US military spending $2.2 bn to build small nuclear reactors

The US Army announced Wednesday it has awarded a combined $2.2 billion to vendors to build and operate small nuclear reactors at five military bases in the United States.

The Army aims to get the first one up and running by September 2028, a target set by President Donald Trump in a May 2025 executive order aimed at accelerating development of next-generation civil nuclear power.

"We now know that our domestic electric grid is potentially at risk," Jeff Waksman, a senior Army official in charge of facilities and energy, told a press conference.

"In a conflict, we also know that we will not necessarily be able to move fossil fuels easily wherever we need them to go," he added.

He said the Army's critical infrastructure currently relies on "some form of liquid fossil fuel, primarily diesel" as a backup in the event of loss of access to the conventional power grid.

The government plans to install small nuclear reactors -- also known as SMRs (small modular reactors) -- at five "initial locations," at a time when the US Department of Energy is also promoting development of SMRs.

Five companies, including startups Antares Nuclear and Radiant Industries and long-standing nuclear industry players Westinghouse and General Atomics, have been selected to do the work.

Since June, five companies have brought SMR prototypes to the so-called "criticality" stage, when a reactor is capable of operating on its own, without an external energy source, and can, in theory, produce energy.

However, no SMR is yet in service, and only one manufacturer, NuScale, has had its reactor design approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

The US military has its own certification process relevant to its needs, Waksman said.

This is what enabled the US Navy, as early as 1954, to launch the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, the USS Nautilus, equipped with the predecessor to SMRs.

Waksman said the military was working jointly with the Department of Energy and the NRC "to align our regulatory processes as much as possible."

That way, the companies developing SMRs for the military "can have a straight line from Army approval to hopefully NRC approval soon after," enabling them to market their reactors to industry or local governments, he said.

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