---
category: Private Organization
location: Akron, Ohio
start: 1867
summary: Babcock & Wilcox is an American nuclear reactor designer that acquired the
  Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) plant in the early 1970s, inheriting
  its controversial history of highly-enriched uranium diversion to Israel.
tags:
- Organization
- Private
- Manufacturing
---

Babcock & Wilcox is a major American reactor designer and manufacturing company. It took over the [NUMEC](/organizations/nuclear-materials-and-equipment-corporation/) plant in the early 1970s. In 1978, Babcock & Wilcox shut down [Zalman Mordecai Shapiro](/people/zalman-mordecai-shapiro/)'s Apollo plant when the nuclear fuels business suffered a downturn. Under public pressure, the company agreed to keep the plant open to determine how much contamination existed. In 1989, the firm began to decontaminate the plant, an expensive process that involved the virtual dismantling of some areas. Company officials acknowledged that many sections of the plant, including its concrete floor, were so contaminated that they had to be dismantled, piece by piece, and buried at appropriate sites after the valuable uranium was removed.[^1]

[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 18.