Climate & Energy · Friday, 28 August 2026

01 Briefing what happened

Nobody has ever built one. The US Army just ordered more than twenty.

Climate & Energy 1 min 43 sources

The Army will pay up to $2.2bn to five companies for small nuclear reactors at five bases. Not one has ever been built, and none supplies the American grid.

$2.2bn

public money committed

across five firms and five years, paid only when milestones are met [1][2]

microreactors on the US grid

none has been built anywhere, by anyone [1][3]

1-20 MW

size of each reactor

a major base draws as much power as a small city [1]

2028

deadline for the first one

the Army was ordered to have one running by 30 September [1][2]

The lead story — what happened

The US Army will pay up to $2.2 billion to five companies to build small nuclear reactors at five of its bases. [1][3]
Not one of these reactors has ever been finished. None supplies power to the American grid today. [1][3]
The Army is not buying cheap electricity. Its backup now is diesel, and in a war a fuel convoy can be stopped. [1]
Each reactor makes 1 to 20 megawatts. A big base uses as much power as a small city, so these will not cover one. [1]
The bases stay wired to the public grid. The reactors are there for the day the grid goes down. [1][2]
The Army will license these reactors itself. Every civilian plant in America is licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission instead. [1][2]
The money is paid on milestones, not up front. The Army copied the structure from NASA's contracts with SpaceX. [2]
The Army says the plan only works if the five firms end up selling reactors to buyers outside the military. [2]
The sites are Fort Bragg, Fort Campbell, Fort Hood, Fort Benning and Fort Drum. Radiant's award alone is $750 million. [1]
These reactors need high-grade uranium. More than twenty could strain US stocks, and the Energy Department has put $2.7 billion into making more. [2]
One reactor is meant to be running by 30 September 2028, and more than twenty within five years. [1][2]
The Army did this before. A reactor at Fort Belvoir ran in 1957. It was the first in America to feed a commercial grid for any length of time. [1]
America builds reactors slowly. Watts Bar Unit 2 in Tennessee, its first of this century, started in 2016, two decades after the unit beside it. [4]

What is pushing on this

Fear of losing the grid High↑

the Army says it will not depend on wires it does not control [1]

Nobody else is buying High→

no utility anywhere has ordered a microreactor [1][3]

Fuel supply Building↑

more than twenty reactors could strain US high-grade uranium stocks [2]

Local consent Building↑

neighbours of a Tennessee uranium plant say nobody asked them [5]

Who is involved

The US Army — wrote the cheque and will write the safety licences too Antares, BWX, General Atomics, Radiant, Westinghouse — the five firms picked, partly so the Army can afford to lose some The Energy Department — supplies the fuel and takes the spent fuel away The Nuclear Regulatory Commission — licenses every civilian reactor, and is being kept in step for later Private investors — expected to put in more than the government does

How it unfolded

1957 an Army reactor at Fort Belvoir feeds a commercial grid, and no industry follows [1]
May 2025 Trump orders a reactor running at a US base by 30 September 2028 [1]
Oct 2025 the Army starts the Janus programme to deliver it [2]
Wed 26 Aug five firms and five bases named, up to $2.2 billion committed [1][3]
By 2031 more than twenty reactors planned across Army sites [2]

Where this points

Watch whether one reactor is actually running by September 2028, and then whether any buyer without a defence budget places an order. [1][2]

The rest of the day

29 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
Glacier collapse kills hundreds in Nepal

A glacier gave way in Tibet on Wednesday and the water reached Nepal in minutes. Nepal recovered 359 bodies and listed 826 people missing. [7][8]

Why it matters — The US Geological Survey first logged it as an earthquake, then found no quake had happened. [7] Researchers say the trigger is only half of it; the rest is who was left exposed. [9]
03
IEA sees power demand up 3.6% a year

The energy agency forecasts global electricity demand growing 3.6% annually to 2030, half again as fast as the last decade, on air conditioning, data centres and electric cars. [6]

Why it matters — It is the number every other story on this page is a fight over: who supplies that growth.
04
Storms flood England after the drought

