview with the Aiken Standard.

Will Williams, the president and CEO of the Economic Development Partnership, has said a successful AMC could usher in "some very high-tech, positive growth" along and around University Parkway.

Williams has been involved with the AMC saga since the beginning.

Colin Demarest is the government and Savannah River Site reporter with the Aiken Standard. Follow him on Twitter: @demarest_colin

___

(c)2019 the Aiken Standard (Aiken, S.C.)

Visit the Aiken Standard (Aiken, S.C.) at www.aikenstandard.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.