US Army to deploy small nuclear power plants

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?”Right now, the military trucks many thousands of liters of diesel and kerosene around conflict zones to fuel vehicles and electrical generators. SMRs in the field could provide electricity for stationary operations and power modular systems that make synthetic fuels on-site from captured carbon dioxide, Sheehan says. Companies such as Prometheus Fuels and Aircela are already piloting refrigerator-size units that make fuels from electricity, ambient air, and water. Synthetic fuels are on the roadmap for Project Janus but won’t be in the