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 government plans to install small nuclear reactors also known as SMRs at five “initial locations,” at a time when the US Department of Energy is also promoting development of SMRs. The US military has its own certification process relevant to its needs, Waksman said. 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.
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.
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.
