FAQs

We are excited to highlight the Senate's recent passage of the ADVANCE Act of 2023, which brings several key benefits to the nuclear industry and Oklo. See the attached memo with more insights into how this could impact Oklo.

Oklo will deploy its first commercial advanced reactor in the United States before the end of the decade. Oklo has a site use permit from the U.S. Department of Energy to build its first plant in Idaho, has fuel for its first reactor, and has been engaged with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission since 2016, preparing to license its first plant. Oklo is a leading advanced reactor company with a site, fuel, and major regulatory progress to date.

• Economic: The energy density of fission affords Oklo sizeable economic advantages over alternatives.
• Reliable: Oklo’s reactors are simple systems with long fuel lifetimes, enabling the reliable production of clean heat and electricity consistently throughout that time.

Oklo's Powerhouses offer several benefits over current power generation technologies.

• Clean: Oklo's Powerhouses are clean and do not emit greenhouse gases eliminating impacts on air pollution and climate change.

• Increased energy resilience and independence: Compared to fossil fuel sources like coal and natural gas, Oklo's fuel is millions of times more energy dense, resulting in millions of times less land impacted by mining and increased reliability of fuel resources. Oklo's reactors can operate for decades without refueling, compared to gas and coal plants that require frequent refueling and rarely have more than a few weeks worth of fuel onsite.

• Economic: The energy density of fuel affords Oklo sizeable economic advantages over fossil alternatives.

• Reliable: Oklo’s reactors need refueling as little as every 20 years and produce reliable, clean heat and electricity consistently throughout that time.

Oklo's primary sales model is to sell power via power purchase agreements (PPAs), as opposed to selling power plants outright. Oklo can sell power plants but has found that people largely prefer PPA models. This means Oklo designs, deploys, and operates its power plants, selling the power from its plants to customers by the megawatt-hour. If you are interested in exploring how Oklo can power your needs, reach out to: bizdev@oklo.com

Oklo power plants are fast reactors, which have over 400 reactor-years of operating experience. Oklo has pursued fast reactors due to their robust operating experience, inherent safety characteristics, favorable operating characteristics, promising economics, and ability to convert nuclear waste into clean electricity.

Fast reactors have operated in the United States, notably EBR-II, which produced about 20 MW of electric power and operated from 1964 to 1995. EBR-II demonstrated the inherent safety characteristics of fast reactors in real-world, full-scale tests. On the morning of April 3, 1986, the reactor was taken to full power, the control rods were locked out of the reactor so they could not be inserted, and the pumps were turned off. At that point, the coolant flow slowed down until it was driven by natural circulation. This caused an imbalance in heat generation and cooling, causing the reactor to heat up. The fuel expanded as it increased in temperature, shutting the reactor down. Natural circulation then removed the heat from the fuel, ultimately transferring it to naturally flowing ambient air. This event was managed seamlessly by the reactor. That same afternoon, they started the reactor back up to full power, a feat that slow neutron reactors could not easily accomplish due to latent fission product poisoning, and again locked the control rods out of the core. The reactor's balance of plant was then shut down, shutting off the normal pathway for heat flow in the system. This caused the reactor to heat up, leading to the fuel expanding, terminating the reaction, and the natural circulation of the coolant was able to cool the reactor. Again, the inherent safety features of the reactor were demonstrated. The design of Oklo's Aurora powerhouse draws substantially on these principles proven by EBR-II.

Unlike fossil fuels, fission does not produce major air pollutants or greenhouse gas emissions. However, all energy technologies generate waste in proportion to the materials they use. Fission requires the least materials per unit of electricity that it produces. That means fission's total waste footprint is smaller than any other source of power – all the waste generated over the last 60+ years of operation from today's reactors would fit in a volume the size of a Walmart store. This includes used fuel, which is highly radioactive and attracts the majority of attention. Because fission fuels are incredibly energy dense, this used fuel is incredibly small considering the power it has produced. Furthermore, used fuel is hard to describe as waste since it still contains about 95% of its original energy content. Fast reactors, like Oklo's reactors, are able to tap into and harness that remaining energy cost-effectively. In fact, there is enough energy content in the used fuel in the U.S. today to power the entire country for over 150 years. Oklo can also recycle its own discharged fuel. This not only taps into tremendous energy reserves but also changes the nature of the material. Recycling means you fission the actinides, which have half-lives in the tens to hundreds of thousands of years. The remaining waste materials return to the normal background radiation levels of the natural deposits it was produced from after 300-700 years. That means you reduce waste volumes, heat loads, and lifetimes. The reduced waste burden allows packaging the fission products into optimal disposal packages, which saves costs and opens up entirely different disposal pathways.

Oklo's name is inspired by the uranium-rich mineral deposits at Oklo, Gabon, which underwent self-sustained fission as natural nuclear reactors two billion years ago. The Oklo logo mark, in particular, has many layers of meaning. The shape, the number of stripes, the ties to ancient symbolism, the circular shape, and more all have meaning.

Yes, our Idaho plant will be a commercial power plant that will produce power for sale to customers.

Oklo power plants are stationary systems, not designed to be transportable. This allows us to achieve cost-competitive economics while avoiding major regulatory, technical, and logistical challenges.

In 2020, Oklo submitted the first ever advanced fission license application to build and operate its first plant. In 2022, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission requested additional information to resume the application.  Oklo is working with the NRC to prepare for upcoming application submissions and is on track to bring its first plant online before the end of the decade.

Oklo's regulatory interactions are captured on the NRC website here.

We are actively working with several international partners and are excited about the potential our systems have in producing affordable, reliable clean power around the world. Please reach out to BIZDEV@OKLO.COM to explore opportunities with us.

Yes, Oklo’s reactors are fast reactors. A fast reactor makes maximum use of uranium fuel. This feature enables the Aurora powerhouse to operate for up to 10 years before refueling and allows Oklo’s plants to run on recycled used nuclear fuel from other nuclear power plants.

When a uranium atom’s nucleus splits (fissions), it releases energy as well as two or three neutrons with the potential to cause other atoms to fission, and on average one of those neutrons must cause another fission to maintain the chain reaction. On release, the neutrons are traveling very fast – around 20,000 km per second – but most of today’s reactors use water as a moderator to slow the neutrons down to about 2 km per second, because this increases their efficiency at fissioning uranium isotopes, among certain others. By contrast, working with fast neutrons gives Oklo’s reactors the advantageous ability to fission a much wider range of fuel isotopes, while also being less sensitive to impurities found in recycled used nuclear fuel. This makes the Aurora highly efficient at converting used fuel into clean energy. Furthermore, Oklo’s advanced recycling process keeps transuranic materials together to be used again as reactor fuel, while minimizing the amount of waste that must ultimately be disposed of, and potentially extracting valuable isotopes from the waste for many promising applications in medicine, energy, industry, and science.

No, Oklo is not developing breeder reactors. Breeder reactors are designed to produce more fissionable isotopes than they consume. Oklo’s reactors do produce fissionable isotopes during operation, which helps extend refueling intervals, but they also efficiently consume these isotopes with the result that they consume more than they produce. This approach contrasts with breeder reactors, which aim to maximize the creation of carbon-free fuel. The configuration of a reactor as a breeder is unnecessary for Oklo, as our reactors can produce energy from recycled used fuel, with a focus on minimizing carbon emissions.