SAN ANTONIO – Joint Base San Antonio could be partially powered with a small, on-site nuclear reactor within the next few years.
The U.S. Air Force announced Wednesday that, in conjunction with the Defense Innovation Unit, it had selected JBSA as the third potential location for nuclear microreactor as part of an initiative to get an advanced nuclear reactor operating on at least one Air Force installation before 2030.
Antares Nuclear, the company chosen to develop and operate the JBSA microreactor, believes it’ll be able to get their system running before then.
“We do tests all the time here at our manufacturing headquarters, and we’re looking forward to working in partnership with the Air Force, the Joint Base San Antonio community, to get something that’s powering assets on the base in 2029,” Tom Mancinelli, the company’s head of federal strategy and policy, told KSAT.
Antares was founded in 2023. Mancinelli said it is currently preparing to turn on its first reactor before July 4 and test its first electricity-producing reactor in 2027.
He compared the size of their microreactor to an F-250 pickup truck and said it provides roughly one megawatt of power, which is enough to power about 250 homes on a hot day.
“The main areas where a microreactor is different from a large-scale reactor are the size — the size of the reactor itself, the amount of power it would provide, but also things like the fact that our reactor is deployable," Mancinelli said. “It’s manufactured in a factory and then shipped to the site, whereas a large-scale reactor is built, oftentimes a multi-year, if not a decades-long construction project in a particular location.”
JBSA is made of four primary locations: Fort Sam Houston, Camp Bullis, Lackland Air Force Base, and Randolph Air Force Base.
Mancinelli said the Antares was “looking certainly, I think, at the Lackland Air Force Base location” for the site of the microreactor, “But these are conversations that we really want to get into in more depth with the Air Force.”
Neighbors near JBSA-Lackland had different reactions to the possibility of a nearby nuclear reactor.
Stephen Yates said he didn’t really have concerns about it.
“It’s the military. I hope they know what they’re doing. You know what I mean?” he said. “This isn’t a high school chemistry class that’s messing around with that.”
Mari Escamilla, though, said “danger” was the first thing that came to mind, and she would probably put her home of 40 years up for sale if a microreactor were to end up at Lackland.
“You can take all the safety precautions, OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) ...and things like that, but you just never know. Nothing is guaranteed,” Escamilla said.
Asked about safety concerns, Mancinelli said nuclear energy is “among the safest sources of electricity available today.”
“Everything we will do will be certified to the highest rigorous standards of our regulators, the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” he said. “And we will absolutely make sure that the system is safe and in no way provides any adverse impact on the community.”
The company’s system is also able to turn itself off and prevent itself from melting down, he said, and the amount of spent nuclear fuel produced during six to 10 years will be about the size of a paint bucket.
Bexar County Precinct 3 Commissioner Grant Moody and San Antonio Councilwoman Misty Spears (D9), who are two of the tri-chairs of the Military Transformation Task Force, cheered news of JBSA’s selection, which they hope could lead to the use of more nuclear energy.
“We’re well overdue for a nuclear renaissance,” Moody said. “It’s been 33 years since a nuclear power plant was put online here in Texas, and so I think that now’s the time. Let’s exploit this opportunity. It’s clean, reliable, dispatchable power. Plus, with the proliferation of data centers, we need on-site production. These modular nuclear reactors can provide that power."
The Air Force had previously selected Buckley Space Force Base in Colorado and Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana as potential sites for microreactors under the Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations initiative.
In a Wednesday news release, the department said next steps include siting and environmental analyses as part of the National Environmental Policy Act process.
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