Nuclear Notes is produced by the Breakthrough Institute, and covers the policy, regulation, technology, and business of advanced nuclear energy in the United States and beyond.
Every Thursday, we track what’s really going on in the field: the new rules moving through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the advanced reactors moving from design to deployment, the companies going public and the utilities merging, and the executive orders and acts of Congress reshaping how the country builds. We explain not just what happened, but why it matters and how the pieces fit together.
Military Purchases Could Launch a Microreactor Industry
The Army and the Air Force are both trying to move quickly to install microreactors, in an effort to isolate themselves from the wider electricity grid, which they see as a target for attack, and replace diesel generators, which have a vulnerable fuel supply chain.
The Army has now put serious money behind that effort. Last week, it selected five reactor companies and five initial military installations under its Janus Program, with up to $2.2 billion in awards: Westinghouse at Fort Drum, BWXT at Fort Campbell, General Atomics at Fort Hood, Antares at Fort Bragg, and Radiant at Fort Benning. The Army says it expects the program, combined with private-sector funding, to ultimately support more than 20 microreactors across Department of War installations. The Air Force also recently selected three suppliers under its Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations program, pairing Radiant with Buckley Space Force Base, Westinghouse with Malmstrom Air Force Base, and Antares with Joint Base San Antonio. The goal is to have at least one reactor operating by 2030 or sooner.
This is a new wave of military interest in nuclear power, but hardly the first. The Army operated its own nuclear power program from the 1950s through the 1970s, developing small reactors specifically to provide power and heat at remote installations. Technical advances in nuclear engineering since then have made small reactors much more feasible. And more recently, the Pentagon launched Project Pele to develop a transportable microreactor for remote military operations.
There is ample precedent for military use of a new technology to pave the way for commercial adaptation. Light-water power reactors, the kind that now make up our reactor fleet, started with naval propulsion reactors. Jet engines started with the military, NASA pioneered solar cells (although the concept was already clear), and NASA and the Pentagon pushed microchip technology.
Janus appears designed with that history in mind. Rather than simply paying companies to develop reactors, the Army is tying funding to technical milestones and requiring substantial private investment. That lets the government create an early market while leaving the suppliers and their investors to bear the risk that the technology may not work or ultimately prove competitive.
And that may be the more interesting part of what is happening now. Microreactor developers have spent years confronting the problem facing much of advanced nuclear: customers are reluctant to order an expensive first plant, while manufacturers cannot bring down costs without orders. The War Department can be a very unusual kind of first customer. It has a real need for the product, can order multiple units, and puts a premium on resilience and fuel security that an ordinary electricity buyer may not.
The Pentagon is sponsoring two categories of microreactors: transportable and fixed. Transportable means that the reactor and power conversion equipment can arrive on several trucks or rail cars or heavy-duty cargo planes and be set up in a few hours. When shut down and left to cool, it can be moved out again after a few days or weeks. Fixed means the reactor can run a few years, until it needs refueling, at which point it will be left to cool for days, and then shipped out, intact, to go back to a factory.
If the Pentagon is the launch customer for a variety of microreactors, the size of the commercial market is not yet clear. And military demand should not be confused with proof of a commercial market. The obvious market is remote communities and off-grid customers, like mines, that now rely on diesel fuel. That fuel is now well over $5 a gallon, not counting delivery charges, and in some places, delivery is a major hassle, often requiring a lot of fuel for the delivery vehicle. A diesel generator can produce only 13 or 14 kWh per gallon, which can put the fuel cost alone at about 40 cents a kilowatt-hour. In addition to energy, the military is buying reliability.
Commercial places with a high need for reliable energy could also be willing to pay premium prices. However, in that setting, a microreactor would compete with batteries or small gas turbines, so price is a big consideration.
The real test of these programs is not whether the Pentagon can get a handful of microreactors built. With enough strategic justification, it can. The test is whether those orders create repeatable products, a supplier base, lower costs, private investment, and customers willing to buy the next units without the Pentagon underwriting them.
Palisades Approaches the End of the Long Road Back
Holtec International, which bought the Palisades reactor to dismantle it, has been working instead to bring it back to life. Holtec just announced that it is finally preparing to load fuel for restart.
The company said it is in “Mode 6,” which means it has loosened the bolts so it can remove the reactor vessel head, or it has already removed it. The reactor is in “cold shut-down,” meaning its temperature is below the boiling point. Operators will use a crane to load new fuel at the periphery of the core, and move older, partly-used fuel towards the center, 204 assemblies in all.
