Army Goes Nuclear: Microreactors Set For US Bases By 2028
Who Will Build the Army’s Nuclear Reactors?
Amazon Unveils Updated Plans For 12 Small Modular Reactors In Washington
Radiant Selects Tennessee to Build Its Advanced Micro Reactor
Oklo, Newcleo, and Blykalla in $2 Billion Nuclear Fuel Deal
Google Brings AI to Fusion Developer CFS
DOE Fusion Roadmap Has Lots of Ideas but No Money
Army Goes Nuclear: Microreactors Set For US Bases By 2028
The U.S. Army, in a joint venture with the Department of Energy, is accelerating plans to deploy commercial nuclear microreactors on domestic military bases, signaling a major shift toward energy independence and national security resilience for DOD sites in the US.
Dubbed the Janus Program, this ambitious effort was formally announced at AUSA 2025 by Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright.
The program aims to establish commercially owned and operated nuclear microreactors—defined as generating between 1 and 20 megawatts of power—at up to nine DOD installations within the contiguous United States. All of the reactors built are expected to provide their power via “private wire,” which means theses power generation plants will not be connected to the commercial grid supplying electricity to the base.
The move is mandated by Executive Order 14299, which requires a nuclear reactor to be operational on a domestic military installation by September 30, 2028.
Resilience in a New Era of Conflict
The primary driving force behind the Janus Program is the vulnerability of the existing civilian power grid, upon which all domestic military bases currently rely. The Army may also be concerned that in time of war, hostile nations would use cybersecurity attacks to bring down US electric power grids that DOD bases depend on for tactical readiness. For instance, China is reported to have spent years hacking US electric power grids, water and transportation infrastructure, and DOD military sites. Having a pocket nuclear reactor on the bases to keep them up and running is one obvious response to that threat.
“If you think about our engagement in a conflict in the Indo-Pacific, it is not going to be like a war we have had in the last 40 or 50 years,” said Army Secretary Driscoll.
“We’re going to need to be able to access power like we have never needed it before.”
Jeff Waksman, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy, and environment, told the online news wire Breaking Defense that the Army is moving “very quickly,” with a draft request for proposals (RFP) expected within the next few weeks.
What the Army Will Have to Do to Get its Reactors
The reactors will be commercially owned-and-operated, with the milestone payments intended to help companies close their business cases as they seek “Nth-of-a-kind” production. The Army and the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) will be modeling this contracting mechanism off of NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program.
The Army will provide technical oversight and assistance, including support to the full uranium fuel cycle and broader nuclear supply chain, ensuring the program strengthens both defense and U.S. industrial capabilities. This level of support has a surprising scope and it is very large.
Demand for Microreactors Will Drive Supply Chain Growth and Labor Force Needs
The U.S. has approximately 450 to 500 military bases in total, spread across all 50 states. This includes sites supporting the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. Some bases are joint commands for more than one service. The implication is that long term the DOD could be contracting for a lot of microreactors and with that demand pull, supply chain firms will need to spin up their capabilities and it will need to happen fast.
In addition to reactor components, supply chain needs will include steam systems, turbines, generators, and switch yard equipment such as transformers. Key to all of this is a number of the microreactor designs likely to be selected for the program acquiring HALEU fuel will be a key success factor. DOE has been priming the pump with contracts for uranium enrichment and LEU as well as HALEU fuel fabrication. The DOD program could have a stimulus effect on demand for nuclear fuel well beyond nascent plans for civilian new builds for data centers.
Beyond systems, components, and fuels, the microreactor firms will need cadres of skilled trades, nuclear engineers with a wide range of specialties, and reactor operators to run the plants once they are installed at DOD sites. Because the Janus Project envisions the microreactors to be “commercially owned and operated,” it means military personnel will not be available to be trained to run the plants.
