BWX Technologies, Inc. (BWXT) operates a uranium fuel materials production facility to support America's fleet of nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers. It also converts Cold War-era government stockpiles of highly enriched uranium (HEU) into material suitable for further processing into commercial nuclear reactor fuel.
In 2011, BWXT completed a contract with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to transform weapons-grade uranium into a low-enriched form suitable for use in TVA’s nuclear reactors. BWXT processed and downblended 22.8 metric tons of highly-enriched uranium in many material forms. A total of 312 metric tons of low-enriched uranium (LEU) were produced during the life-cycle of the project – enough to power the entire TVA service area (about 3.8 million households) for 4.4 years.
We began receiving, storing, characterizing, dissolving, recovering and purifying a variety of uranium-bearing materials in the early 1960s. In 1995, the U.S. government awarded BWXT a contract to downblend approximately 600 kilograms of HEU into LEU. The HEU was obtained from Kazakhstan through LEU that could be used by commercial nuclear power plants to produce electricity.
