One of the parent companies of the prime contractor for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility said Monday it will be acquired by Houston-based McDermott International in a $6-billion all-stock deal slated to close in the second quarter of 2018.
At the close of the transaction CB&I, the Woodlands, Texas, energy technology and infrastructure provider will combine with the engineering and offshore-oil-infrastructure company and be led by David Dickson, currently president and chief executive officer of McDermott.
The combined company would have a combined annual revenue of about $10 billion, with a roughly $14.5-billion backlog. CB&I had more than 42,000 employees globally in 2016, according to the company’s latest 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In a joint press release announcing the merger, McDermott said it had 12,000 employees.
CB&I is the majority partner of CB&I AREVA MOX Services, which is building the NNSA’s MOX plant at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.
The joint venture broke ground on MOX in 2007, at which time the NNSA thought the facility would be operational in 2016.
More than 10 years later, the MOX plant is still under construction and the NNSA has proposed canceling the project in favor of a “dilute and dispose” method it says would be much cheaper and faster. Both the Obama and Trump administrations have said it will be impossible to complete the facility under expected NNSA budgets.
The agency has so far spent about $5 billion on the MOX plant, which is designed to turn 34 metric tons of surplus weapon-grade plutonium into commercial reactor fuel under an arms-control pact finalized with Russia in 2010.
However, the United States now proposes instead to dilute its surplus plutonium, mix the material with grout, and bury the resulting cylinders deep underground at the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
Elected officials from South Carolina, from local to federal, have fought all plans to mothball MOX. Congress has so far refused to cancel the program.
It was not clear at deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor whether the proposed merger of CB&I and McDermott would affect MOX.