Thunderstorms hit the West Midlands on Wednesday evening. Thirty-two homes flooded near the Tame Valley Canal in Perry Barr, Birmingham. [10][11]

Why it matters — Months of dry weather baked the ground hard, so the rain ran off instead of soaking in. [12]
05
Study names firms behind the West's lost water

Emissions from 122 oil, gas and cement companies caused about half the water the American West lost to climate change from 2014 to 2024, a study in Nature found. [13][14]

Why it matters — It is the first work to put named companies behind a specific regional water shortage rather than global warming in general. [13]
06
Arctic drilling to skip environmental review

The Trump administration moved to let winter oil exploration on Alaska's North Slope go ahead with no environmental review at all. [15]

Why it matters — The review is where objections are normally raised, so removing it removes the objections rather than answering them.
07
Analysis puts a number on the US policy turn

The Natural Resources Defense Council modelled the loss of 540 gigawatts of renewables under current federal policy, with household power rates up an extra 4.2% to 5.5% by 2035. [16]

Why it matters — It is a modelled case, not a measurement, but it prices the swing in bills rather than in megawatts.
08
Two UK data centres would out-emit Exxon

Two planned British data centres would emit 4.577 million tonnes of carbon a year, more than ExxonMobil's UK operations, campaigners at Foxglove calculated. [17] A third, in outer London, discloses 1.2 million tonnes a year on its own. [18]

Why it matters — Both plan their own gas power stations because the grid queue is 315 data centres and 73 gigawatts long. [17]
09
Texas gas plants are all for data centres

The twelve largest gas power projects planned in Texas are every one of them built to run data centres, Global Energy Monitor found. [19]

Why it matters — A handful could emit over 100 million tonnes a year, roughly a mid-sized country's output. [19]
10
One in four new European cars is electric

Battery cars took 25.7% of new registrations across 16 European markets in July, up 13.6% on last year. Denmark reached 80.1%. [20]

Why it matters — Italy's share fell from 10.1% to 5.9% in one month after its subsidy expired, which shows how much of this is policy. [20]
11
Batteries start moving solar into the night

Batteries installed in 2026 could shift 34% of new daily solar generation into non-solar hours, the think tank Ember found, against 4% five years ago. [21]

Why it matters — Solar met over 25% of world demand at midday and near zero after 8pm, so the gap is the whole problem. [21]
12
India's draft rules may deter foreign reactors

New Delhi's draft framework would make foreign reactor designs win approval at home and again from India's regulator before building starts. [22]

Why it matters — India wants nearly $210 billion of investment to raise nuclear capacity almost tenfold to 100 gigawatts. [22]
13
Jellyfish shut French reactors again

Jellyfish clogged the cooling filters at Gravelines in northern France, shutting two more of its six 900-megawatt units this week. A third has been off since 10 August. [23]

Why it matters — Warm water brings plankton to the surface and jellyfish follow, and the same plant was shut for this last August. [23]
14
Permafrost thaw confirmed worldwide

The thawing surface layer above frozen ground deepened at 156 monitoring sites from 2000 to 2024, including over 90% of European mountain sites. Some doubled. [24]

Why it matters — That layer holds carbon; thawing it releases greenhouse gases that nobody chose to emit. [24]
15
Corals show El Ninos getting stronger

Galapagos coral skeletons record 1,000 years before industry. Strong El Nino events have been more frequent in the past century than in any of it, a Science study found. [25]

Why it matters — This June's event is the third strong one in eleven years, never seen before. [25]
16
Saudi Arabia reroutes its oil a second time

Houthi attacks have pushed Saudi Arabia out of the Bab al-Mandab strait. It is now shipping crude north in the Red Sea to an Egyptian pipeline instead. [26]

Why it matters — The Iran war had already closed the Strait of Hormuz to it. Countries hit by conflict produced 43% of world oil supply last year. [27]
17
US home solar sales heading for a fall

New American residential solar capacity is forecast to drop 21% this year after import tariffs and the end of the main federal tax credit. [28]

Why it matters — Installers are small firms, and a fifth off the market is enough to close many of them. [28]
18
Lawsuit filed over climate centre closure

