Pentagon Working on Mini Nuclear Reactors for Emergency Power
March 5, 2020 | By John A. Tirpak
The Defense Department is looking to develop miniature nuclear reactors to supply power to domestic military bases in an emergency, and later to power expeditionary forces, Pentagon acquisition and sustainment chief Ellen Lord said March 4.
“We’re looking at small, modular nuclear reactors,†Lord said at a McAleese and Associates conference in Washington. “The concern is … what if the grid goes down?â€
The Defense Department largely relies on commercial power supplies, which are increasingly vulnerable to cyber attack. In fiscal 2018, there were 562 utility outages at DOD installations that lasted eight hours or longer. The Defense Department’s 2018 Annual Energy Management and Resilience Report, the latest version of the report published online, estimated the financial impact for 223 of those events was $23.3 million.
https://www.airforcemag.com/pentagon-working-on-mini-nuclear-reactors-for-emergency-power/
