By admin 
A nuclear fission company with ties to South Carolina has been awarded a contract to “own, construct, and operate nuclear microreactor power” at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
Read more SC city stops Flock cameras after 2 police officers are fired for misusing system
Antares announced the agreement Wednesday, noting it falls under the Army’s Janus Program, launched in 2025 to provide “energy to support national defense installations and critical missions.”
Nuclear microreactors are a military response to the growing threat of cyberattacks on the nation’s power grid.
“Military installations today depend on the commercial grid and on fuel convoys that stretch across oceans. Both create single points of failure that sophisticated adversaries can exploit,” Antares officials said in a statement to The Charlotte Observer.
“A microreactor at Fort Bragg removes both dependencies. It delivers clean, firm power onsite, runs for years without refueling, and keeps mission-critical systems powered through disruptions that would otherwise take a base offline. This could include natural disasters or man-made cyber or kinetic attacks.”
The U.S. power grid “is considered for a major cyberattack,” and the concern is no longer theoretical, according to a Council on Foreign Relations report.
“Rapid digitization combined with low levels of investment in cybersecurity and a weak regulatory regime suggest that the U.S. power system is as vulnerable — if not more vulnerable — to a cyberattack as systems in other parts of the world,” the 2017 report stated.
Antares was awarded the contract after its “deployment-ready” microreactor designs were reviewed by the Army, the Defense Innovation Unit, and a panel of nuclear experts drawn from the Department of Energy, according to a news release.
Read more Three Rock Hill area teens allegedly cut down, damaged Flock cameras in SC
“Each Antares R1 microreactor can ship by truck, rail, air, or barge in three shipping containers,” the company said. “Antares reactors are factory-built, designed to be transportable, and shipped to the site rather than constructed on-site over years.”
Research on the project was carried out in partnership with the Savannah River National Laboratory Advanced Manufacturing Collaborative on the campus of the University of South Carolina-Aiken, officials said.
Antares expects to deploy “dozens of reactors under Janus for the Army,” Antares Founder and CEO Jordan Bramble said in the release.
Microreactors are considered a “uniquely resilient power source” for the nation’s defense infrastructure, Antares says. They can run for years without refueling, operate independent of the commercial power grid, and are not vulnerable liquid-fuel supply chains, the company says.
The Department of the Army reports it selected “energy vendors” for four additional bases, including: Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Benning, Georgia, and Fort Drum, New York. The contracts have a combined value of $2.2 billion, officials said.
The Army expects more than 20 nuclear microreactors will be built and operated across Department of War installations, officials said.
Founded in 2023, Antares is a nuclear fission energy company developing compact microreactors for defense and space applications. Antares operates facilities in Torrance, California; Idaho Falls, Idaho; and Aiken, South Carolina.
Read more ICE sends second deportation flight to Haiti in a week. There are kids aboard