HILL AIR FORCE BASE, Utah (AP) — The Pentagon and Energy Department have airlifted a small nuclear reactor from California to Utah for the first time, demonstrating what they say is the U.S.’s potential to rapidly deploy nuclear power for military and civilian use.
The nearly 700-mile flight last weekend — which carried a 5-megawatt microreactor without nuclear fuel — highlights the Trump administration’s efforts to promote nuclear power to help meet soaring power demand from artificial intelligence and data centers, as well as for military use.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Undersecretary of Defense Michael Duffey, who traveled with the privately built reactor, hailed the Feb. 15 trip by a C-17 military jet as a breakthrough for U.S. efforts to speed up commercial licensing of microreactors, part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to reshape the country’s energy landscape.
A new focus on nuclear power
President Donald Trump supports nuclear power — a carbon-free source of electricity — as a reliable energy source, even though he has been generally hostile to renewable energy and prefers coal and other fossil fuels to produce electricity.
Skeptics warn that nuclear power carries risks and say microreactors may not be safe or feasible and have not proven they can meet demand at a reasonable price.
Wright brushed aside those concerns while touting progress on Trump’s push for a rapid escalation of nuclear power. Trump last year signed a series of executive orders allowing Wright to approve some advanced reactor designs and designs, taking away authority from the independent safety agency that has regulated the US nuclear industry for five decades.
“Today is history. A next-generation, multi-megawatt nuclear power plant is being loaded into the C-17 behind us,” Wright said before the two-hour flight from March Air Reserve Base in California to Hill Air Force Base in Utah.
The minivan-sized reactor is one of at least three that will reach “criticality” — when a nuclear reaction can sustain a series of reactions in progress — by July 4, as Trump has promised, Wright said.
“This is speed, this is innovation, this is the beginning of a nuclear renaissance,” he said.
The microreactors would be for civilian and military use
There are currently 94 operating nuclear reactors in the U.S. that generate about 19 percent of the country’s electricity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That’s down from 104 reactors in 2013 and includes two new commercial reactors in Georgia, which were the nation’s first large reactors built from scratch in a generation.
Recognizing the inherent delays in deploying new large-scale reactors, industry and government have focused in recent years on more efficient designs, including a small modular reactor proposed by the nation’s largest public power company, the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Microreactors, designed to be portable, can take that a step further and “accelerate the delivery of resilient energy to where it’s needed,” Duffey said. Ultimately, mobile reactors could provide energy security on a military base without the civilian grid, he and other officials said.
The demonstration flight “brings us closer to deploying nuclear power when and where it’s needed to give our nation’s warfighters the tools to win the war,” Duffey said.
The reactor shipped to Utah will be able to generate up to 5 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 5,000 homes, said Isaiah Taylor, CEO of Valar Atomics, the California startup that produced the reactor. The company hopes to start selling power on a test basis next year and become fully commercial in 2028.
Some safety concerns have not been addressed, experts say
Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the transport flight — which included scores of reporters, photographers and TV news crews — was little more than “a dog and pony show” that merely demonstrated the Pentagon’s ability to ship heavy equipment.
The flight “doesn’t answer any questions about whether the project is feasible, economical, feasible or safe — for the military and the public,” Lyman said in an interview.
The Trump administration “has not made a safety case” for how microreactors, once loaded with nuclear fuel, can be safely transported to data centers or military bases, Lyman said.
Officials also haven’t resolved how the nuclear waste will be disposed of, though Wright said the Energy Department is in talks with Utah and other states to host sites that could reprocess the fuel or handle permanent disposal.
The microreactor flown to Utah will be sent to the Utah Energy Laboratory San Rafael for testing and evaluation, Wright said. Fuel will be provided by the Nevada Homeland Security site, Taylor said.
“The answer to energy is always more,” Wright said. After four years of restrictions on more polluting forms of energy under the Biden administration, he said, “now we’re trying to free everything up. And nuclear will fly soon.”