A recent report by the United Coalition for Advanced Nuclear Power (UCAN Power) says America’s commercial power industry will benefit from the Pentagon’s growing role in nuclear technology.
The report drafted in November outlines “34 tangible recommendations” that the Department of Defense (DoD), or as the White House calls it the Department of War (DOW), could undertake to advance nuclear technology. This includes having the defense sector become an early customer for first-of-its-kind technology.
“The Department of War can and must lead the way,” according to the report. “America’s armed forces face persistent challenges on the world stage and in the Homeland. Advanced nuclear technologies provide a solution to enhance energy resilience, improve reliability, and overcome contested logistics challenges.”
“Conversely, DOW’s performance in program development, training, sustainment, and technology deployment at scale can provide reactor developers and fuel suppliers the initial order book to bring their technologies to market,” the report continued.
The report urged the Pentagon to collaborate with the Department of Energy to help advance the nuclear executive orders President Donald Trump issued on May 23, UCAN said. The defense establishment should work with DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to pursue a “whole of government” approach, the report said.
“America’s civil nuclear reactor fleet, and decades of a robust nuclear industrial base, originated within the U.S. defense establishment,” according to the report. “The first electricity-generating nuclear reactor at Shippingport, Pennsylvania, was originally built for an aircraft carrier in a program eventually cancelled.”
“Several of today’s leading nuclear companies played a major role in defense applications in the early years of the nuclear era, with Westinghouse, General Atomics, and Babcock and Wilcox (now BWXT) among many others,” according to the UCAN report.
“Fuel supply, too, grew out of the defense establishment. By 1956, the U.S. had built three massive uranium enrichment plants, the first in Oak Ridge, Tennessee as part of the Manhattan Project, which was followed in the early 1950s by facilities in Paducah, Kentucky and Portsmouth, Ohio,” according to the report.
Today, the Pentagon and the defense sector operate “hundreds of installations globally.” These installations need a resilient power source, UCAN said.
The report lauds various government efforts to commercialize mobile microreactors that could be used at government installations. This includes a proposed mini-reactor at Eielson Air Force Base, near Fairbanks, Alaska. The recently-announced Janus Program for small mobile reactors at military sites and various NASA initiatives are also important, the report said.