BWX Technologies (BWXT) announced Tuesday the award of a contract valued at $1.5 billion to support national defense-focused domestic uranium enrichment for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
The Lynchburg, Va.-based nuclear company will begin tackling the list of requirements for building the Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) pilot plant, the company’s press release said. The requirements include the plant’s design, license applications, preparation for the physical site, equipment procurement, centrifuge manufacturing readiness and eventual plant operation.
In preparation for this effort, BWXT had acquired 97 acres of land in Oak Ridge, Tenn. earlier in the year, and started construction of the Centrifuge Manufacturing Development Facility in Oak Ridge in June. The purpose of the DUECE pilot plant is to start demonstrating low-enriched uranium production for NNSA’s defense missions, before transitioning to producing highly-enriched uranium for naval propulsion. The plant will be located in Erwin, Tenn., at BWXT’s Nuclear Fuel Services site.
Global Laser Enrichment said this week it has completed its large-scale enrichment demonstration testing at its Test Loop facility in Wilmington, N.C.
After beginning its demonstration testing in May, GLE said its SILEX laser-based uranium enrichment process is ready for commercial use, according to its Tuesday press release. The technology would eventually be used in a major new uranium enrichment facility at the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site in Western Kentucky.
“We believe the enrichment activities conducted over the past five months position GLE to be the next American uranium enrichment solution,” GLE CEO Stephen Long said in the release. “Twenty percent of U.S. electricity supply comes from nuclear energy, and GLE is expected to allow America to end its dangerous dependency on a fragile, foreign government-owned uranium fuel supply chain.”
Amentum has been awarded £26 million ($35 million US) under a four-year contract to provide specialist services for the UK’s nuclear waste management association.
Amentum will be one of the suppliers on all four lots of the United Kingdom’s Integrated Waste Management Specialist Nuclear Services Framework, according to Amentum’s Tuesday’s press release.
Under the framework, Amentum will provide technical support, including topics such as waste management and sustainability, to Nuclear Waste Services’s Integrated Waste Management Delivery Team.
The New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) will actively monitor Los Alamos National Laboratory’s controlled capture of tritium that was scheduled to start Saturday, Sept. 13.
NMED has “strict safeguards and oversight in place to ensure public safety,” the state agency said Sept. 12. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is venting and capturing tritium from four flanged containers, NMED said.
The tritium operation, which falls under the regulatory authority of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is being monitored by onsite NMED staff at Los Alamos. The venting operation is expected to last only a couple of weeks, although the Department of Energy and NNSA have been granted a 180-day temporary authorization that runs through early March 2026.
Federal and state agencies have reached a deal to expand the hunting boundary around the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory.
The agreement between Idaho, DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was announced this week in a press release. The agreement adds another 80 miles to the approved hunting area. The deal is in response to an Idaho Department of Fish and Game to address concerns that elk and pronghorn antelope have been grazing on private fields bordering the laboratory grounds.
Those approved to go hunting in the expanded area must agree to training on unexploded ordinance in the vicinity.
Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID) said in a Sept. 8 press release that provisions included in the House -passed version of the Energy & Water Appropriations fiscal 2026 bill would benefit the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL).
The legislation that passed the House 214-to-213 would fund INL’s continuing research into advanced tri-structural Isotropic (TRISO) and high-assay low enriched uranium (HALEU) reactor fuel, Simpson said. The appropriations bill would also support infrastructure and operations including the Microreactor Application Research Validation and Evaluation (MARVEL) project and the Demonstration of Microreactor Experiments (DOME) Test Bed.
No counterpart energy and water appropriations measure has passed the Senate yet. Congress is currently working on some type of stopgap continuing resolution to keep government operations from shutting down Sept. 30.
The Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory at Richland, Wash., has reportedly laid off an undisclosed number of employees due to budget cuts.
The layoff was first reported Thursday by the Tri-City Herald newspaper. The newspaper said Battelle National, which runs the lab for DOE, confirmed a small number of layoffs were made this week. The newspaper could not confirm the number of workers let go, but reported it was too few to trigger public workforce reduction notices required in Washington state.
“Battelle recently eliminated some vacant positions and offered a voluntary separation option to staff in certain operational areas,” according to a statement emailed to Exchange Monitor by a Battelle spokesperson. “Unfortunately, the necessary number of volunteers was not achieved, so Battelle has made the difficult decision to move forward with a limited number of involuntary separations.
The United States and the United Kingdom concluded a joint summit Thursday by putting out a memorandum of understanding on “technology prosperity,” including cooperation on issues from nuclear energy to artificial intelligence.
While the deal between the Trans-Atlantic allies seeks to deepen collaboration on all-things-nuclear, it also sets out a goal of shedding dependence on nuclear fuel from Russia.
The parties envision “ensuring a secure and reliable supply chain for advanced nuclear fuels in both countries, and achieving full independence from Russian nuclear fuel by the end of 2028,” according to the document.