nuclear-news

US Army wants to deploy small nuclear power plants

The Janus Program aims to put commercial reactors into military service by 2028

by Craig Bettenhausen, Chemical and Engineering News, October 31, 2025

A plan by the US Army to deploy small modular nuclear reactors could help the military replace fossil fuels shipped along precarious supply lines with electricity and synthetic fuels generated on-site. Project Janus, which Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright jointly announced on Oct. 14, aims to put a small modular reactor (SMR) in operation by the end of 2028.

The shutdown of the federal government is delaying the rollout, army officials say, but a draft request for proposals should be out in a matter of weeks.

Though the program aims to put the first military SMR at a base in the US, the bigger vision is mobile microreactors that can provide power in far-flung locations. “The biggest military use case is contested logistics,” says Staff Sheehan, CEO of a nuclear chemistry start-up that is in stealth mode. “How do you power small, tactical, forward-operating bases, or even larger bases of thousands of servicemembers, that historically required a diesel generator and hydrocarbon fuels?”……………………………………………………….

The 2028 installation target was set in May by President Donald J. Trump in an executive order, which calls for the first reactor to be in operation by September that year. The same order also directs the US energy and defense secretaries to use “all available legal authorities” to smooth the regulatory road for advanced nuclear reactors and nuclear-fuel-recycling facilities built at sites controlled by those agencies. It also designates a wide range of activities, including those serving artificial intelligence hardware, as defense-critical electrical infrastructure.

That designation is important because many military reactors don’t require approvals from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the independent federal agency that issues permits and regulations for civilian nuclear power. Many nuclear power advocates accuse the NRC of driving up the cost of nuclear power through overregulation, whereas critics hold the agency up as a critical public safeguard……………………. https://cen.acs.org/energy/nuclear-power/US-Army-deploy-small-nuclear/103/web/2025/10#:~:text=Project%20Janus,%20which%20Secretary%20of,by%20the%20end%20of%202028.

November 8, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | weapons and war