Regulatory

To construct and operate a commercial reactor in the U.S., the NRC must license the facility. The NRC issues many licenses, including standard design certifications, early site permits, limited work authorizations, construction permits, operating licenses, and combined licenses. All license application processes follow the same general review steps: they are submitted by an NRC applicant, the NRC determines if they are acceptable for review (i.e., the acceptance review process), license applications are reviewed by the NRC, and, if the review is successful, they are approved, and the license is issued.

The acceptance review is mandated by the NRC’s regulations, and, the direct interpretation of the regulatory importance of acceptance is to identify that the application is complete. Once the application has been accepted for docketing, the NRC performs a technical review until they have reasonable assurance that they have met their mission and have completed all the steps in the review process, dependent on the license application type.

Although there are many NRC licensing pathways for an advanced fission facility, only two are generally considered because they have been historically used. The first is the “Part 50 approach,” which is how today’s reactors are licensed and is described in Title 10 to the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) Part 50. The Part 50 licensing approach is two steps and requires both a construction permit and an operating license. In 1989, the NRC introduced the “Part 52 approach,” which refers to 10 CFR Part 52 and includes numerous combinations of licensing approaches. Specifically of relevance to Oklo is the combined license approach, and Oklo has already used it for the Aurora at the Idaho National Laboratory (Aurora-INL). The Part 50 and 52 approaches are summarized in Table 1‑1; note that these are only a selected subset of Part 52 approaches.

When a company submits an application, a design for your technology is submitted, showing how it behaves and how it is safe by analyzing it against a number of challenging but nonetheless plausible scenarios. You’re trying to show that you’ve engineered the system so thoroughly that it doesn’t pose any undue risk even in extraordinary circumstances. The way regulators look at that is largely procedural and they’ve mostly looked at these proposals in the context of light water reactors. The problem is that the process doesn’t extend well to next generation systems where you have high degrees of inherent passive safety. The system is basically “physics safe.”  If something destroys the cooling procedures during operation, the system will heat up and thermally expand, but that expansion actually shuts the reactor down by causing more neutrons to leak out of the reactor than are staying in it. So there’s this natural feedback that cause you to shut down that is based on physics. You’re always able to stay cool by the natural circulation of the coolants. These are all well-known and understood in operational contexts. That presents an opportunity to look at these things fundamentally differently from a regulatory process perspective. 

At Oklo, we are at the tip of the spear on this. There is a lot of newness here. So right now, there are a lot of opportunities for the NRC staff and agencies to look at these things more organically and enabling this type of review. Empowering staff to do that would be worth a lot. But because it’s a lot easier for them to do things as they’ve done them before, it adds a lot of inefficiency given the inherent differences between legacy and advanced nuclear technologies. So it’s much harder for them to stick their neck out and do something more efficient and modern that’s appropriate for the technology. If you actually align those things, that’s going to help a lot because you’re going to enable smart, technical, capable people in the agency to do their job.

Historically, projects have been designed by one company, constructed by another, and finally operated by a separate company. The use of Part 50 licensing pathways has been informed by this approach, allowing for the construction of a designed facility to ultimately be turned over to an operating utility. For a company that is both designing, constructing, and operating a facility, the Part 52 pathway Oklo is pursuing allows for greater speed and repeatability by licensing nuclear power plants of the same design utilizing the R-COLA/S-COLA approach. Specifically, the first COLA serves as the “reference” COLA, which can then be incorporated in “subsequent” COLA’s, where future reviews are focused only on the content that changes from the reference application.  COLAs must include both a final safety analysis report and an environmental report.

Oklo submitted and remains the only advanced reactor company to have submitted an application for both construction and operation of its design and have it accepted for review.  As owner and operator, Oklo is not only designing but constructing and operating a facility. The Part 52 pathway Oklo is pursing allows for greater speed and repeatability by licensing nuclear power plants of the same design utilizing the COLA approach.

In other words, Oklo will gain staff approval of its design for both its first deployment and subsequent deployments through its combined license application review, while also receiving approval to construct and operate, pending completion of key inspection and testing. Ultimately, any entity seeking to operate an advanced reactor will need to submit for an operating license with the NRC.

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 has since added additional staff with decades of NRC experience. Oklo has been able to reach resolution of the items identified in the denial and is now preparing for an application readiness review.

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

Oklo has a site use permit at INL, and fuel from INL and DOE. At present, Oklo is actively engaged with the NRC as it prepares to submit an application within 12 months. Oklo has begun preliminary long-lead procurement activities.