BWXT Wins $4 Million NNSA Contract to Design Y-12 Lithium Facility Module

BWX Technologies (BWXT ) announced on September 3, 2026 that it has received a contract award from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration to deliver a conceptual design for the first module of a new Lithium Processing Facility to be constructed at the Y-12 National Security Complex. According to the company’s announcement, the award covers a four-month, $4 million first phase during which NNSA will evaluate the two selected companies’ conceptual designs for the facility’s Machining and Inspection Module.

Lithium reprocessing is an ongoing function currently conducted in aging facilities at Y-12. BWXT said NNSA’s national security mission requires modernization in order to continue direct reuse, purification, component production and salvage efforts.

“This project represents an important investment in modernizing the nation’s nuclear security infrastructure and ensuring NNSA has the capabilities needed to support its mission well into the future,” said Heatherly Dukes, president of BWXT’s Technical Services Group. “Our decades of experience managing and operating complex, high-consequence sites give us unique insight into designing and constructing facilities that are ready to operate.”

BWXT is teamed with Edgewater Technical Associates, Evans General Contractors, Process Engineering Associates and Merrick & Co. on the project.

Multi-Phase Selection Process

Acceptance of BWXT’s proposal followed a competitive process that selected two companies to advance a multi-phase approach for Lithium Processing Facility construction. At the second phase of design completion, NNSA intends to down-select to one company and initiate the third phase of contract negotiations for construction of the module with a single qualified developer team. Additional modules of the Lithium Processing Facility would be designed and built under separate contracts.

Lithium Modernization at Y-12

NNSA Principal Deputy Administrator Frank Rose said in remarks at the facility’s October 19, 2023 groundbreaking that the event signaled the start of the agency’s next major investment, the Lithium Processing Facility. The United States has processed lithium since the 1940s at the site now known as the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, according to NNSA’s stockpile program overview.

The existing lithium operation is housed in Building 9204-2, known as Beta-2, an original Manhattan Project-era building that Rose said has degraded with time. NNSA states that the current lithium facility dates back to the Manhattan Project and is deteriorating because of its age and the corrosive nature of materials used in lithium operations. Upon completion of the new facility, NNSA plans to relocate lithium work to a safe, reliable, modern building that will incorporate more efficient production processes and field new technologies allowing the rapid and efficient recycling of lithium from dismantled weapons. In the meantime, the agency said it is restarting lapsed capabilities and investing in current processes and the existing facility so that lithium parts can continue to be produced safely until the new facility is completed.

Rose described the planned facility in his 2023 remarks as a modern, safe and reliable 245,000-square-foot building, and said initial site preparation work would begin that month and last about a year and a half, with main construction set to begin in mid-2025.

NNSA also prepared an environmental assessment, DOE/EA-2145, analyzing the potential environmental impacts of constructing and operating the facility to process and supply the lithium material and components needed to support the National Security Enterprise. The assessment placed the facility on a proposed site at Y-12 currently occupied by the Biology Complex, and the review’s published documents include a finding of no significant impact.

Y-12 scientists and engineers separately developed a homogenization technology, a streamlined process for recycling lithium parts, that NNSA approved for inclusion in the facility’s basic design, according to an October 15, 2020 agency article. The process mixes lithium materials in a large oven to produce a uniform lithium hydride product, a material NNSA said is essential for refurbishing and modernizing the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile. The agency is the sole supplier of lithium materials supporting U.S. defense missions. After Y-12 demonstrated a small-scale prototype of the technology, a team from Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories assessed and confirmed its viability with help from experts across the Nuclear Security Enterprise. NNSA said the technology would improve worker safety, increase the efficiency of existing lithium part manufacturing, improve product consistency and, over time, reduce operating costs.

“Homogenization is about using recycled lithium material from multiple sources and producing a consistent product to make parts… The more consistent the product, the more confident the weapons design labs are in qualifying our work,” Sabrina Hampton, NNSA’s LPF program manager, said in the 2020 article.

That article said the Lithium Processing Facility would come online by 2031, replacing the 1940s-era building where lithium operations currently take place. Under the multi-phase approach BWXT described, NNSA’s next stated step after the four-month first phase is the down-select to a single developer team for construction negotiations on the Machining and Inspection Module.