BWX Technologies
🇺🇸 Lynchburg, US · Active
Also known as BWXT
BWX Technologies (BWXT) is a US nuclear manufacturer headquartered in Lynchburg, Virginia, which became an independent listed company in July 2015 when it separated from Babcock & Wilcox. It builds the reactors for US Navy submarines and aircraft carriers, a line that goes back to components for the USS Nautilus, and it makes nuclear fuel, including TRISO particle fuel, CANDU reactor components and fuel for Canada, and medical isotopes. It also carries out clean-up at government nuclear sites. Its own reactor design is the BWXT Advanced Nuclear Reactor (BANR), a transportable 75 MWt high-temperature gas-cooled microreactor. An earlier small modular reactor, mPower, was abandoned in 2017. BWXT bought the Canadian engineering firm Kinectrics in 2025.
- Sector
- Fission, Fuel cycle
- Technology
- High-temperature gas-cooled reactor
- Fuel
- High-assay low-enriched uranium, TRISO particle fuel
- Role
- Reactor developer, Supplier
Terms
- High-temperature gas-cooled reactor
- Helium-cooled and graphite-moderated, running far hotter than a water reactor. Fuel is TRISO particles, typically formed into pebbles or prismatic blocks, at LEU or HALEU enrichment depending on the design. The high outlet temperature suits industrial process heat as well as electricity.
- High-assay low-enriched uranium
- High-assay low-enriched uranium: uranium enriched to between 5% and just under 20% uranium-235, as the US Department of Energy defines it. It is still formally low-enriched, because the international line for highly enriched uranium is 20%, which is why many designs specify 19.75%. The binding supply constraint for many advanced reactor designs. The 5 to 10% part, which carries lighter US physical-security requirements than material from 10% up, is also tagged as LEU+. A developer calling fuel in that band 'LEU' is making a labelling choice, not describing a different enrichment.
- TRISO particle fuel
- Fuel kernels about the size of a poppy seed, each wrapped in layers of carbon and silicon carbide, so every particle acts as a tiny containment for its own fission products. The US Department of Energy reports that irradiated particles came through more than 300 hours of testing at temperatures up to 1,800 °C with no to minimal damage. That record covers the particle designs, temperatures and burnups actually tested; a claim outside that envelope is not covered by it.
Designs
| Design | Developer | Approach | Electrical output per unit | Size class | Licensing stage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BWXT Advanced Nuclear Reactor (BANR) BANR | BWX Technologies | High-temperature gas-cooled reactor | Output not stated | Not classed | No milestone recorded |