A next-generation nuclear reactor is airlifted from March Air Reserve Base, California, to Hill Air Force Base, Utah, in February 2026. The US military is investing billions in microreactors, creating a market that could shape the future of nuclear energy. (US Navy/Petty Officer 1st Class Eric Brann)

How Military Microreactors May Lead the Nuclear Energy Revolution

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The US military is investing billions in microreactors, creating a market that could shape the future of nuclear energy.

Artificial intelligence (AI) data centers, the anticipated driving force behind America’s spiking energy demand, seem to be faltering, and with that trend may plummet the hopes that a major expansion of commercial nuclear energy will power the future. But part of that market, the microreactor sector, could find an unlikely savior in the Department of Defense (DOD).  

It was naval nuclear power in the 1950s that paved the way for pressurized water reactors to become the standard for commercial nuclear energy production in the United States. Now the Army and Air Force are leading the way on microreactors.

According to the Army’s head of reactor projects, Jeff Waksman, that service has “set aside more than $2 billion over the next five years to develop and build first-of-a-kind reactors.” And beyond purely military applications, the Army’s nuclear power projects are designed to “help commercial vendors develop mass-producible, commercially ready reactors that can be sold on the open market.”

President Donald Trump’s May 2024 nuclear energy executive orders set a deadline of September 30, 2028, for the operation of a small domestic military reactor. This is several years earlier than the estimate for commercial small reactors to come online.

The interest in non-naval nuclear power is linked to a 2016 Defense Science Board analysis that identified nuclear energy as a “critical enabler of future military operations.” This recommendation was designed to address problems resulting from dependence on diesel fuel for forward and remote military operations. A 2018 Army study identified that 52 percent of casualties in the Iraq conflict were linked to........

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