Small Nuclear Reactors on Horizon as Pentagon Programs Eye 2028 Goal

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State of Play. Rising stress on the U.S. power grid has sparked renewed urgency for reliable energy solutions at military installations.

As Featured in National Defense. Will Rogers draws on his experience as the former senior climate advisor to the Secretary of the Army to assess the Pentagon’s advanced nuclear power strategy and provide insights on what’s still needed to succeed in developing a reactor that supports enough of the load at military bases to make grid disruptions a non-issue.

The Opportunity. Small, modular reactors can help distribute energy generation across different sources, enhancing durability. Achieving commercial viability in the next decade would prevent the military from competing for electrons on the grid against energy-intensive customers like AI data centers.

“The biggest challenge that we face as a country — and the military is a feature in this — is energy resilience on the U.S. commercial grid. The needs are real. The scarcity of electrons is real as well.”

— Will Rogers, Principal, Converge Strategies

Pentagon Programs Eye 2028. The Pentagon has long pursued small modular reactors, and today, government and industry aim to bring advanced nuclear technology online for military applications as early as 2028. Three initiatives are driving toward the goal to operationalize microreactors within the next few years:

1 | Project Pele is building a transportable microreactor and aiming to demonstrate the capability at Idaho National Laboratory in 2028.

2 | The Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations initiative — originally conceived by the Army in 2024 and now led by the Air Force in partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit — has a goal to bring microreactors to installations by 2030, if not sooner.

3 | The Army’s Janus Program, established in 2025, seeks to deliver microreactors to bases by 2028.

The Challenge. Resources are finite, nuclear energy efforts can be costly, and competing regulatory approaches may make it difficult to speak with one voice to industry.

Bottom Line. The Department should pursue a long-term cost assessment and a dedicated funding line for energy bills at host installations, so no base’s sustainment accounts, or its warfighters, end up covering costs they can’t absorb.

Media Contact

Adair Douglas, adouglas@convergestrategies.com