BWX Technologies announced Tuesday it acquired 97 acres of land in Oak Ridge, Tenn. with the goal of rebuilding domestic uranium enrichment capabilities by manufacturing centrifuges.
According to the emailed press release, the land acquisition would support DOE and its semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) deployment of Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) technology. The land is at Horizon Center industrial park near DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The NNSA also announced in a sole-source intention notice on databases FedConnect and sam.gov April 9 that BWX Technologies (BWXT) would likely be awarded a sole source contract for a Domestic Uranium Enrichment Pilot Plant. The notice said the company would design, license, construct and operate a uranium enrichment pilot plant facility to demonstrate “production readiness” of DUECE technology to establish a supply of low-enriched uranium, before transitioning to highly enriched uranium production in the future to support naval nuclear propulsion fuel production.
This contract, according to the sole-source notice, is in support of the DUECE Pilot Plant Deployment Study awarded to BWXT subsidiary Nuclear Fuels Services in August 2024. The contract requires Nuclear Fuel Services to complete a yearlong engineering study to evaluate options for the pilot plant.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory manages the DUECE program which aims to develop uranium enrichment technology and information for national security purposes. Oak Ridge’s DUECE program is one of two domestic uranium enrichment options, alongside Centrus Energy Corp.’s AC-100M, that NNSA had been considering for its defense-enrichment plant.
NNSA expects the second of two planned DUECE demonstrations to complete in fiscal year 2029, which runs through Sept. 30, 2029. The hope from the DOE is that it starts domestically enriching uranium by the 2030s.
