Jim Bittner is taking over as vice president and general manager for BWX Technologies’ Nuclear Operations Groups’ Lynchburg, Va., manufacturing facility, which manufactures reactors for naval aircraft carriers and submarines, the company announced Monday.
Bittner will be in charge of about 2,200 employees in Lynchburg, which is one of the two commercial facilities certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to handle highly enriched uranium.
He succeeds B. Joel Burch, who became vice president of BWXT Innovation Campus near Lynchburg, the company said in a press release.
The company is a minority partner in about a half-dozen joint ventures for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management, including being part of the cleanup team for the Portsmouth Site in Ohio and a member of the prime contractor for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
BWXT has a virtual monopoly on the naval reactors market. The company also manufactures naval reactors fuel and manages defense-nuclear properties for the Department of Energy. The company is said to be part of a team, along with Honeywell, bidding for the next contract to manage the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas.
The deal would be worth up to $30 billion over 10 years, with five years of firm money, DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration has said.