The Environmental Defense Fund sued in federal court in Colorado to stop the closure of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which runs advanced climate and weather models. [29]

Why it matters — The lawsuit says closing it would cut off research that scientists around the world build their own work on. [29]
19
Utah begins the longest hot-rock test yet

The FORGE site in Utah started pumping water through fractured hot rock for 90 days, possibly 120, to see whether the heat and the water last. [30]

Why it matters — Geothermal companies do not yet know how fast a hot-rock reservoir cools or how much water it swallows. [30]
20
California votes on paying homes for power

Two bills to let utilities call on home batteries, thermostats and car chargers instead of building grid capacity cleared committee, with a floor vote due by 31 August. [31]

Why it matters — Newsom vetoed similar bills last year; a study puts the saving at $550 million a year by 2035. [31]
21
A Chinese province passes 100 GW of solar

Jiangsu reached 100.08 gigawatts of solar by late July, and 69.29 of that sits on industrial roofs, public buildings and rural homes rather than on land. [32]

Why it matters — It is the model for crowded places with no spare ground. [32]
22
Washington has spent $4bn backing gas exports

Federal agencies have pledged more than $4 billion since July 2025 to push liquefied gas export projects through, on top of tariffs and executive orders. [33]

Why it matters — There are more proposed export projects than there are buyers for the gas. [33]
23
Solar carried Europe through its hottest summer

Heat and drought forced Europe's nuclear, gas and coal plants to cut output as rivers warmed and shrank, while wind sagged in the still air. Solar ran above normal. [34]

Why it matters — Only 23% of European households have air conditioning, and that number is climbing. [34]
24
Cleaner air measurably helps children

London traffic rules were followed by measured improvement in children whose lung growth had been stunted. New York rules that cut pollution before birth were followed by better cognitive test scores. [35]

Why it matters — It is evidence that the damage is not only preventable but partly reversible. [35]
25
A Welsh county became a wildfire emissions hotspot

Torfaen had one of the world's highest wildfire carbon emissions per square kilometre in July, EU satellite data showed, behind only places in Angola, Spain and Algeria. [36]

Why it matters — The council said it had not seen the data and could not tell what evidence it rested on. [36]
26
New York's grid keeps sounding the alarm

Nearly 10,000 people in Southeast Queens lost power during a July heatwave. New York's grid operator has since called on paid demand cuts far more often than in the previous decade. [37]

Why it matters — Air conditioning is the load that arrives exactly when the grid is weakest. [37]
27
Iraq asks OPEC for a bigger share

Iraq sent its oil and finance ministers to Saudi Arabia to ask for a higher OPEC quota. It wants 8 to 10 million barrels a day within six years. [38]

Why it matters — It pumped about 4 million a day before the Iran war. OPEC re-measures every member's capacity in September, setting the baselines for 2027. [38]
28
A tornado wrecked half a French village

Winds of 117km/h tore through Pomas, near Carcassonne, damaging an estimated 300 homes and injuring 39 people, two critically. [39]

Why it matters — Around 2,800 homes across ten villages lost power. [39]
29
Fusion firm raises $1bn to finish its machine

Commonwealth Fusion Systems raised about $1 billion to complete SPARC, its demonstration reactor, which its chief executive says is roughly 80% built. [40]

Why it matters — SPARC is meant to show a fusion machine producing more energy than it consumes. [40]
30
Austria moves its solar money to storage

Vienna will phase out grants for ordinary rooftop solar and shift the money to batteries and control systems. Its last funding round emptied in 33 seconds. [41]

Why it matters — Panels are no longer the scarce thing; somewhere to put the midday power is. [41]

02 Lesson why it matters

The first buyer is never the one who wants it cheap

A machine nobody can afford still gets built, if one buyer is not shopping on price because the alternative is losing.

The twist

You cannot sell a first-of-its-kind machine to anyone doing sums on the bill. You can sell it to someone whose alternative is not a bigger bill but a defeat.