The sheer scope of the military’s needs are such that if civilian sector demand for microreactors and small modular reactors, especially to power data centers, takes off in the 2030s, the combined economic effects of the new builds in both realms could have a net positive effect on the nation’s GDP. The downside is that a metaphorical tsunami of demand for nuclear supply chain production could introduce inflationary effects that would increase costs for both DOD and civilian developers of micros and SMRs.
The Janus Program will build on lessons learned from Project Pele, a transportable nuclear reactor which is the first electricity-producing Generation IV nuclear reactor to begin construction anywhere in the world outside of China. The Department of Energy laboratory teams which partnered on the technical, legal, and policy aspects of Project Pele will also be working closely on the Janus Program. It is probably not a moment too soon for the Janus Program to also focus on the key determinants of success which are supply chain production and training and deploying the labor force to build and operate its reactors.
Community Consent is Mandatory
Waksman emphasized in his interview with Breaking Defense that the selection of base sites will be a lengthy process requiring extensive local engagement. Crucially, he said the Army will not force a microreactor on any community or state that objects.
“If the local communities decide they don’t want it, then we won’t go there,” Waksman stated, assuring reporters that the 21st-century Army would avoid the mistakes of the past, referencing a controversial 1960s incident where a reactor was covertly placed in Greenland without Danish knowledge.
Notably, the Army did not mention in its press statements any references to the use of transportable microreactors on the approximately 128 US military bases overseas.
A Win for the Civilian Grid?
In a unique development, the Janus Program holds the potential to boost local economies and the national energy infrastructure. Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-NC) told Breaking Defense that because nuclear capabilities on military installations are regulated differently than off-base facilities, excess power generated could be shared with the civilian grid—potentially powering nearby data centers and driving economic growth.
However, Waksman acknowledged that selling power back to the commercial grid requires Congress to work out “a gray area in law” concerning the overlapping rules that govern military, civil, and commercial nuclear energy.
For developers of microreactors, with their many nonbinding MOUs with AI data centers, the apparent certainty of DOD contracts to build in “fleet mode” using factory production, for hundreds of DOD sites, is a real attraction.
Wakesman noted that while nuclear power may be “slightly more expensive than traditional sources,” the Army views the increased resiliency and energy security as a necessary trade-off. The goal is to find solutions where the cost is “reasonably close” to fossil fuels. If the microreactor developers can hit these kinds of numbers, the benefit for the civilian sector customers will be very significant.
& & &
Who Will Build the Army’s Nuclear Reactors?
An RFP will be issued to determine how many of the firms will be awarded contracts to build micro transportable reactors for DOD
To ensure U.S. energy dominance, the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), with the Department of the Army and the Department of the Air Force, last April it launched the Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations (ANPI) program. First announced in summer 2024, the program will allow for the design and build of fixed on-site microreactor nuclear power systems on select military installations to support global operations across land, air, sea, space, and cyberspace. The Department of Defense team selected eight companies to be eligible to demonstrate the ability to deliver compliant, safe, secure, and reliable nuclear power.
In April 2025 the DOD named the companies that are now eligible to receive Other Transaction (OT) awards to provide commercially available dual use microreactor technology at various DOD installations. Selected companies for the ANPI program include:
Antares Nuclear, Inc
BWXT Advanced Technologies LLC
General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems
Kairos Power, LLC
Oklo Inc.
Radiant Industries Incorporated
Westinghouse Government Services
X-Energy, LLC
“Projecting power abroad demands ensuring power at home and this program aims to deliver that, ensuring that our defense leaders can remain focused on lethality,” said Dr. Andrew Higier, Energy Portfolio Director at DIU.
“Microreactors on installations are a critical first step in delivering energy dominance to the Force. Tapping into the commercial sector’s rapid advancements in this area is critical due to the significant private investment in this space over the last few years. The U.S. and the DOD must maintain the advantage and leverage the best of breed nuclear technology for our national security.”
