BWXT is assembling a reactor core for a Defense Department project to supply electricity to troops and their equipment in remote locations. Crews recently lowered the core barrel through a roof hatch at the company’s Innovation Campus in Lynchburg, Virginia.
The state’s military project
The Defense Department’s Strategic Capabilities Office selected BWXT in 2022 to develop and deploy Project Pele. Work is concentrated at a fenced-off facility along the James River, about three hours southwest of Washington. Northrop Grumman, Rolls-Royce LibertyWorks and Torch Technologies are also contributing.
The project aims to address military energy needs and the risks of relying on diesel resupply runs and generators. Generator noise, the source says, can reveal a military position. Small, concealable reactors could ease those pressures. Project Pele must fit within a shipping-container constraint while producing as much power as possible, Kate Kelly, president of BWXT Advanced Technologies, told Axios.
“The problem for Pele that we are trying to solve is: produce as much power as you can out of a module that can still fit within that shipping container constraint,” Kelly said.
Pele is expected to produce 1.5 megawatts of continuous electricity. The reactor will use tri-structural isotropic fuel, which BWXT also makes and has supplied to other companies, including startup Antares.
Corporate work, public mission
BWXT is assembling the core at its Innovation Campus. “We are, truly, into the fabrication and assembly cycle,” Charles Graves, director of government microreactors, told Axios. “There is a huge difference between looking at a paper reactor and getting to a point like this.”
The system is scheduled to ship next year to Idaho National Laboratory. There, crews will fuel, test and operate it for three years. Workers broke ground at the site in 2024. Graves said the site is “progressing well.”
The account names BWXT and the other corporate contributors, but gives no contract value, projected revenue or financial terms. It also offers no figures on the number of workers involved, their pay or their employment conditions. Crews installed the core barrel, but the source doesn’t describe a union role or organized labor’s involvement.
Kelly said the project carries a significant mission and that the industry “can't afford a mishap.” “We need to be successful,” she told Axios. The account doesn’t describe an alternative proposal for meeting the military’s energy needs, nor does it detail a civilian use for the Pele reactor.
A wider nuclear push
Nuclear energy is drawing interest from the White House, the Pentagon, Silicon Valley and El Segundo. A Gallup poll conducted in March found growing support among average Americans; the source doesn’t state the year.
BWXT’s work on Pele is informing another effort, Janus. Under that arrangement, the company is expected to build and operate BANR, a high-temperature, gas-cooled reactor, at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. The article gives no further details about the arrangement’s financial terms or the workers who would build and operate the reactor.