California-based Oklo and Tennessee-based Standard Nuclear entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) Tuesday to look into commercial collaboration on nuclear fuel recycling and advanced fuel manufacturing.
The collaboration between the two companies comes as both companies were selected for advanced negotiations by the Department of Energy under its Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program last month, according to Oklo’s press release.
Under the MOU, the two companies intend to evaluate product conditions, potential commercial terms and delivery schedules for recycled materials from Oklo’s planned fuel recycling facility in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
“The collaboration would focus on the supply of reprocessed uranium (RepU) and uranium-transuranic material (U/TRU) streams from used nuclear fuel, which could serve as feedstock for TRISO fuel manufacturing,” Oklo said.
The MOU also creates a framework for the two companies to evaluate the potential use of surplus plutonium. This framework allows for them to collaborate on exploring facilities, licensing, packaging and transportation to support the conversion of plutonium into reactor fuel.
Teaming up with Standard Nuclear, which is based in Oak Ridge, continues to build out Oklo’s presence in East Tennessee. Last year the company announced its plans to build a $1.68 billion recycling facility there. With the recycling facility, Oklo is developing a plutonium-fueled fast test reactor named Pluto as a larger part of a strategy to demonstrate plutonium can be used as a bridge fuel for advanced reactors, it said.
Additionally, last week, Oklo acquired the Oak Ridge-based manufacturing firm ARMEC to help with manufacturing of its reactors.
Standard Nuclear is a nuclear fuel company that develops tri-structural isotropic – or TRISO – fuel. Both Oklo and Standard Nuclear were selected by DOE to participate in its fuel line pilot program, a supplementary program to the reactor pilot program.
Oklo was also selected for two projects under DOE’s reactor pilot program.