In Afghanistan, the Army once estimated that roughly one casualty occurred for every 24 fuel convoys it ran to keep forward bases powered and running. A new program just bet $2.2 billion that a reactor is safer than a truck.
Five Bases, Five Reactor Designs
On August 26, the US Army named five companies to build microreactors under a new initiative called the Janus Program, putting up to $2.2 billion in government funding behind five different designs at five different posts. Antares Nuclear will build at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. BWXT Advanced Technologies will build at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems will build at Fort Hood, Texas, with a design that scales from 5 to 20 megawatts. Radiant Industries will build at Fort Benning, Georgia, using its Kaleidos microreactor already testing at Idaho National Laboratory. Westinghouse Government Services will build at Fort Drum, New York.
That spread matters. Instead of betting everything on one design, the Army is testing five approaches side by side, under real operating conditions, at the same time.
Why This Is About More Than the Power Bill
None of the five selected designs run on weapons-grade uranium, a choice that lowers the security burden at every site and cuts proliferation risk. The Army also confirmed it won’t store nuclear waste on bases long-term.
But the real driver here isn’t the electric bill. It’s the fuel convoy. Every gallon of diesel that keeps a forward base running has to arrive by truck, and those trucks have historically been some of the most dangerous missions the military runs. Staff Sergeant Reyes, who drove fuel convoys during two deployments overseas, remembers exactly which stretches of road felt the most exposed, the same stretches a base powered by its own reactor would never need a convoy to cross. A base that generates its own power for years without refueling doesn’t need that convoy at all. Owen West, director of the Defense Innovation Unit, put the urgency plainly: “We need more power. We need it delivered faster and cheaper, and we need it to be more reliable.” Army Secretary Driscoll framed the contracts as a way to “deliver safe, reliable baseload power directly to our installations.”
The Fuel Pipeline Is Already Real
Radiant’s reactor draws on the same TRISO fuel supply chain covered in our multi-year TRISO fuel supply deal. This rollout already has real contracts backing it, not just plans on a slide.
What to Watch Next
The Army wants its first reactor running by September 2028, and the program funds work through fiscal year 2031. Officials project more than 20 reactors across Department of War installations once the program scales, a genuine adoption curve rather than a one-off demonstration. Watch which of the five designs reaches its base first. Whichever one delivers reliable power fastest and cheapest will likely shape how the broader US grid adopts this technology next.
Source: Army.mil official release