California-based startup Radiant Nuclear has signed an agreement to deliver a first-of-a-kind (FOAK) microreactor to a US Air Force military base in 2028. The value of the contract and the location of the base were not disclosed. Radiant previously received funding awards from the US Department of Defense (DOD) to evaluate the integration of microreactors at the Hill Air Force Base near Salt Lake City in Utah.
The latest agreement is a first for what is intended to be a “mass-manufactured” microreactor. It was signed with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) at the Department of the Air Force (DAF) under the Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations (ANPI) program The DIU describes itself as “the only DOD organisation focused on accelerating the adoption of commercial and dual-use technology to solve operational challenges at speed and scale”.
Radiant CEO and Founder Doug Bernauer said: “We’re proud to be the first agreement designed to deliver mass-manufactured nuclear microreactors for a U.S. military base. In 36 months, Kaleidos reactors will arrive via truck and within 48 hours plug in, power on, and provide resilient, cyber-secure power to our nation’s Air Force for years without refuelling. The mandate of the USAF innovation office is to strengthen our national security by accelerating the adoption of dual-use technology for the military.”
This is the second USAF deal for the procurement of a microreactor. In June, DAF, in coordination with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Energy Office issued a Notice of Intent to Award (NOITA) to Oklo for its advanced microreactor.
The contract with Radiant comes after the Department of Energy (DOE) selected Radiant’s Kaleidos reactor to be scheduled to test next year at Idaho National Laboratory’s (INL’s) Demonstration of Microreactor Experiments (DOME) testbed facility. The DOME experiments will be the first of their kind in the world and are intended to fast-track the deployment of US microreactor technologies. The first fuelled reactor experiment could start in spring 2026.
Radiant in June hired former US DOE Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Rita Baranwal whose technical career includes executive roles at INL and Westinghouse before joining DOE.
Radiant’s Kaleidos micro-reactor design is a transportable high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) using high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) tristructural-isotropic (TRISO) fuel, helium gas coolant, and prismatic graphite blocks. It has a capacity of 3MWt or 1 MWe. Each 70-tonne micro-reactor will fit into a single shipping container. Radiant says the reactor can set up to be producing power within 48 hours of delivery at a customer site. The reactor has a five-year fuel cycle and a 20-year service life. Refuelling is carried out at a remote maintenance facility.
In 2022, Radiant launched a Request for Proposals for fuel fabricators to produce TRISO fuel, and in 2023 signed an agreement with Centrus Energy to work towards a future supply of HALEU for up to 20 Kaleidos microreactors. In 2023, Radiant also received funding from the DOE to support activities related to qualification modelling for TRISO fuel.
The DOE National Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC) at INL is supporting Radiant’s regulatory engagement activities with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the DOE. In June 2024, the DOE announced that it had approved the Kaleidos safety design strategy, which is required before testing the Kaleidos SMR at DOME.
Radiant raised $60m in venture funding including $40m in Series B fundraising in April 2023 which it plans to use to test Kaleidos mat DOME and to support siting for a factory that would eventually produce up to 50 microreactors a year. Radiant has also received two awards from the NRIC programme: up to $1.5m for front-end engineering & experiment design (FEEED) in 2023; and up to $5m for detailed engineering and experiment planning (DEEP) in 2024.
The contract with DIU represents a milestone in the US military’s push toward energy independence and resilient power systems that can operate without vulnerable fuel supply lines, according to Radiant.
“Nuclear power online is something they’ve been thinking about for a long time. And now it’s finally becoming real,” Dylan Enright, Radiant’s head of federal and military engagement, told Cowboy State Daily. “For 10 years, they’ve been sort of studying nuclear as something that could help their energy infrastructure be much more resilient, against cyber-attacks and all sorts of nefarious activities, both in the United States and in forward bases.”