The ANPI project directly supports Executive Order (E.O.) 14156 – Declaring a National Energy Emergency and E.O. 14154 – Unleashing American Energy which recognizes that external energy dependencies create the potential for disruption and risk to mission from constrained grid energy systems, natural disasters, or physical and cyber attacks to infrastructure.
To address these energy challenges and ensure mission continuity, ANPI objectives include:
Provide mission readiness through energy resilience;
Deploy nuclear power and demonstrate its capability to provide safe, secure, reliable, and compliant electricity in support of installation readiness goals for mission critical assets and empower the warfighter;
Field a decentralized scalable microreactor system capable of producing enough electrical power to meet 100 percent of all critical loads;
Utilize the civil regulatory pathways of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to stimulate commercial nuclear microreactor technology development and the associated supply chains in the U.S.
The ANPI program is a collaboration between DIU, Department of the Army, and Department of the Air Force – working to design, license, build, and operate one or more microreactor nuclear power plants on military installations.
In addition to DIU, Army, Air Force, ANPI receives support from the Department of Energy; the NRC; Idaho National Laboratory with Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Los Alamos National Laboratory; Argonne National Laboratory; Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; Sandia National Laboratory; and the Office of Nuclear Energy.
& & &
Amazon Unveils Updated Plans For 12 Small Modular Reactors In Washington
(NucNet contributed to this report) Amazon has unveiled updated plans for a small modular reactor (SMR) facility in the US state of Washington that will now be triple the original proposed size with 12 reactors producing a maximum of 960 MW of electricity.
It isn’t clear where this claim about “triple size” comes from as X-Energy has been promoting a 12 reactor effort to be built adjacent to the Columbia Generating Station in Richland, WA, under DOE’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program for several years. Energy Northwest and X-energy have engaged extensively on plans for an 12 unit Xe-100 facility since 2020.
Under an updated agreement with Energy Northwest announced in October 2024, Amazon said it will have the right to purchase electricity from the first project of four modules. Energy Northwest had the option to further build out the site by adding up to eight additional modules resulting in a total project generating capacity of up to 960 MWs.
There is a question of whether X-Energy can deliver on this project while at the same time developing a four reactor package to DOW at the site of of one of the chemical manufacturer’s sites located on the Texas gulf coast. An initial Xe-100 plant is being planned for chemical company Dow Inc’s UCC Seadrift Operations site on the Texas Gulf Coast. This plant could be the first SMR deployed to serve an industrial site in the US.
Amazon said the Cascade Advanced Energy Facility will be constructed in three phases, each with four of X-energy’s 80-MW, high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs). Amazon said it expects construction to start “by the end of this decade,” with hopes of generating electricity sometime “in the 2030s.”
The facility, built as part of a partnership between Amazon and Energy Northwest, will supply the utility with power and augment the single-unit Columbia nuclear power station, the Pacific Northwest’s only existing commercial nuclear facility.
As part of the deal, Amazon will finance the construction of the project and the power will flow to Energy Northwest which currently supplies power for Amazon’s nearby data centers. Previously, X-Energy has said that Energy Northwest would be the utility operator and that Amazon would be a key customer via a power purchase agreement.
In this regard, Amazon is following in Google’s footsteps in moving from limiting risk to exclusively signing PPAs to actually funding the construction of multiple advanced reactors. Google has a deal with Kairos to fund the deployment of multiple units of the firm’s molten salt advanced reactor design.
X-energy says in a press statement its reactor is “road-shippable with accelerated construction timelines and predictable and manageable construction costs, and is well-suited to meet the requirements of energy-intensive data centers.”
According to Amazon, the facility will have a significantly smaller footprint than traditional nuclear plants. The project will create over 1,000 construction jobs and over 100 permanent positions.
Supply Chain Partners
In August, Amazon, X-energy, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power and Doosan Enerbility signed an agreement to accelerate the deployment of Xe-100 advanced nuclear reactors in the US to meet increasing power demand from data centers, advanced manufacturing and electrification. The South Korean firms will be key elements of the supply chain of major components of the Xe-100 reactors built in the US.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is currently engaged in pre-application activities with X Energy, LLC. (X-energy). The firm is currently submitting topical reports prior to submitting a licensing application.
