U.S. officials Tuesday announced a program to locate small nuclear power generation reactors on U.S. Army bases around the world.
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced the Janus Program, aimed at developing microreactors to generate power without relying on diesel fuel, at the Association of the U.S. Army conference in Washington.
“Ultimately, and not in the too far future, you’ll be able to place a reactor at a forward-deployed base, produce multiple megawatts of power, so meaningful power, and it’ll run for years, potentially decades, without any refueling or any reservicing,” Wright told the AUSA Warriors Corner panel.
Driscoll and Wright emphasized the importance of being able to supply vast amounts of energy to remote locations while limiting threats to supply chains.
“If you think about our engagement and conflict in the Indo-Pacific, it is not going to be like a war we’ve had the last 40 or 50 years,” Driscoll said. “We are going to need energy on the actual objective. We’re going to need to be able to access power like we have never needed it before.”
The announcement follows President Donald Trump’s May executive order calling for the operation of a nuclear reactor at a domestic military base by Sept. 30, 2028.
In 2022, Pentagon officials also announced “Project Pele,” with the goal of developing a 40-ton nuclear reactor capable of one to five megawatts of power that could be transported to an austere environment.
Driscoll, Wright, and Jeff Waksman, the Army’s principal deputy assistant secretary for installations, energy and environment, who will lead the project, said Tuesday that the Army will work with the Defense Innovation Unit and the Energy Department to develop and test the microreactors, which will be commercially owned and operated.
Driscoll touted the partnership with commercial entities, saying that it was the Army’s goal to be a, “host for American entrepreneurship and industry.”
Few specifics about the Janus Program microreactors were discussed at Tuesday’s panel, although Wright said he expected the first small reactor being developed at the Energy Department’s Idaho National Laboratory to “go critical next year,” adding that he expected this first milestone before July 4, 2026.
Speaking later on Tuesday, Waksman said that he hoped that the Project Janus microreactors would be able to build off of the reactors currently being developed in Idaho.