Lynchburg-based BWX Technologies will build a nuclear microreactor at Fort Campbell, on the Kentucky-Tennessee border, officials announced Wednesday.
BWXT, which employs about 2,850 people in the Lynchburg area, was one of five companies selected under the Army’s Janus program, which launched in October 2025.
Janus aims to install nuclear power on military bases while helping companies develop next-generation reactors for private markets. Officials said Wednesday that the program could bring about the country’s first advanced nuclear microreactors that are fully commercially operated and producing electricity for a purpose beyond demonstrations and testing.
“It comes down to the increasing need to secure our energy independence,” Kate Kelly, president of BWXT Advanced Technologies, a subsidiary focused on advanced nuclear reactors and fuel, said in an interview.
“Nuclear reactors can provide resilient and reliable electricity to power critical operations and critical assets on our military installations.”
At Fort Campbell, BWXT will deploy its 20-megawatt BWXT Advanced Nuclear Reactor, or BANR. It will be the first time the company has built this model of microreactor.
BWXT hopes to break ground at the base in 2028 and have the reactor running in the early 2030s. While BANR will provide always-on, baseload power, the Army base will continue to draw electricity from the grid.
BWXT’s involvement in Janus builds on the company’s decades of history supplying nuclear reactors and fuel for U.S. Navy submarines and aircraft carriers, along with its development of advanced reactors for future commercial use.
“One of the reasons why BWXT is so excited by this opportunity is that it is such a strong blend of some of the core principles and markets that the company supports,” Kelly said.
Other companies announced Wednesday as providing nuclear microreactors for Army bases under the Janus program are Antares Nuclear, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina; General Atomics Electromagnetics Systems, at Fort Hood, Texas; Radiant Industries, at Fort Benning, Georgia; and Westinghouse Government Services, at Fort Drum, New York.
The reactors will be owned and operated by commercial contractors, not the military. Each of the five reactor developers chosen under the Janus program must meet certain technical milestones to receive government funding, and they will differ in the designs of their reactors, how many they’ll build, and the timelines under which they’ll operate.
The Army said that it will award up to $2.2 billion total over five years. It anticipates that the companies’ private investment will exceed that amount, although officials declined to provide specific estimates on Wednesday.
Kelly declined to specify the value of the contract to BWXT.
Official: Nuclear a ‘natural game changer’ for Army
Military bases require a lot of energy, but a conflict could imperil the domestic electric grid and the Army still depends on liquid fossil fuels, primarily diesel, to back up its critical infrastructure, said Jeff Waksman, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy and environment.
“That makes nuclear a natural game changer for the Army,” Waksman said in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday.
Fort Campbell has approximately 28,000 active-duty personnel, 45,000 family members and nearly 10,000 civilian and contractor employees on about 107,000 acres in Kentucky and Tennessee. It’s famously home to the 101st Airborne Division, known as the “Screaming Eagles,” the Army’s only air assault division.
Some details, such as where exactly at Fort Campbell the nuclear power plant will be built, have yet to be determined, Kelly said.
BWXT’s reactor will use a fuel called TRISO — short for “tristructural isotropic” — which the company says is safer than traditional nuclear fuels because ceramic layers around its tiny uranium kernels keep radioactive fission contained. BWXT manufactures TRISO fuel at its Campbell County facility.
All of the reactors involved in the Janus program have newer designs that mean they are “inherently safe” in the event of a failure that requires them to shut down, Waksman said.
“We wouldn’t be putting these on these installations unless we had absolute certainty and comfort in the safety of these systems,” he said.
The program also establishes timelines for moving nuclear waste off site.
“We are not going to leave stuff behind that is radioactive for decades to come,” Waksman said.
Army program aims to boost reactor development
Janus was the ancient Roman god of transitions, and the Janus program will help these selected companies transition from experiments and prototypes to real commercial products, Waksman said.
The idea is that after the Army subsidizes the reactors’ initial design and operations, the reactors could then be sold commercially with few changes and with a clearer understanding of how much they cost, he said.
“We need to get them over the hump. There’s always that big, first-of-a-kind risk with any new reactor technology,” Waksman said.
Nuclear microreactors could be very helpful for military purposes, Waksman said. While they might be more expensive than other forms of energy such as natural gas or even larger nuclear reactors, they could be deployed in remote locations far from the grid, such as the Arctic.
“These microreactors don’t have to be at natural gas prices to be of a lot of use to the Army,” Waksman said.
BWXT hopes that its microreactor could one day see commercial application such as with electric utilities, data centers or industrial users such as mining companies.
The reactor is relatively compact and can be scaled up with multiple units on a single site to meet various power needs, according to the company.
BWXT said Wednesday that Tata Chemicals has signed a letter of intent to explore deploying up to eight microreactor units in Wyoming. There, Tata mines soda ash, which is an industrial chemical used in oil drilling, water softening and the manufacturing of ceramics, glass and household chemicals, among other applications.
The Janus program is a partnership between the Army and the Defense Innovation Unit, which aims to accelerate the military’s adoption of commercial technologies.
The program builds off of an executive order that President Donald Trump issued in May 2025 that directs the military to deploy advanced nuclear reactors at military installations. The order directs that at least one reactor should be generating electricity by the end of September 2028.
If that goal is hit, Waksman said it would mark the first fully commercially operating advanced reactor that’s providing electricity for a “useful purpose” rather than performing a demonstration or undergoing testing.
The Janus program also builds off of Project Pele, under which a team is building a 1.5-megawatt nuclear microreactor at BWXT that could be transported in a standard-size shipping container and carried by airplane.
Wednesday’s announcement came on the heels of a U.S. Department of Energy pilot program that aimed to have at least three advanced reactors reach criticality — essentially, being on and stable — by July 4. BWXT supplied TRISO fuel for an Antares reactor that met that deadline.