X-energy is designing the Xe-100 reactor which is a pebble-bed, high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR). Each reactor will generate 200MWt and approximately 80MWe. The standard Xe-100 “four-pack” plant generates approximately 320MWe.
& & &
Radiant Selects Tennessee to Build Its Advanced Micro Reactor
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, TN Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner Stuart C. McWhorter and Radiant officials announced the Radiant has selected Tennessee for a $280 million investment that will expand the company’s nuclear manufacturing and research and development (R&D) to Oak Ridge, TN.
The land for Radiant’s new factory, which encompasses portions of the historic K-27 and K-29 Manhattan Project sites, has been purchased from the Oak Ridge Industrial Development Board.
With construction slated to begin in 2026, Radiant says this agreement puts it on track to deliver its first mass-produced Kaleidos nuclear generator by 2028, and, within a few years, the firm’s ambitious is to scale up production to 50 reactors per year. Some of these units may be for DOD use (see previous stories).
“We chose Oak Ridge, Tennessee, because of their strong workforce, the community’s rich nuclear heritage and the public’s second-to-none nuclear IQ,” said Tori Shivanandan, Chief Operating Officer of Radiant.
“Just as importantly, the state’s business-friendly environment gave us the immediate regulatory certainty we needed to move fast and be up and running to meet growing customer demand for our nuclear generators.”
In its press statement Radiant said it will create 175 new jobs in Roane County that will directly support the development and mass production of Radiant’s Kaleidos. Upon completion of the facility, this machine will be the world’s first one-megawatt portable nuclear generator capable of generating power in remote areas and providing resilient power options for military bases or disaster-relief scenarios. Radiant is the sixth company to locate in Tennessee utilizing the Nuclear Energy Fund.
The $50 million fund was in Gov. Lee’s recommended 2023-2024 budget and approved by the Tennessee General Assembly. An additional $10 million was allocated and approved in the state’s budget during both the 2024 and 2025 legislative sessions, bringing the fund’s total to $70 million since its inception.
Tennessee’s Gain is Wyoming’s Loss
Radiant has pivoted from plans to build a nuclear reactor refueling facility in a remote corner the Rockies near Casper, WY, to locate its its key manufacturing facilities at a site in East Tennessee not far from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The firm said it exited plans to locate in Wyoming due to opposition from the state legislature which imposed stiff requirements on any firm planning to locate spent nuclear fuel in the state.
The loss of the Radiant project prompted Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon to issue a sharply worded rebuke of the legislature’s decision and he called out a specific political faction that was behind the measure.
“It is a sad day when Wyoming loses out to Tennessee in providing energy leadership. Members of the Freedom Caucus inspired ‘Club No’ convinced Radiant that Wyoming isn’t about leadership and problem solving. Tennessee stood ready to accept that opportunity; maybe they understand how to build an economy.”
That wasn’t all. Gordon fired a second salvo castigating Wyoming legislators for giving in to unfounded fears.
‘Club No’ has ushered in a new culture of no matter who began or who commenced it, we’re against it. Let me say it plainly: Wyoming should not be held back by fear. We should be pioneers. We should be the first state companies turn to when they want regulatory clarity, bold infrastructure, and a partner for innovation.”
What’s paradoxical about the legislature’s actions is that Wyoming is a leading supplier of uranium for the nation’s commercial nuclear energy industry. Apparently, digging it up and shipping it out as yellowcake is one thing, but managing the resulting nuclear fuel both in un-irradiated and spent fuel forms did not fly with the deeply conservative politicians who rammed the measure though over the governor’s objections.