How it works

A new machine works, and costs far too much
Everyone who wants it wants it cheap, so nobody orders one
One buyer is not shopping on price
For them, the thing the machine prevents costs more than the machine
They order the first ones, and the factory starts
The next buyer pays less for a machine they did not shape

Where you've seen this

Satellite navigation

built so missiles would land accurately, and now it finds a delivery driver a front door

Tinned food

invented for an army that had to eat on the march, then it filled every kitchen cupboard

Air travel

early airlines lived on mail contracts, because letters had to arrive and passengers only wanted to

The catch

The machine is shaped by that first buyer's odd needs, and sometimes it never fits anyone else. The Army ran a reactor at Fort Belvoir in 1957 and no industry followed.

And the whole of it

Everyone here is sensible from their own seat: soldiers want power nobody can cut, firms want an order book, taxpayers carry a risk no private buyer would. Whether a household ever sees anything from it gets settled decades later, by people who will not remember this week.

03 Lab your turn

Who buys the first one

Pitch a first-of-its-kind reactor to five buyers and feel why only the one who is not shopping on price can start the factory.

04 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

The Army is paying to bring a reactor into existence that no electricity buyer would order, because what it wants is not cheap power but power nobody can cut off. [1][2]

Why it works on us — It is being told as a nuclear revival, which is a bigger story than a defence department buying itself a better backup generator. [1][3]

Who gains

The five reactor firms — A government order book is the one thing a first-of-a-kind nuclear company cannot buy. Radiant alone has $750 million and a site at Fort Benning. [1]
BWX Technologies — It already holds a ten-year, $1.6 billion federal contract for weapons material in Tennessee. Fort Campbell adds a power business on top of it. [1][5]
Gas pipeline owners — Enbridge sold KKR and Apollo a C$2.7 billion stake in a British Columbia expansion the same week, as data-centre demand keeps gas contracts valuable. [42]
Texas data-centre developers — Building their own gas plants skips the grid queue, and the state's twelve biggest planned gas projects are all for data centres. [19]

Who pays

Neighbours of the nuclear supply chain — In Jonesborough, Tennessee, people living beside a uranium plant say nobody asked them and they cannot prove where their illnesses came from. [5]
American rooftop solar installers — New home solar capacity is forecast to fall 21% this year after import tariffs and the end of the federal credit. Most installers are small firms. [28]
Households on the US grid — One model of current federal policy puts household electricity rates up an extra 4.2% to 5.5% by 2035. [16]
Villages below the Bhote Koshi in Nepal — A glacier collapsed inside Tibet and the water arrived minutes later in settlements that had no warning system and no hand in the cause. [7][8]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

Whether any of the five reactors gets built on time.

Nobody has finished a microreactor anywhere. The Army said it picked five firms so that one or more can fail without ending the programme. [1][2]
02

How much of the bill the public ends up carrying.

The Army expects private money to be the majority and would not give a figure, saying the companies are still raising it off the announcement. [2]
03

How big the award actually is.

The Associated Press headlined $2 billion; the New York Times and the Army's own framing put it at up to $2.2 billion over five years. We use the higher figure. [1][3]
04

Whether the civilian regulator will accept an Army-licensed design.

The Army is writing its own safety approvals and says it is keeping them close to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's. The commission has not said it will take them. [1][2]
05

How many people died on the Nepal-Tibet border.

Nepal recovered 359 bodies and listed 826 missing; China reported three dead and 558 missing in Gyirong county. Neither side can say whether the lists overlap. [7]
06

What two British data centres would really emit.

Foxglove assumed both run flat out from day one. The government calls that misleading. Neither has published a middle case. [17]
07

Where the uranium for reactor twenty-one comes from.

The Energy Department plans to downblend existing stockpiles first, and the Army says more than twenty units could strain US supplies. [2]
08

Whether demand can be moved instead of supplied.

The energy agency says the amount of demand that can shift will have to grow between two and seven times by 2035. No country has shown it at that size. [43]

05 Hope carry this

The Army picked five companies partly because it expects some of them to fail, and said so out loud. Planning honestly for your own failure is a quiet kind of competence, and it is how hard things eventually get built.