Navy picks Quantico for nuclear power site

The Marine Corps base at Quantico could have its own small nuclear reactor to insulate it from power outages if plans floated by the U.S. Navy earlier this month are fruitful. Quantico is one of seven Navy and Marine Corps bases, including four in Virginia, slated for its own nuclear-based power supply.

The information is contained in a “request for information” the Navy issued earlier this month. The Navy is asking for suggestions on how it can employ “contractor owned/operated nuclear power sites” to keep bases operating in cases of power disruptions, bad weather or cyberattacks.

“Ensuring that installations can continue their mission in the event of a grid power outage is a critical priority,” the solicitation states.

Quantico covers more than 55,000 acres, which are surrounded by Fauquier, Prince William and Stafford counties and the Potomac River. Even the most remote parts of the base are within 5 miles of surrounding residential communities.

While the Navy’s program is initially focused on just seven bases, it’s part of a larger joint program between the federal departments of energy and defense to create prototypes of small reactors for military and civilian use. The programs have special relevance to Northern Virginia, where an explosion of data centers and their extraordinary power demands may lead utilities or developers to turn to small reactors as a solution.

Small nuclear reactors on military bases will serve two purposes: protecting the base from outages and demonstrating their use for civilian applications, the military announcement says.   

In June, the U.S. Army solicited bids for two microreactors to supply full power to two unnamed bases. The reactors, to be built by 2030, would produce between 3 and 10 megawatts of power.

Col. Chris Vitale, the U.S. Army’s director for energy and climate change, said current power sources at Army bases are vulnerable. “Advanced nuclear is really the solution that makes sense,” he said at a June event.  

Meanwhile, the Air Force is in the process of selecting a contractor to build a microreactor at Eielson Air Force Base, near Fairbanks, Alaska, following directives written into the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act. Completion was scheduled for 2027, but a bid protest has forced delays.

Other Defense Department initiatives include Project Pele, a 1- to 5-megawatt microreactor being assembled at the BWXT plant in Lynchburg, Virginia, and another Air Force project that will show how microreactors can deliver heat and power to Hill Air Force Base in Utah.

Microreactors are generally capable of producing between 1 and 10 megawatts of electricity and could be transported on a truck. The larger “small modular reactors” can generate between 20 and 300 megawatts. Their sections can be assembled in a factory and transported to an installation site. They can be linked together to multiply their output.

Dominion Energy solicited proposals in June to build a 300-megawatt small modular reactor near its 1,800-megawatt nuclear power plant near Lake Anna. On Oct. 17, Amazon and Dominion announced an agreement to develop the project.

Due to their compact size and simplicity of design, small reactors are touted as being safer than the huge land-based plants like that at Three Mile Island. One Seattle-based company bidding on the Air Force project calls itself “Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation.”

Still, the Union of Concerned Scientists has warned that small reactors may have less robust containment systems, that their underground placement could make them vulnerable to earthquakes and flooding, and they would likely be sited near population centers, raising evacuation concerns.

The seven Navy and Marine Corps bases identified as possible nuclear development sites are all located in populated areas and include: Quantico, Dahlgren, Virginia Beach and Yorktown, all in Virginia; Patuxent River in Maryland; and Cherry Point and Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

The Navy says future generators at all sites could feed power into the grid but would revert back to the military installation first in an emergency loss of power

Still, there would likely be local resistance to placing a nuclear reactor, even a small one, at Quantico or next to any of the county’s large data center campuses, said Elena Schlossberg, a leader of the Coalition to Protect Prince William County.

“If they start getting placed next to all these data center campuses, there will be a lot of questions, and I think there will not be answers,” Schlossberg said. “I just think we are headed down a very dangerous path.”