NNSA funding for BWXT's DUECE enrichment pilot plant hits $266.7M

The National Nuclear Security Administration has now obligated $266.7 million on BWXT Enrichment Operations' first task order for the Domestic Uranium Enrichment Centrifuge Experiment (DUECE) pilot plant in Erwin, Tennessee, federal spending records show. That is up from $67 million at signing a year ago, and $156.3 million of it arrived after July.

Key facts

• Task Order 1 (PIID 89233125FNA400743) carries $266,693,104.79 in total obligations against a base-and-options value of $357.3 million, with performance running to 30 September 2030.
• Money arrived in four funded actions: $67.0 million at signing on 22 September 2025, $43.4 million on 17 March 2026, $120.0 million on 21 July 2026 and $36.3 million on 11 September 2026.
• The latest modification, P00005 on 28 September 2026, was an administrative action that obligated no new money.
• The order sits under a sole-source IDIQ contract valued at $1.5 billion, awarded on 16 September 2025.
• GAO says the plant is expected to receive NRC construction approval in 2031, begin limited operations in 2035 and reach 50,000 SWU per year.

What happened

USAspending.gov lists six transactions on delivery order 89233125FNA400743, titled "Domestic Uranium Enrichment Pilot Plant Task Order 1". The order was signed on 22 September 2025 with an initial obligation of $67.0 million. On 17 March 2026, modification P00001 definitized the letter contract and added $43,377,954, which means the work had started before its final terms were set. Two funding-only modifications followed: $120.0 million on 21 July 2026 and $36,315,150.79 on 11 September 2026, less than three weeks before federal fiscal year 2026 closed. Modifications P00002 (30 April) and P00005 (28 September) were administrative and carried no money.

Together those actions total $266.7 million, or about 75% of the order's $357.3 million base-and-options value. The same record shows $85.2 million in outlays, meaning money actually paid out rather than committed. Some automated award feeds list the order under the 28 September 2026 date. That is the date of the latest modification, not a new award.

The record also fills in details the original announcements left out. The awarding office is NNSA's Non-M&O Contracting Operations Division, and the funds come from NNSA Weapons Activities. The order is firm-fixed-price and was not competed, citing the only-one-source exception in FAR 6.302-1. The place of performance is Erwin, in Unicoi County, Tennessee. The Lynchburg, Virginia address on file belongs to the recipient. It is the only order so far under the parent IDV 89233125DNA000068, which shows a $1.5 billion ceiling, and that IDV received another administrative modification on 7 October 2026.

NNN found no BWXT or NNSA announcement of the 2026 funding actions. The record lists amounts and dates only; it does not say what deliverables each obligation pays for.

Why it matters

DUECE belongs to NNSA's defense program, not the commercial fuel market. NNSA says the plant serves its push for a supply of unobligated enriched uranium for defense purposes: low-enriched uranium (LEU) for tritium production, and highly enriched uranium (HEU) for naval nuclear propulsion. The agency states the technology "will not be used to produce enriched uranium for the commercial nuclear power industry." Unobligated material carries no foreign peaceful-use restrictions, the same condition behind NNSA's request for domestic U3O8.

The funding pace matters because the schedule is long. NNSA obligated about $199.7 million on the order during fiscal year 2026, compared with $67 million at signing, so the agency is paying for real work years before any enrichment begins. BWXT's second-quarter 2026 Form 10-Q attributes the $12.3 million year-on-year rise in Government Operations revenue, to $601.3 million, "primarily" to contributions from enrichment operations.

DUECE also stands apart from the civilian enrichment build-out NNN has tracked. On 5 January 2026, DOE awarded $2.7 billion in LEU and HALEU enrichment task orders, $900 million each to American Centrifuge Operating, General Matter and Orano Federal Services, the deal behind Centrus's $900 million HALEU task order. Those orders serve reactor fuel, while DUECE serves the weapons and naval programs.

Background

The DUECE centrifuge comes from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which NNSA has funded since 2016. GAO says the technology had reached technology readiness level 4, meaning validated in a laboratory environment, as of 2024. ORNL remains the design authority. In 2024, NNSA awarded BWXT an engineering study that identified the pilot plant's requirements, and the September 2025 award moved that study into licensing, construction and operations.

BWXT says it will build the plant at its Nuclear Fuel Services site in Erwin, using centrifuges from a Centrifuge Manufacturing Development Facility it began building in Oak Ridge in June 2025 on nearly 97 acres. The company projects about 100 skilled jobs there once the facility is fully operational. GAO reports that the Oak Ridge facility opened in January 2026.

GAO's August 2026 report sets out the wider plan. The pilot plant may first produce limited amounts of unobligated LEU for tritium, then convert to HEU enrichment around 2049. A separate, larger LEU production plant would need about 1.5 million SWU per year by the 2050s. GAO says NNSA's current inventories cover national-security needs into the 2040s. For the basics of enrichment levels, see NNN's HALEU explainer and the US nuclear fuel supply chain guide. For how DOE funding flows to industry, see DOE nuclear funding explained.

What's next

About $90.6 million of Task Order 1's value is still unobligated, and the order runs to 30 September 2030. The near-term checkpoints are fiscal year 2027 funding actions on the order, any second task order under the $1.5 billion IDIQ, and BWXT's next quarterly filing for updates on enrichment revenue.

The longer clock runs through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. GAO notes that an NNSA document flags the NRC licensing review timeline as a schedule risk for the pilot plant, with construction approval expected in 2031 and limited operations in 2035. If either date slips, the plant's role in covering defense needs after the inventories run down moves with it.