Interestingly, one of the chief sponsors of SF0186 – Advanced nuclear reactor manufacturers-fuel storage – is State Senator Jim Anderson (R-Natrona) which includes Casper, WY, and the site north of it which was to have been the intended home of the Radiant nuclear fuel depot. Clearly, local opposition to the plant, some of which was based on ill-informed fears, outweighed expectations for the economic benefits of Radiant’s nuclear fuel facility in terms of the jobs and tax base that the plant would have delivered to the rural community.
& & &
Oklo, Newcleo, and Blykalla in $2 Billion Nuclear Fuel Deal
Three advanced nuclear reactor developers have announced plans develop advanced fuel fabrication and manufacturing infrastructure in the United States.
Newcleo says in a joint press statement it plans to invest up to $2 billion via a Newcleo-affiliated investment vehicle. Blykalla, Sweden’s advanced nuclear technology developer, is also considering co-investing in the same projects, and procuring fuel related services from the projects. The project is intended, in the US, to support the domestic expansion of Oklo’s fuel and fast-reactor technologies.
Interestingly, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum is quoted as saying in the the press statement that all $2 billion would be spent on nuclear fuel facilities in the US.
None of the three firms were forthcoming in identifying sources of investment to raise the $2 billion, the timing of the construction and operation of the nuclear fuel infrastructure,, nor identify the US locations of fuel fabrication facilities. The press release says, “Specific projects and investment amounts will be detailed in forthcoming definitive agreements.”
Oklo’s Plans for Recycling Spent Nuclear Fuel
One location is more or less certain. Last month Oklo announced a $1.68 billion to be built in East Tennessee. The recycling facility will recover usable fuel material from used nuclear fuel and fabricate it into HALEU fuel for advanced reactors. This process can reduce waste volumes for more economical, clean, and efficient disposal pathways.
The fuel recycling facility is the first phase of Oklo’s broader advanced fuel center, a multi-facility campus aimed at supporting recycling and fuel fabrication.
The press statement says “the partnership strengthens all parties’ abilities to supply the growing global demand for energy. This effort includes co-investment into, and co-location of, fuel fabrication facilities and could include repurposing surplus plutonium in a manner consistent with established U.S. safety and security requirements.”
Jacob DeWitte, co-founder and CEO of Oklo, said, “Fissioning surplus plutonium is the best way to eliminate a legacy liability while creating an abundant near-term fuel source. It can accelerate the deployment of multiple gigawatts of advanced reactors and serve as a bridge fuel until uranium enrichment and recycling scale up.”
Neither Oklo nor the other two firms addressed the issue of where and how they would get the surplus PU-239 or how they would manage it it in terms of IAEA nonproliferation requirements to prevent diversion into a hostile nation’s nuclear weapons hands.
MOX to HALEU
The major nuclear powers that have inventories of PU-239 in spent nuclear fuel have struggled with disposition strategies for it. In terms of western nations, only France reprocesses it into mixed oxide fuel (MOX) which is used in nuclear reactors in place of LEU fuel in France, Japan, and several other countries including Belgium, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Russia produces MOX fuel for its BN-600 and BN-800 reactors and supplies it to China for its CFR-600 fast reactors supplied by Russia. In 2020 Russia announced plans for life extension of the BN-600.
The economic case for MOX, and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, are open to question. The US Department of Energy abandoned a multi-billion effort to build a reprocessing facility in South Carolina that would have turned surplus PU-239 into PWR type MOX fuel assemblies. Cost overruns and a lack of political support from the the Obama Administration killed the effort leaving behind another DOE white elephant.
Oklo does not plan to produce MOX fuel. Instead, it plans to begin its advanced fuel journey by reconfiguring left over fuel from the EBR-II sodium cooled research reactor that operated at Argonne West in Idaho. Like other advanced nuclear reactor developers, beyond EBR-II it will need a lot of high assay low enriched fuel (HALEU) at 5-19% U235 to operate the fleet of SMRs it plans to build to power AI data centers.
