The US Army’s $2bn push into the nuclear power race
The military awarded contracts to five companies to build and operate first-of-a-kind nuclear microreactors at five bases across the country
The US Army’s $2.2bn nuclear microreactor push
The race to deploy and operate the first small modular nuclear reactor in the western world is intensifying, as the Trump administration pours billions of dollars into pilot projects with tight deadlines.
On Wednesday the US Army awarded contracts worth $2.2bn to five companies to build and operate a fleet of first-of-a-kind nuclear microreactors at five military sites across the country.
The contracts are part of a Trump administration programme that aims to revitalise America’s industrial capacity and technology leadership, as well as strengthen the army’s ability to project power globally.
A microreactor is a small, factory-built nuclear fission reactor that can fit inside a standard shipping container and is designed to produce clean electricity and heat. They are designed to generate roughly one to 20 megawatts of electricity, which is enough to power up to 20,000 homes.
The only SMRs that have been built and are operating today are in Russia and China, creating a strategic challenge for Washington in an industry where it has historically been a global leader.
The Janus Program aims to meet the terms of an executive order issued by Trump in May 2025, which called on the army to operate an advanced microreactor at a US military facility by September 30 2028. The army and Department of Defense’s Innovation Unit will provide technical and logistical support to the vendors, as well as funding to support a fast-track deployment.
“Awarding these contracts accelerates our ability to deliver safe, reliable baseload power directly to our installations. We are building the energy resilience necessary to project combat power globally, without relying on potentially vulnerable external grids,” said Dan Driscoll, secretary of the army.
The successful companies and military bases are: Antares Nuclear at Fort Bragg in North Carolina; BWXT Advanced Technologies at Fort Campbell, Kentucky; General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems at Fort Hood, Texas; Radiant at Fort Benning in Georgia; and Westinghouse Government Services at Fort Drum in New York.
These companies were expected to leverage the federal funding to raise billions of dollars of additional private capital to build more than 20 microreactors at additional military sites in the future, the army told journalists at a press briefing.
The army will regulate the deployment and operation of the reactors on its military bases, a controversial move that limits the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to a consultative role in the process. The Union of Concerned Scientists has argued recent efforts to fast-track deployment of nuclear reactors risk undermining the NRC and safety standards across the industry.
The Trump administration has said its reforms will not negatively impact safety.
“These are army-licensed, they are not NRC-licensed. So, there is no formal NRC process. However, the whole idea here is that at the back end of this we want a commercial product . . . we’re trying to transition from experiments and prototypes to actual commercial products,” said Jeff Waksman, principal deputy assistant secretary of the army for installations, energy and environment
Deployment and operation of commercial reactors would be overseen by the NRC.
The initial deployment of five microreactors is at military bases, which already have connections to the electric grid. In the future, the army could deploy the technology to provide power to remote sites cut off from alternative sources of electricity. However, it is unclear whether nuclear reactors could evolve from playing a role in maritime warfare through submarines and aircraft carriers to land-based combat.
“I don’t think anyone is going to put a nuclear reactor into a real tactical zone. We’re not going to have nuclear power tanks or anything like that anytime soon,” said Waksman. “But certainly where nuclear power makes a lot of sense is in remote and austere locations, so places where electricity is difficult to get, where there are long supply lines or where electricity is expensive.”
He added: “If you look at the situations that we have, say, in Alaska or on islands, we often have very tenuous energy situations . . . On a lot of our Pacific islands we are dependent on foreign ships’ fuel from foreign-flagged vessels and that doesn’t give us a lot of comfort if there were ever to be a future conflict. So being able to bring reliable energy that we know can provide power for years without refuelling would be a complete game-changer.”
The army has a long and, at times, troubled history with nuclear energy. In 1957 it activated the first nuclear reactor at Fort Belvoir, just outside Washington DC. The 10-megawatt thermal capacity facility was connected to the power grid in northern Virginia before the nation’s first commercial plant was built a year later.
The army shut down the reactor in 1973 and removed the nuclear fuel and control rods during a partial decommissioning in 1973–1974. But it was only fully demolished and its site restored in 2026 due to contamination.
Meanwhile, an experimental reactor commissioned by the army in the Idaho desert — Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One — suffered a steam explosion and meltdown in January 1961, killing three operators in the only fatal reactor accident in US history.