Lynchburg’s BWXT wins $690M contract extension

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded a contract extension to Lynchburg-based nuclear components and fuel supplier BWX Technologies Inc. (BWXT) worth up to $690 million, the company announced today.

BWXT has worked with Irving, Texas-based engineering and construction firm Fluor Corp. on the project, an effort to decontaminate and decommission the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, Ohio.

The new agreement, which took effect March 29, includes a one-year extension with two additional six-month options, BWXT said. The original contract was awarded in 2010.

The joint venture, which employs 1,900 workers, is part of a cleanup program the DOE launched in 1989. The facility, which operated from 1954 to 2001, was one of three gaseous diffusion plants in the country constructed to produce enriched uranium, according to BWXT.

The company’s work across seven sites supporting the DOE’s environmental management mission “demonstrates the breadth and depth of our company’s waste management, environmental remediation and site cleanup capabilities,” BWXT’s Nuclear Services Group president, Ken Camplin, said in a statement.

BWXT also produces nuclear fuel in Lynchburg for the DOE, as part of a project it announced in November