SANTA CLARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Oklo Inc. (NYSE: OKLO) (“Oklo” or the “Company”), an advanced nuclear technology company, and Switch, a premier provider of AI, cloud and enterprise data centers, have signed a non-binding Master Power Agreement (“Master Agreement”) to deploy 12 gigawatts of Oklo Aurora powerhouse projects through 2044. This is one of the largest corporate clean power agreements ever signed. The Master Agreement establishes a framework for collaboration, with the expectation that individual binding agreements will be finalized as project milestones are reached.
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There doesn’t appear to be a published schedule for getting the Oklo Aurora design approved by the NRC. From the NRC website, it says they are engaged in “pre-application activities”. These activities are apparently Oklo providing information and answering NRC’s questions.
The NRC previously rejected Oklo’s initial application. Since Oklo is a newcomer to the nuclear power industry, they probably didn’t fully understand how the NRC works and the type of information the NRC requires in evaluating a new design. These sort of development problems are understandable, and hopefully the Oklo people now have a better path to success.
NRC webpage on current activities related to the Oklo Aurora design:
https://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/advanced/who-were-working-with/licensing-activities/pre-application-activities/okla-aurora-powerhouse.html
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The Oklo press release says the agreement is for 12 gigawatts of new capacity. That is 12,000 megawatts. The NRC website says the Aurora design will provide 15 MWe per reactor.
12000 / 15 = 800 reactors! That is over 8 times the number of operable nuclear power reactors in the US right now. I suppose this is what they mean by assembly line production of SMRs. I would guess they will gang up several reactors at one power production site. That way they can better optimize staffing, including the security staff requirements.
Oklo is an interesting name. Oklo is a region in the African country of Gabon. It is where French scientists first identified the remains of natural nuclear reactors, which operated there millions of years ago. It turns out Mother Nature built the first fission reactors long, long before Enrico Fermi built the Chicago pile as part of the Manhattan Project.
_ Pete
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..note that OKLO is planning much larger plants than Aurora, their test plant..
..likely 100MWe typical..
..safety remains, fuel burn increases..
..gotta make the fuel..
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The Levelized Cost of Electricity is the total costs for a power plant (construction plus operating costs) divided by the total amount of electricity produced over the life of the plant. One way to get the LCOE down is to increase the denominator, so more MWh are generated. But that takes a reactor running at a higher power level. A 100 MWe plant sounds more realistic to get the LCOE in a range customers will be happy with, so long as it is still a simple design with inherent safety.
_ Pete
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Scaling Up: Overcoming Fuel and Licensing Hurdles
Still, like others in the advanced nuclear industry, Oklo still faces challenges before it can scale its technology to meet growing energy demands. Its hurdles hover over two key issues—fuel and licensing.
Aurora powerhouses will require high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU), a material with a limited commercial supply chain in the U.S. To fuel its first 15-MWe commercial plant, slated to deploy in 2027 at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), it is developing the Aurora Fuel Fabrication Facility (AFFF), a facility collocated at INL, that will fabricate fuel using HALEU awarded through a cooperative agreement with INL. The facility in October garnered the DOE’s approval of its Conceptual Safety Design Report (CSDR). And while Oklo already also has a partnership with Centrus Energy, which is demonstrating HALEU production, its future plans involve building a commercial-scale fuel recycling facility.
“We are uniquely positioned here since only fast reactors can take recycled fuel and fresh HALEU,” Oklo recently told POWER. “The scalability of advanced fuel recycling is central to our strategy. We recently completed the first end-to-end demonstration of the key stages of our advanced fuel recycling process in collaboration with Argonne and INL. This success represents a critical step toward scaling our recycling capabilities and deploying a commercial facility capable of increasing advanced reactor fuel supplies. Our approach not only enhances fuel cost effectiveness but also contributes to long-term sustainability by diversifying fuel sources,” it said.
On the licensing front, Oklo has notably championed regulatory movement. It submitted the first-ever combined license application (COLA) to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for an advanced non-light water reactor (LWR) in March 2020 (for its 15-MWe INL facility). Though the NRC denied that application in January 2022, the company has continued its extensive engagement with NRC staff. It expects to submit a new COLA—“a model for future applications” to the NRC in 2025. Subsequent COLAs could follow soon, in late 2025 and early 2026.