The U.S. Army announced on Wednesday that it would award up to $2.2 billion to five companies to build a new generation of miniature nuclear power reactors at military bases around the country.
The move is part of the Trump administration’s efforts to spur the country’s largest expansion of nuclear power in more than three decades. Federal agencies have been easing or eliminating regulations for nuclear power plants and supporting companies that are developing novel types of small reactors meant to be faster and easier to build than traditional large reactors.
The Army is particularly interested in “microreactors” that are small enough to be mass-produced in a factory and shipped by truck or airplane to far-flung military installations to provide reliable electricity, without the need for frequent refueling. While roughly a dozen companies are developing designs for microreactors, none have been built yet.
To kick-start construction, the Army will help fund five different companies looking to build initial versions of their reactors: Antares Nuclear at Fort Bragg in North Carolina; BWX Technologies at Fort Campbell in Kentucky; General Atomics at Fort Hood in Texas; Radiant Industries at Fort Benning in Georgia; and Westinghouse Government Services at Fort Drum in New York.
The goal is to deploy at least one microreactor by the fall of 2028 and help the industry as a whole become commercially viable, officials said. The companies are also expected to raise billions of dollars in private funding.
“We believe that this will be the spear tip not just for microreactors but for all advanced reactors in the United States,” said Jeff Waksman, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment. “There have been a lot of microreactor companies that have popped up recently, but we need to get them over the hump.”
Still, the U.S. nuclear industry has developed a reputation for over-promising and under-delivering in recent decades. Army officials said they had thoroughly vetted each company and believed that they all had a reasonable chance of success, but conceded that some reactors might not get completed given that the technologies were still unproven.
The Army is modeling its effort, known as the Janus Program, after a NASA initiative that helped develop private spaceflight and funded Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Reactor developers will have to hit certain milestones to receive federal funds, and the Army can cancel funding or divert it to other companies as needed.
“We know that this is going to be very difficult and that there’s a very real chance that one or more of these companies could fail,” said Mr. Waksman. “That’s why we want to ensure that at all times we have competition.”
The U.S. military has historically played a central role in the development of nuclear energy, with early reactors designed for ships and submarines. The first nuclear plant to provide power to the commercial electric grid was at Fort Belvoir, an Army base in Virginia, in 1957.
The Pentagon has a lot of leeway to authorize new nuclear projects. Reactors built for defense purposes do not need approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the independent federal agency that oversees the safety of civilian nuclear plants and can take years to license new designs.
Mr. Waksman said that the Army was working with the commission and the Energy Department to align safety standards, so that any microreactors built at Army bases could later apply for N.R.C. approval for commercial use under a new expedited pathway the Trump administration is creating. Some Democrats have criticized that process as lacking transparency.
Experts said that many microreactor technologies appear promising, but it remains to be seen whether they will make economic sense to deploy widely.
A typical microreactor is 20 megawatts or less, capable of powering thousands of homes, whereas traditional reactors can be 800 megawatts or more, enough to power entire cities. While microreactors are expected to be faster to build and have a lower upfront price tag, the electricity they make is expected to cost much more, because they lack the economies of scale of large reactors.
Mr. Waksman said that the U.S. military had a number of remote installations in places like Alaska or on Pacific islands where microreactors could be worth the price, since those bases already import fossil fuels at high costs. Some industrial companies have also expressed interest in microreactors to provide power or heat in locations where it wouldn’t necessarily make sense to build a giant power plant.
Several reactor developers said the initial Army funding could help them push down costs over time.
“Operating on military installations first gives us the reliability track record to unlock commercial deployments, and the resulting, much larger commercial volume drives down costs,” said Mike Starrett, chief commercial officer at Radiant, a start-up that was awarded $750 million to build up to 15 of its 1-megawatt microreactors.
Nuclear power has broadly attracted bipartisan support because it can generate electricity around the clock without releasing planet-warming greenhouse gases. Earlier this month, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, called on the Army to fund a microreactor at Fort Drum, in the northern part of the state.
One of the biggest challenges could be finding enough fuel for future plants. Mr. Waksman said the military should be able to procure enough low-enriched uranium for an initial wave of around 20 microreactors. But more than that would require the United States to develop new domestic supply chains for nuclear fuel — which the Energy Department is spending billions of dollars to try to do.
Nuclear waste is another lingering issue. The Army is still cleaning up contamination from several nuclear reactors that it operated in the 1950s and 1960s. This time around, officials said, companies will be required to remove any radioactive materials from bases within two years of operation. The federal government still hasn’t developed a permanent waste disposal solution, however.