Presumably, the plan is to use the Tennessee site to produce high assay low enriched fuel (HALEU), rather than MOX, to power the planned production of advanced reactors by all three firms. The strategy would be to make all three firms self-sufficient in having reliable fuel services for their reactors and not have to depend on any of the firms designated by DOE for uranium enrichment and fuel fabrication of HAELU.
Oklo has numerous non-binding MOUs with potential data center customers as well as similar arrangements with oil & gas firms in the Texas oil patch of Odessa and Midland, TX. It proposes to built 75 MW SMRs in fleet mode with all of them requiring HALEU fuel.
Other HALEU Fuel Deals
Oklo isn’t the only advanced nuclear reactor developer to invest in nuclear fuel facilities. In 2022 X-Energy announced the formation of its TRISO-X plant in Tennessee to produce for for its 80 MW HTGRs. Two years later DOE awarded X-Energy a $145M tax credit for the construction of the facility.
In 2022 TerraPower announced a $200M deal with Global Nuclear Fuel to produce enriched uranium fuel at its Wilmington, NC, plants. In 2024 TerraPower announced a deal with Framatome via a fuel fabrication service agreement to fund the creation of a high assay low enriched uranium (HALEU) metallization pilot plant in Richland, WA. This pilot plant will demonstrate Framatome’s capability to metallize HALEU from a uranium oxide form.
About the Firm’s Advanced Reactors and their Supply Chains
In its report about the three way deal, World Nuclear News profiled some the existing relationships that precede this week’s announcement.
Oklo’s Aurora powerhouse is a fast neutron reactor. Building on the design and operating heritage of the Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II), which ran in Idaho from 1964 to 1994, it uses metallic fuel to produce electricity and usable heat, and can operate on fuel made from fresh HALEU or used nuclear fuel. Current models, at 75 MWe,. use pool-type sodium with pumps similar to the EBR-II coolant system.
Newcleo is developing its Small Modular Lead-cooled Fast Reactor (SM-LFR) technology. According to Paris-headquartered Newcleo’s delivery roadmap, the first non-nuclear pre-cursor prototype of its reactor is expected to be ready by 2026 in Italy, the first reactor operational in France by the end of 2031, while the final investment decision for the first commercial power plant is expected around 2029.
Blykalla – formerly called LeadCold – is a spin-off from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, where lead-cooled reactor systems have been under development since 1996. The company – founded in 2013 as a joint stock company – is developing the SEALER (Swedish Advanced Lead Reactor) lead-cooled SMR.
Other relationships between the three firms include;
A Joint Technology Development Agreement signed last month saw Oklo and Blykalla agree to share technical and market insights on materials, components, non-nuclear supply chain sourcing, fuel fabrication, and licensing best practices across the USA and Sweden.
Together the two companies will examine shared suppliers for reactor-agnostic equipment to improve availability, schedules, and cost. Under the agreement, Oklo may also supply select components for Blykalla’s direct use to strengthen a vertically integrated, potentially cross-border, supply chain. Oklo may also provide fuel fabrication services to Blykalla. In parallel, Oklo and Blykalla will pursue targeted R&D and regulatory analysis to boost reliability and lower lifecycle costs without requiring design changes.
The agreement includes Oklo co-leading Blykalla’s next investment round through a commitment of about $5 million. Other investors, so far unnamed, are expected to join in the investment vehicle.
In February this year Blykalla and Newcleo signed an agreement for the joint research and development of materials for lead-cooled fast reactors (LFRs). The partnership entails the exchange of materials, results, and associated data to assist the respective R&D programs of each party.
& & &
Google Brings AI to Fusion Developer CFS
Google announced a research research partnership with Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS),which is developing a compact, powerful tokamak machine called SPARC.
SPARC leverages powerful high-temperature superconducting magnets and aims to be the first magnetic fusion machine in history to generate net fusion energy — more power from fusion than it takes to sustain it. That landmark achievement is known as crossing “breakeven,” and a critical milestone on the path to viable fusion energy.
