Dive Brief:

• Oklo remains on track to submit its combined license application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission later this year and deploy its first commercial power plant at Idaho National Laboratory in late 2027 or early 2028, the advanced nuclear developer said Monday.
• The company expanded its Aurora powerhouse design from 50 MW to 75 MW to support demand from large data center customers “without adding any notable technical, design or regulatory complexities,” it said.
• Oklo also added two new board members to replace former Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright, who left earlier this year to serve as U.S. Energy Secretary. One of the incoming board members is Daniel Poneman, former president and CEO of Centrus Energy, a U.S. nuclear fuel supplier from which Oklo plans to source high-assay, low-enriched uranium fuel.

Dive Insight:

Since July 2023, when it announced that it would go public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company cofounded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Oklo’s order pipeline has grown from less than 1 GW to around 14 GW, it said Monday in a separate quarterly update.

That pipeline includes a 12-GW, 20-year “master power agreement” with data center developer and operator Switch, plus several smaller agreements with other data center firms and Texas-based oil and gas operator Diamondback Energy.

Master power agreements are more flexible and less risky than traditional power purchase agreements, which Oklo has not pursued to date, Chief Financial Officer Craig Bealmear said Monday on an investor webcast. Covering planned capacity investments, delivery timelines, target sites and regions and power price ranges, the agreements act as frameworks for Oklo’s customer relationships and eventual project-level PPAs, Oklo said in its quarterly update.  

In the investor materials and webcast, Oklo detailed plans for a “phased deployment” of power generation infrastructure in partnership with RPower, an off-grid, gas-fired “prime power” provider. The partnership envisions rapid deployment of gas-fired generation as a near-term “bridge” for data center customers with urgent power needs, followed by phased powerhouse deployment and an eventual end state where RPower’s generators provide backup power and grid services, Oklo said.

“[The partnership] enhances grid stability, allowing RPower to act as a good grid citizen with Oklo, supplying surplus power to the grid when needed,” Bealmear said.

Oklo’s decision to upsize its powerhouse capacity from 50 MW to 75 MW was “very much a customer-informed design decision” based on “where we see … the data center architectures progressing,” CEO Jacob DeWitte said on the investor call. The 75-MW size allows Oklo to serve an emerging “sweet spot” between 60 MW and 72 MW per data hall with margin to spare, whereas a 50-MW reactor would “limit some of the upside,” he said.

The larger reactor design is more fuel-efficient and offers “economies of scale” by allowing future customers to achieve the same output with fewer reactors, Bealmear said. But the upsize is modest enough not to introduce new technical or design risk in licensing, he added.

Ongoing, multiyear preapplication engagement with the NRC and recent positive regulatory developments have Oklo cautiously optimistic for a smooth licensing process, DeWitte said.

“One reference point that I think is important here is TerraPower’s construction permit work — they did a readiness assessment and relatively quickly thereafter [in March 2024] submitted a construction permit, and there’s been recent news that the NRC is ahead of schedule on that review,” DeWitte said. “[TerraPower’s design] is a very similar technology set to ours.”

Oklo’s imminent Pre-Application Readiness Assessment will address the siting and environmental components of its combined license application for its first commercial powerhouse at Idaho National Laboratory, where Oklo has begun early site work, the company said Monday.

Oklo plans to submit its combined license application in the fourth quarter of this year, following the Oct. 1 effective date for the NRC’s proposed 55% hourly rate reduction for advanced reactor applicants, DeWitte said.

Though it has enough HALEU fuel for the INL reactor’s initial load, Oklo shares other advanced reactor companies’ near-term concerns about limited nuclear fuel supplies, DeWitte said. Congress unlocked $2.7 billion for U.S. HALEU production last year in a law that also banned most uranium imports from Russia, significantly tightening the civilian market as suppliers like Centrus work to build domestic capacity.  

“I do worry about the bridge between now and the early 2030s,” DeWitte said.

But growing orderbooks for advanced reactors ought to spur additional investments in U.S. production capacity, while tech giants’ interest in HALEU-fueled reactors in particular suggest key customers see the fuel issue as a “solvable problem,” DeWitte said. And Oklo’s planned investment is in fuel recycling capabilities, which could eventually reduce its fuel costs by 80%, “a little bit of an ace up our sleeves,” he added.