The long road back illustrates attention to detail and safety, and the long lead time to keep plants running or make regulatory changes. Entergy shut Palisades down in May 2022, citing a tough economic situation, and Holtec bought it the following month, almost immediately seeking to reopen it. But there was a backlog of deferred maintenance because the plant had been scheduled to retire. And there was new ground to break on the regulatory front; no one had ever sought to restore an operating license after it had been surrendered to the NRC.
Palisades would seem to have had an easier path to re-opening than Three Mile Island unit 1, but both have proven difficult. Holtec had not begun dismantling Palisades, but Exelon destroyed some major components at TMI_1 now the Crane Clean Energy Center. Exelon shut that reactor in September 2019 because it said costs were higher than its revenues, and in the years before it reversed course, it cut its maintenance costs in ways that added to the difficulty of re-starting the plant.
But then the market for electricity shifted sharply. Ownership shifted to Constellation Energy when Exelon split up into a generation company and a regulated utility, and Constellation announced in September 2024 that it planned to restart the reactor. But that job requires major new equipment purchases and completely new fuel. Constellation hopes to reopen next year.
Several other reactors were closed prematurely during the years of hardly any load growth and exceptionally cheap natural gas. The third plant seeking to restart is Duane Arnold, which shut in August 2020. Its owner hopes to apply for an operating license in the next two months. Other than that, there are no other viable candidates for restart.
All three plants face the challenge of hiring and training staff. Unlike the license for a commercial airline pilot or a truck driver, a control room operator’s license is specific to one plant.
The three have something else in common: All are restarting with contracts in hand to sell their output for decades to come.
Palisades, an 805-megawatt pressurized water reactor near Kalamazoo, Michigan, commissioned in 1971, is not precisely what a builder would set out to create today; in fact, Holtec is seeking to build two new reactors there as well, small modular models, each 300 megawatts. But building fresh is slow and expensive, which increases the attraction of reconditioning an old plant.
California Toys With Overcoming its Allergy to Nuclear
The Port of Long Beach, seeking to decarbonize and secure a steady supply of energy, has announced a partnership with a startup named Bluecore Energy to explore a 10-megawatt reactor that would be installed on a barge at the port. The company, which has raised $10 million, is headquartered at a warehouse in the port.
Long Beach is the second largest port in the country and wants to double its container volume by 2050, and be carbon-free. Bluecore wants to start with barge-based reactors to supply ports, but later build reactors to power ships.
Never Mind the Nuclear Physics; Will It Fit on the Grid?
The Pennsylvania-Jersey-Maryland Interconnection, the country’s largest independent system operator, has removed a 750-megawatt generating project planned by Oklo in Ohio from its interconnection study plan, apparently over concern about whether it could ride through a disruption in voltage.
The project mixes Oklo advanced reactors with gas generation and fuel cells. The fuel cells make direct current, which must be converted to alternating current. PJM has not publicly described the reason for its action, but Oklo says it was told that Oklo had not shown that the generators could handle a disruption. In August 2003 a voltage disruption caused a cascade that created a power failure from Detroit to New York City.
Oklo has complained to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that PJM’s action will delay the project by at least 14 months.
Tennessee Says It Has Issued Its First Fusion License
Type One Energy, which plans to break ground on a stellarator-type fusion machine this year in Clinton, Tennessee, at the site of an old TVA coal plant, has received a license from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. Tennessee is an Agreement State, which means it effectively takes over some NRC functions within its borders. This license is a first for the State.
A stellarator is a doughnut-shaped machine that uses magnets to hold a superheated plasma. Type One says the plant will start up in 2034.
See You in December?
Tickets are now on sale for the annual Abundance Conference, which will be held this year on December 10 & 11 in Washington, DC. The Abundance coalition is cross-ideological and based on the premise that America can and should build more, including more housing, more energy, more infrastructure, and more opportunity.
The event brings together policymakers, technologists, and builders, and is produced by the Breakthrough Institute and Niskanen Center.
Thanks for Reading!
Public/Private partnership seems to be the way to go. Maximise value for money with reliable and durable output while contributing to the technological advances possible in such an arrangement.
"The Army operated its own nuclear power program from the 1950s through the 1970s.."
Indeed it did, notably unsuccessful. Poor reliability, high maintenance.