BWXT Technologies (BWXT) sees a potential multibillion-dollar opportunity as the U.S. government rebuilds domestic nuclear-fuel capabilities for national security, including enrichment capacity and production of unobligated uranium, company executives said during a Sept. 29 investor day.
The company is currently working under a roughly $1.5 billion National Nuclear Security Administration contract to develop capabilities for producing enriched uranium for national-security applications. BWXT executives said the effort could eventually expand into a much broader government program spanning low-enriched uranium (LEU), high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) and highly enriched uranium (HEU).
BWXT CEO Rex Geveden cited a Government Accountability Office estimate of about $37 billion to reconstitute the U.S. defense-fuel capability, from uranium mining through highly enriched uranium production. Geveden said BWXT intends to compete for portions of that potential work, including LEU and HALEU production, while positioning the company to eventually support the full enrichment chain.
The company is working with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to industrialize centrifuge technology and plans to establish manufacturing capacity capable of producing large numbers of centrifuges. BWXT executives said the company ultimately expects to support production at a scale of hundreds of thousands of centrifuges.
The effort is driven in part by the depletion of the U.S. HEU stockpile, which BWXT said is being consumed for uses including naval reactor fuel, tritium production and other national-security applications. The company said the existing stockpile could extend into the 2040s or early 2050s, depending on demand.
BWXT also said the government is funding much of the infrastructure associated with rebuilding the defense-fuel capability, with the company initially contributing to development and demonstration work.
The company characterized the effort as a multidecade opportunity to rebuild a domestic, unobligated nuclear-fuel supply chain for U.S. national-security needs.