Babcock & Wilcox
Babcock & Wilcox is the nuclear steam supply system vendor for 8 reactor units on record, 5 of them operating, totalling 4.5 GW of gross capacity across 1 country.
Designer of the once-through steam generator PWRs at Oconee, Davis-Besse, Crystal River and Three Mile Island. TMI-2, a B&W unit, suffered the 1979 partial meltdown that ended new US reactor orders for three decades. The company sold no further commercial reactors; its commercial nuclear services business was later acquired by Framatome, while the government and naval business continues as BWX Technologies.
| Headquarters | Akron, Ohio, USA |
|---|---|
| Founded | not recorded |
| Ownership | listed |
| Roles in the chain | vendor |
| United States | 5 |
|---|
Babcock & Wilcox in context
Babcock & Wilcox is the reactor vendor for 5 of the 419 operating units on record (1.2%), 12th of 13 vendors by operating units, 4,510 MW gross in total.
The median age of its operating units is 52.0 years, against 39.0 for the whole operating fleet.
Its 7 finished units with construction and grid dates took a median 6.1 years to build, against 6.0 across all finished reactors.
Babcock & Wilcox is the vendor of 1 reactor design line (B&W 177-FA), covering 8 units on record, 5 of them operating.
How these are worked out: shares and ranks use the world totals cited in the table, and only named companies are ranked (unnamed or country-level entries in a source are not). A facility with no stated capacity is counted as a facility but adds nothing to a capacity figure. Vendor figures count operating units where this company is the recorded reactor vendor; ages count from the start-up year on record, and build times run from construction start to grid connection, as on the age and build-times pages.
Design lines
| Design | Generation | Capacity | Operating | Units |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| B&W 177-FA | II | 850–950 MWe gross | 5 | 8 |
Installed base
| Unit | Country | Status | Model | Gross MW | Online |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Davis Besse nuclear power plant 1 | United States | B&W RLP (DRYAMB) | 925 | 1978 | |
| Arkansas Nuclear One nuclear power plant 1 | United States | B&W LLP (DRYAMB) | 903 | 1974 | |
| Oconee nuclear power plant 3 | United States | B&W LLP (DRYAMB) | 900 | 1974 | |
| Oconee nuclear power plant 1 | United States | B&W LLP (DRYAMB) | 891 | 1973 | |
| Oconee nuclear power plant 2 | United States | B&W LLP (DRYAMB) | 891 | 1974 | |
| Crystal River nuclear power plant 3 | United States | Retired | B&W LLP (DRYAMB) | 890 | 1977 |
| Three Mile Island nuclear power plant 1 | United States | Retired | B&W LLP (DRYAMB) | 880 | 1974 |
| Three Mile Island nuclear power plant Unit 1 Repower | United States | Pre-construction | B&W LLP (DRYAMB) | 880 | 2027 |
Sources
- Babcock & Wilcox, company source
- Global Nuclear Power Tracker, Global Energy Monitor, August 2026 release , CC BY 4.0 · retrieved 2026-09-06
How these sources are used, including the corrections applied on top of them and what is deliberately left blank · download the underlying data