Google said that its work includes accelerating the timeline to deliver fusion energy to the grid. It has been collaborating on three key areas so far:
Producing a fast, accurate, differentiable simulation of a fusion plasma. Finding the most efficient and robust path to maximizing fusion energy. Using reinforcement learning to discover novel real-time control strategies.
Google said help its artificial intelligence (AI) software will help CFS teams test and refine their operating plans by running millions of virtual experiments before SPARC is even turned on.
Tech Crunch reports that this isn’t Google’s first foray into nuclear fusion. Google has worked with TAE Technologies to use AI to study how plasma behaves inside TAE’s fusion machine.
There’s a reason Google keeps coming back to the problem: AI might be uniquely suited to making fusion power possible.
One of the biggest challenges facing fusion startups is keeping the plasma inside a reactor hot enough for long enough. Unlike nuclear fission reactions, which are self-sustaining, fusion reactions are difficult to maintain outside of stars like the sun. Without that sort of mass and gravity, the plasma is constantly in danger of diffusing and snuffing itself out.
In CFS’s reactors, powerful magnets substitute for gravity to help corral the plasma, but they’re not perfect. Reactor operators have to develop control software that can enable the device to continuously react to changing plasma conditions.
Problem is, there are almost too many knobs to turn, certainly more than a human is capable of. That’s the sort of problem that AI excels at.
Google’s extended description of the work scope and its value to CFS’s development efforts, can be read here.
& & &
DOE Fusion Roadmap Has Lots of Ideas but No Money
In a widely publicized rollout of the Department of Energy’s 2025 Fusion Roadmap, Energy Secretary Chris Wright framed the challenge: “In a budget cutting time we need to sell the Senate that we need to be investing much more in fusion.” (Full Text: PDF file) The roadmap as a program initiative and agency priority has to get Senate approval. Appropriations to fund it will begin in the House.
Wright declined to name a specific level of funding although some industry analysts have said DOE may be considering asking for as much as $10 billion over an unspecified period of years to support commercialization of fusion power plants.
DOE’s hesitancy about being specific about funding for commercializing the US fusion industry is likely due to the facts that (1) the government is shut down over unrelated issues with slim prospects of resolution of them soon, and (2) DOE staffing, including its loan program office, has been shredded like a chunk of mozzarella cheese over a pizza. It is unclear who or how the agency would manage to distribute any fusion funds even if it got them. Rehiring key staff would be a good place to start once the government is back in business.
From a policy perspective, the roadmap does represent a strategic shift from fusion science to commercial deployment. It addresses core challenges to commercialization. (image right from the DOE roadmap)
Stuart Allen, CEO at FusionX Group, wrote in a post on Linkedin that the roadmap has several key elements,
Alignment: the objective is for DOE, national labs, and industry to operate in alignment. With, as Under Secretary Darío Gil noted: “…a shared purpose – to accelerate the path to commercial fusion power.”
Competition: as the U.S. coordinates domestic efforts, global competitors, and partners accelerate their own fusion programs. The complex interplay between all these will be core to fusion’s advance
Funding: there is a critical caveat, the Roadmap explicitly states DOE is “not committing to specific funding levels”
Allen closed by noting, “Industry-government alignment is unprecedented. Commercial timelines are aggressive. But without meaningful federal funding and support, a mid 2030s target remains aspirational.”
What’s in the Roadmap?
The Fusion Science & Technology (S&T) Roadmap is a comprehensive national strategy to accelerate the development and commercialization of fusion energy by the mid-2030s.
The roadmap charts a path for federal support to the growing fusion energy industry, identifying critical science and technology gaps and defining the milestones needed to bring commercial fusion power to the grid. DOE say it was developed with broad input from over 600 researchers, engineers, and industry stakeholders.
The press statement also included another caveat – DOE’s ability to support this Roadmap’s milestones and timelines of scaling up the domestic fusion private sector by the 2030s is contingent on the development of future public private partnerships.
# # #