Radiant Wins $750 Million Army Contract for 15 Microreactors

Tori Shivanandan said Radiant has received a $750 million Army award to provide 15 portable nuclear microreactors under the Janus program. She characterized that amount as about one-third of Janus’s overall budget, while the 15 reactors account for roughly 75% of the program’s planned volume: 15 of 20 units.

Shivanandan presented that allocation as a vote of confidence in both the maturity of Radiant’s technology and its capacity to manufacture at scale. She credited Dr. Jeff Waksman and Defense Innovation Unit Director Owen West for what she called bold leadership in recognizing portable nuclear as an Army energy solution.

Radiant builds Kaleidos, a one-megawatt microreactor designed to travel by land, air, or sea. Shivanandan said one megawatt is enough power for about 1,000 homes; an on-screen company facts panel added that this could power 1,000 homes for five years. The stated differentiator is portability: rather than being permanently sited, the reactor is meant to be moved to where a customer needs power.

Radiant-supplied footage shown during the interview depicted a white RADIANT-marked shipping container on a flatbed truck, cranes assembling outdoor equipment, a large desert facility, and close views of metallic pipes and reactor internals. The images supported the company’s description of a reactor system intended for transport and deployment.

Radiant competed against more than 40 companies through multiple down-selection rounds, Shivanandan said. The process included hours of presentations, detailed questioning about what the product could do, and site visits by military representatives to inspect the technology Radiant had developed.

She described the military as an “incredibly savvy customer” with substantial internal expertise. In her account, the selection reflects not only the portable-reactor proposition but also the Army’s assessment of Radiant’s understanding of the product’s capabilities.

Radiant has shipped a test reactor to the DOME facility at Idaho National Laboratory, where Shivanandan said broader testing would begin over the coming months. She said the next reactor is slated for delivery to a military base in 2028. The award now leaves Radiant with the stated tasks of completing that testing, preparing for the 2028 delivery, and scaling its operations.

Asked what scaling requires, Shivanandan said Radiant would do “all of the above” on raising money and hiring competitively. But she placed execution above either input: “most importantly,” she said, the company would put its heads down and build for America.

Tori Shivanandan rejected the premise that Radiant’s position should chiefly be measured against whether China is ahead of the United States on nuclear regulation or technology. Her argument was that the two countries begin from different energy problems and therefore pursue different baseline solutions.

She described the US grid as a system built in the 1960s around generation, transmission, and utilization, without fundamental change since. Radiant’s proposed intervention is to address both generation and transmission at the customer’s site: put power production where it is used, rather than depend on electricity generated remotely and transmitted across the grid.

Shivanandan contrasted that approach with what she described as China’s ability to build large capital projects quickly. The American alternative, in her framing, is to innovate—an area where she said the United States and its military are particularly strong—and use that innovation to create a more resilient grid.

The Janus contract gives that argument a military application. But Shivanandan cast Radiant’s ambition more broadly: portable nuclear, she said, is the new solution required by an American grid that needs power delivered closer to the customer.