The international nuclear technology company BWX Technologies, Inc. opened a Huntsville office Thursday to begin developing products for the aerospace and military including a nuclear propulsion system that could send rockets to Mars.

"We expect to start our next new major line of business here ... to be the nexus of nuclear technology as applied to space and defense," BWXT President and CEO Rex Geveden said at a grand opening of the company's new offices in Cummings Research Park. "We expect to create entirely new products and entirely new markets here.... We're not here for market share, we're here for market creation."

The company, a leading supplier of nuclear components to the U.S. government, has a contract with NASA to create conceptual designs for a nuclear thermal reactor that could power a spaceship to Mars. It will do that development at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville with a team of "high-compensation technical staff," said Jonathan Certain, vice president for advanced technical programs at the company.

The size of the workforce in Huntsville is dependent on growth in the new markets it plans to create, but Certain said BWXT hopes to hire between 75 and 150 people in the next four or five years.

Geveden said nuclear engines are "not particularly high thrust, so they're not good for rockets, but once you're in space, they're probably the best engines for those applications. You can get to Mars very fast and very efficiently."

"This is something people have been talking about for years and have not done," Geveden said. NASA has flown nuclear systems for decades, he said, but they are radio isotope thermal electric generators, "which are basically plutonium blocks and the heat of the decay of that plutonium can create electricity."

"We're talking about something very different here," Geveden said. "We're talking about an active nuclear reactor to run hydrogen across the core and expand it out through a nozzle."

The company will not use "fuel grade plutonium" in Huntsville, Geveden said, "but we can do the bulk of the work here."

BWX Technologies is the result of the breakup of the power company Babcock and Wilcox. It is headquartered in Lynchburg, Va. and has nine operating sites in North America.

The company manufactures all the fuel and nuclear cores that power America's aircraft carrier and submarine fleets. It is licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to handle weapons grade uranium and builds an average of two reactors to the Navy each year.

A large presence in the Canadian nuclear power market, BWXT has also entered the medical nuclear isotope market. "We expect medical radio isotopes to be a major new line of business for us," Geveden told local business leaders and officials at the grand opening.

Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle welcomed the company saying it "brings a new market to our area, makes our area that much stronger, and makes our technology that much stronger."

The company's local site director is Gene Goldman, a former director of NASA's Stennis Space Center and acting center director at Marshall in Huntsville. Goldman presented a $5,000 check from the company to help develop the planned Alabama Cyber and Engineering School in Huntsville at the ceremony.