Pentagon Selects Three Microreactor Companies for Air Force Bases as Military Nuclear Programme Advances Toward 2030
The Pentagon has narrowed its Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations (ANPI) programme from eight companies to three, advancing microreactor deployment at Buckley Space Force Base (Colorado) and Malmstrom Air Force Base (Montana) by 2030. The original eight vendors included BWXT, Oklo, X-energy, Kairos Power, Radiant, General Atomics, Westinghouse, and Antares.
The commercially owned reactor model, backed by Executive Order 14299 and $125 million in Congressional funding, addresses military grid vulnerability while serving as a proving ground for reactors that could also power AI data centres.
Bloomberg reported on Tuesday that the down-selection is the most concrete step yet in the ANPI programme, a joint effort between the Defense Innovation Unit, the Air Force, and the Army aimed at making military bases energy-independent.
The programme began in April 2025, when the DIU selected eight companies to develop microreactor proposals. Each was tasked with designing commercially owned and operated reactors that could be built on military land, licensed through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and maintained by the vendor throughout their operational life. The military would buy the electricity without owning the reactor, a model designed to accelerate deployment by sidestepping the decades-long procurement cycles that have historically paralysed defence infrastructure projects.
Why Air Force bases need their own power plants
The Department of Defense consumes more than 30 terawatt-hours of electricity annually across more than 500 installations, making it the single largest energy consumer in the US government. The overwhelming majority of that power comes from the civilian grid. That dependence is now treated as a strategic vulnerability. Cyberattacks on US energy infrastructure have increased by roughly 70% in recent years. The grid itself is under growing strain from data centre construction, with the International Energy Agency projecting that data centre electricity consumption will exceed 1,000 terawatt-hours globally by the end of 2026. Military bases that host missile fields, space surveillance operations, and nuclear command infrastructure cannot afford to compete with AI training clusters for grid capacity.
Two Air Force installations have been selected as the first deployment sites: Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora, Colorado, hosting the Aerospace Data Facility, one of the Department of Defense’s critical infrastructure nodes.