The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) this month formally marked the end of its program to downblend 10 metric tons of excess highly enriched uranium when it closed out a contract with Westinghouse Government Services.
According to the Government Accountability Office, Westinghouse planned to sell the resulting low-enriched uranium to the Tennessee Valley Authority, which uses the material to generate tritium for U.S. nuclear weapons during commercial operations of the Watts Bar Unit 1 nuclear power reactor.
The NNSA closed out the Westinghouse contract on June 3, according to a notice posted online. The semiautonomous Department of Energy branch transferred the title to the low-enriched uranium to Westinghouse, an agency spokesperson said last week.
The Hopkins, S.C., company, formerly WesDyne, changed its name to Government Services after parent Westinghouse filed for bankruptcy in 2017. It finished its work on the repurposed excess uranium contract in 2019, the NNSA spokesperson said. The downblending contract, awarded in 2015, was worth more than $330 million.
Westinghouse subcontracted the downblending to Nuclear Fuel Services, the Erwin, Tenn.-based BWX Technologies subsidiary that operates the only commercial facility in the U.S. that regularly works with highly enriched uranium.
BWX Technologies has since taken on uranium downblending work for the NNSA. In 2018, the TVA gave Nuclear Fuel Services a roughly $500 million, four-year contract to downblend 20 metric tons of highly enriched uranium to provide fuel for tritium irradiation at Watts Bar.
