Santa Clara, Calif-based nuclear company Oklo signed a nuclear fuel deal with Centrus Energy and began the research and demonstration phase of its isotope test reactor this week.
Centrus HALEU Fuel Supply Deal
On Thursday, Oklo signed multiple multi-year contracts with Centrus for high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU). According to the press release, the deals formalize an agreed-upon intent of purchase between the two companies in June that would provide HALEU at Oklo’s five planned Aurora powerhouse reactors in Pike County, Ohio.
Oklo’s planned reactors in Ohio are a part of a January deal with Meta to bring 1,200 megawatts of new nuclear energy online.
Centrus and Oklo also agreed to deliver HALEU to future Aurora powerhouse reactor deployments and later to its Aurora reactor located at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory.
As a part of the agreements, Oklo will make prepayments to Centrus for the HALEU deliveries. The payments will help support Centrus’ expansion of its uranium enrichment capacity at its enrichment facility in Piketon, Ohio at the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site.
“Securing fuel is essential to scaling our power business beyond our first reactor in Idaho,” said Oklo CEO and co-founder Jacob DeWitte. “These agreements support our initial Ohio deployments and provide fuel for future Aurora powerhouses. Meta’s support helps advance fuel procurement for the Ohio campus and our work to deliver new, clean, reliable power to the grid.”
The Aurora powerhouse is a liquid-metal sodium-cooled fast generation IV fast reactor designed to generate up to 75 megawatts of electricity. The reactor is designed to use HALEU metallic fuel leveraging recovered Experimental Breeder Reactor-II fuel.
Groves Isotope Test Reactor
While the company signed a fuel supply deal, it also received DOE authorization to move to “unrestricted” operations for its Groves isotope test reactor located in Lockhart, Texas. Oklo said in a Wednesday press release the approval will allow it to test functions for both its future isotope reactors as well as Aurora powerhouse reactors.
The Texas facility research and demonstration facility will serve as a “training and qualification platform” for reactor workers and provide “continued evaluations of control rod drive mechanism performance and reliability,” according to the release.
The Groves isotope test reactor facility was one of the several test reactors to reach criticality under DOE’s reactor pilot program. Groves was the first of these test reactors to reach criticality on private land.
Oklo said it will leverage this Groves isotope test reactor facility in building its next Groves facility, the Groves-2 Forge. The second Groves facility has been selected under DOE’s Nuclear Energy Launch Pad. The new facility will have “capabilities to produce, process and purify critical isotopes,” Oklo said.
