Radiant Industries chosen for naval station deployment

On Wednesday, the Department of the Navy announced that it has selected Radiant Industries to design, build, and deliver a "prototype microreactor power plant" featuring the company's Kaleidos design for the Naval Weapons Station Crane in Indiana.

A one-week recap: It has been a truly unusual week in terms of the volume of nuclear-related announcements coming out of Indiana.

On Monday, Amazon, American Electric Power, and X-energy announced a new partnership to potentially site a 960-MWe nuclear power plant in the state. Later that day, the state, the Hoosier Energy Rural Electric Cooperative, and AtkinsRéalis announced plans to deploy up to 6 gigawatts' worth of CANDU reactors in Indiana.

There were still two more items of Indiana nuclear interest reported by Nuclear News this week. First, the state has officially opened applications for its Indiana Advanced Nuclear Ready Communities Program. Second, Purdue University announced that Seungjin Kim will be the university's first chief nuclear officer.

The new development: In September, the Department of Defense announced that NWS Crane would be the site of the first microreactor deployment on a terrestrial Navy site. At the time, the DOD explained that the project would be jointly executed with the Army's Janus Program. However, a private industry partner for the project was not named.

This newest announcement has named Radiant Industries as that private industry partner. The NWS Crane project will be Radiant's second deployment through the Janus Program; it has already been selected to deploy its Kaleidos reactor technology at Georgia's Fort Benning.

The Army recently confirmed that Radiant will deploy three Kaleidos reactors at Fort Benning. For its part, Radiant previously has announced that it is in a binding agreement totaling up to $650 million to deploy 15 of its Kaleidos reactors through Janus.

While neither the DOD nor Radiant definitively stated how many reactors will be deployed at NWS Crane, Jeff Waksman, principal deputy assistant secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment, said of the project, "We are excited to partner with the Navy to place a Janus reactor at NWS Crane, and by doing so to deliver the state of Indiana its first advanced microreactor." This quote strongly implies that only one reactor is currently planned for the site.

Separately, Radiant also is involved with the Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations (ANPI) program. Through ANPI-an Air Force Initiative-the company has been selected to deploy Kaleidos at the Buckley Space Force Base in Colorado.

Meanwhile, Radiant is also participating in Department of Energy programs. It was selected for both the Reactor Pilot Program and the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad, two major DOE initiatives aiming to speed reactor development. Currently, the company is preparing to test its first demonstration reactor in the Demonstration of Microreactor Experiments (DOME) test bed at Idaho National Laboratory-also through DOE collaboration.

Kaleidos is a 1-MWe helium-cooled, high-temperature, TRISO-fueled reactor design. The company is aiming to mass produce its reactors at a facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

In the announcement of its selection for NWS Crane, Radiant said of its multifaceted collaboration with the DOD that it is "the only company partnered with the Army, Navy, and Air Force." The company added that the NWS Crane project will involve close collaboration with the NRC and the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, among several other partners.