The US Army is backing the development of portable nuclear power for its remote bases, with up to $2.2 billion in funding set to go to five companies building and operating small reactors.
The programme centres on so-called microreactors — factory-built nuclear units designed for transport and capable of producing up to 20 megawatts of electricity each.
Under the Janus programme, the Army aims to deploy its first reactor by September 2028, with the technology potentially supplying power to isolated installations in places such as Alaska and offshore islands.
The companies and bases the Army selected were:
The Army did not detail how much money would be distributed to each company. But Radiant said it will get up to $750 million to develop and deploy 15 of its Kaleidos reactors in the programme.
An Army official said reactors will have to follow all environmental and safety rules that apply to commercial reactors but added that they would be regulated by the Army, not the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which regulates commercial reactors.
"The whole idea here is that at the back end of this we want a commercial product," said Jeff Waksman, the principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment.
Radiant's Chief Commercial Officer Mike Starrett told Reuters in an interview that the Janus award is key to the company scaling up its business to eventually meet the needs of commercial customers like data centres in about 2030.
Critics of microreactors say they will be more expensive than conventional reactors. Waksman said nobody thinks that microreactors will be lower in cost than conventional plants. "What we are trying to do here with Janus ... is to flesh out how we can get those prices down," Waksman said.
The military currently pays about 40 cents a kilowatt-hour to power Arctic installations, a cost it hopes to cut, Waksman said. The Army also expects the private sector to raise more money for the reactors than the federal government will, and the programme will help attract that capital.
Starrett said that because Radiant's containerised reactors can be brought to the customer, eliminating energy transmission fees, their delivered cost will be between 20 and 30 cents per kilowatt-hour.
