Nuclear power might be coming to an Army base near you, and sooner than you think

AUSA 2025 — The Army is weeks away from kicking off a new competition that could see nuclear microreactors deployed to domestic military bases in the next few years.

Dubbed the Janus Program, the joint effort with the Department of Energy intends stand up commercial nuclear microreactors — defined as generating 1-20 megawatts of power — for use on domestic bases. It ties into Executive Order 14299, signed earlier this year by President Donald Trump, which ordered the operation of nuclear-reactors on a domestic military installation by Sept. 30, 2028.

The reactors will be commercially owned and operated, and acquired through a partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit. The news was announced in a joint appearance on Tuesday here at AUSA from Army secretary Daniel Driscoll and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, with the two men describing nuclear energy as the potential future for American energy independence.

“If you think about our engagement in a conflict in the Indo-Pacific, it is not going to be like a war we have had in the last 40 or 50 years,” Driscoll said. “We’re going to need to be able to access power like we have never needed it before.”

Hours later Jeff Waksman, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment, laid the program out for reporters. According to Waksman, a draft request for proposals will go out in the next “few weeks” — although that may be delayed by the government shutdown —  which will lead into an industry day and, following that, a full competition.

“Realistically, it’s gonna take us a few months to do all this. But we are planning to put a draft RFP out within a few weeks, so we’re gonna move very quickly,” Waksman said. “Selecting the sites will take longer, okay? Because that’s gonna be part of the local engagement.”

Earlier this year, DIU announced it had selected eight companies under its Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations (ANPI) effort. However, for Janus, all energy companies, not just those previously cleared by DIU’s older effort, will be welcome to participate. That’s in part because the requirements for Janus are different than ANPI, and in part because in the time since DIU launched that program, some nuclear startups have received investments that allow them to scale in ways they didn’t before.  

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Ultimately, the goal is to downselect to multiple companies, each of whom will be given a specific Army installation (likely in the contiguous 48 states) for which they would build a pair of reactors. Building more than one reactor is important, Waksman said, because it proves to the Army that this isn’t just a company making a one-off R&D effort. Over the course of this phase, he added the hope is that the supply chain can be codified and condensed to find efficiencies for all the companies involved.

As to which of the up-to-nine sites will be selected, Waksman emphasized several times that there is no plan to force a nuclear reactor on a community that doesn’t want it. In turn, communities or states that are more open to nuclear power may have an edge in the decision as to which bases these reactors go to.

“There’s gonna be a long period of local engagement and local discussion. … I think as long as we have that discussion, as long as we have a clear face to the project, and we’re clearly engaging with local communities, then I think there’s going to be a lot of appetite for it,” he said. “Now, if the local communities decide they don’t want it, then we won’t go there. We’re not here to impose on any local communities.”

Even more complex than nuclear reactors for the US is the question of staging such systems abroad. That’s particularly true in Japan, a key hub for the military in the Pacific.

Waksman acknowledged that is a complex situation, noting the Navy has been able to get nuclear-powered subs in other countries through a status of forces agreement. But again, he was emphatic that there is no plan to force these reactors on anyone.

“Some people may or may not be aware that in the 1960s the Army snuck a nuclear reactor into Greenland. They did not tell the Danish, and then [the Danes] got very peeved about it. But that was the 60s, or, as I like to say, before there were laws,” Waksman said. “That’s not how we operate in 2025, so we’re not gonna be sneaking these reactors in anywhere.”

Sharing Power With The Gird

A big part of the reason the Army is pursuing nuclear power for bases goes back to fears about the civilian power grid, which powers domestic facilities. Ultimately, any military base in the US is reliant on the grid around it — sharing its vulnerabilities to sabotage or cyber attacks in a conflict.  

But earlier in the day, Rep. Pat Harrigan, R-NC., told an audience at AUSA that there is a chance to create a win-win situation not just for national security, but for economic growth as well.

“As many of you may or may not know, nuclear capabilities on our military installations are not regulated the same way by the NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] as they are off our bases,” Harrigan said. “And so we can ostensibly put small modular reactors, even big nuclear [reactors] on our military bases, and use some of that power to power data centers, for example, that would be immediately adjacent.”

Waksman also brought up the idea of giving power back to the grid, but noted that there are legal and regulatory issues that have to be worked out in Congress, due to overlapping rules about which agencies govern military, civil and commercial nuclear energy.

“It’s just kind of a gray area in law that no one’s ever had to worry about, because we’ve never had Department of Defense-regulated reactors that were trying to sell commercially,” he said. “So that’s why we’ve taken this to Congress. There seems to be a bipartisan appetite to figure this out.”

In terms of cost, Waksman noted that nuclear may end up being slightly more expensive than traditional sources — but that if the cost is close enough, there’s a trade off that is worth it.

“The question is, how much are we willing to pay for resiliency? That’s still an open question,” he said. “I don’t think we need to meet absolute parity with fossil fuels, but I think we need to be reasonably close.”

Sydney Freedberg contributed to this report