USS Gerald R. Ford will use its nuclear reactors to power Naval Station Norfolk, as the Navy tests alternative ways to run shore-side bases in a crisis. Acting Secretary of the Navy Hung Cao made the announcement during a recent House Armed Services Committee hearing.
“This summer, Norfolk Naval base is going to be powered from an aircraft carrier,” Cao said. “We're going to export the energy from the aircraft carrier to the base, but imagine having this power generation from within the base that we can even export the energy to the surrounding area.”
A Navy spokesman confirmed that the first test will happen in Norfolk, using a Ford-class aircraft carrier. USS Ford is currently the only carrier in its class that is operated by the Navy. USS John F. Kennedy is expected to be delivered next year from Newport News Shipbuilding. The Ford is preparing to enter maintenance at Norfolk Naval Shipyard after a record-setting deployment that lasted nearly 11 months.
“The Department of the Navy is executing a multi-pronged strategy to ensure the delivery of firm, baseload power to our installations for energy resilience and mission assurance,” the spokesman said.
The Navy is looking at ways to power its installations when the civilian grid could be compromised during a crisis, like a natural disaster or cyber attack. The two nuclear generators on board Ford-class aircraft carriers are more powerful than the plants on board the older Nimitz-class carriers.
In June 2025, Naval Weapons Station Yorktown signed a memorandum of understanding with Dominion Energy Virginia to look at the feasibility of building a power plant on the base near Williamsburg, including a small modular nuclear reactor. In August, the Navy began soliciting prototypes for these types of reactors. There have been test models but no SMR has been deployed in the United States.
During the announcement last year, Dominion President Ed Baine said he does not expect the company would have a plant online in Virginia until the mid-2030s. The company is already in talks with Amazon to build an SMR plant in Louisa County.
Dominion signed a similar agreement with Fort Lee (formerly Fort Gregg-Adams) in 2024. The Virginia Department of Energy announced in October 2024 that four of seven locations being considered by the Navy for potential shore-based nuclear power sites are in Virginia, including Naval Air Station Oceana, Naval Support Activity South Potomac, Naval Weapons Station Yorktown and Marine Corps Base Quantico.
The Army announced in November that it has selected nine sites to potentially house micro-reactors, including Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
US Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Virginia) said the projects could be paired with data centers throughout the military, which require large sources of electricity. Cao said the military could sell the power and use the money to fund base repairs.
