On Army bases, nuclear energy can’t add resilience, just costs and risks

Every now and then, the US government offers a huge subsidy to an industry on grounds that make no sense to anyone with even basic knowledge of the subject. The latest example, announced in June, is the Army’s Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations (ANPI) program to install small reactors on military bases, ostensibly to increase “energy resilience.”

This is perplexing for several reasons. First, such resilience can be provided much more effectively, safely, and cheaply with non-nuclear options. Second, nuclear reactors themselves cannot provide “resilience,” because their safe operation always has required input of electricity to the reactors from other power sources. Third, the Army’s planned reactors would lack a robust containment building, so an attack or accident could disperse radioactive waste, endangering base personnel and neighboring civilians.

Both the Army and taxpayers should cry foul on this indefensible waste of national security dollars.

Of course, energy resilience is a reasonable concern for Army bases, which now get their electricity from the commercial grid that is potentially subject to blackouts from bad weather or even cyberattacks. The simple and inexpensive solution, already utilized by military bases and other essential services including hospitals, is to maintain backup diesel fuel and generators for emergency use. It costs only about $2 million to $4 million for a set of diesel generators to produce 5 megawatts of electricity — the amount the Army seeks — and the diesel fuel would be cheap since the generators would operate only during rare emergencies.

By contrast, the price of a single nuclear reactor to produce the same five megawatts of electricity would be several hundred million dollars — roughly 100 times as expensive — according to government estimates and my previously published research. Even if, as the Army hopes, the reactor could replace the commercial grid as the primary source of power for the base, the electricity produced by the reactor would cost several times more than what the Army now pays for commercial electricity. So, regardless of whether the reactor was used for primary or backup power, Army costs would spike substantially.

What about resilience, which is the supposed justification for buying these expensive reactors?  Well, even though reactors can produce electricity, they have always required an external source of electricity to keep them running safely — most crucially to cool the fuel to avoid a nuclear meltdown and radioactive release. The Army’s recent request for proposals seems to acknowledge this reality by saying that in addition to an external electricity source, the reactor must have an “alternative credited independent power source as a backup.”

Therefore, an Army base reactor would almost surely depend on drawing electricity from the commercial grid. But this means the reactor would be no more resilient than the existing power source it is supposed to replace to increase resilience. In the event of a blackout of the commercial grid, what would the reactor do to get essential electricity? Of course, it would turn on its backup diesel generators. However, if the base requires backup generators anyway, it has no need for the super-expensive reactor.

It gets even worse. To prevent costs from rising even higher, the nuclear industry has decided that its small reactors — the kind the Army is seeking — will be built without a containment building that could prevent radiation from escaping in the event of an accident. This also means the reactors would be more vulnerable to attack by aircraft, missiles, rockets, and drones.

A successful kinetic attack could spread radioactivity in at least two ways. First, like a “dirty bomb,” it could disperse the reactor’s solid irradiated fuel over a wide area into a few or many radioactive chunks that would be very hazardous if approached. Even worse, if the attack interrupted the reactor’s active or passive cooling, the fuel could overheat and breach its cladding, thereby allowing gaseous radioactivity to spread more widely.

Ironically, it is not clear if the Army even wants these nuclear reactors, which originally were proposed in 2018 by Congressional advocates of nuclear energy, who also have promoted nuclear reactors for Air Force bases and forward operating bases — including in war zones where they would be even more vulnerable.

Comments from Pentagon officials about these programs indicate that at least part of the motivation is to help America’s struggling nuclear reactor companies, which have yet to find a single private-sector customer for their small but pricey powerplants. The Defense Secretary’s manager for the Army’s mobile reactor project touts it as “a pathfinder to advanced nuclear reactors in the commercial sector.”  A Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Air Force says, “We’re trying to … create a playbook of how other villages or communities and cities” can pursue “energy through a microreactor.”

But even if the civilian nuclear industry deserved additional subsidies, which is questionable, that would not justify wasting defense dollars on unnecessary reactors that could endanger our troops.

Truthfully, energy resilience for military bases is a real concern that deserves safe, effective, and economical solutions — but nuclear reactors satisfy none of those criteria.

Fortunately, we live in a democracy, so there is still a chance to stop these dangerous boondoggles. Service members and their dependents, communities near military bases, and taxpayers in general can and should call on Congress to suspend the ANPI program — and instead explore how its funding could be reprogrammed more productively.

Alan J. Kuperman is associate professor and coordinator of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project (www.NPPP.org) at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin.