Oklo in September announced plans to bring the United States’ first commercial nuclear fuel recycling plant to Oak Ridge, along with 800 new jobs, in a $1.7 billion investment that includes partnerships with the nation’s largest public power provider.
An Oklo staffer recently said in a public meeting the company also hopes East Tennessee, which has welcomed substantial nuclear development in recent years, could also host Oklo’s fast reactors in a later phase of expansion.
The company’s initial public announcement didn’t reference specific plans for reactors in Oak Ridge, but Oklo’s senior director for fuel recycling said earlier this month he hopes power plants lead to a better-balanced nuclear ecosystem for the company.
With a set of new commercial reactors, Oklo would be well-placed to sell power to utilities eager to meet a moment of rising energy demand that’s been driven, in part, by the rise of AI technology. The Tennessee Valley Authority, the the largest public utility in the U.S., last month announced its interest in partnering with Oklo on energy sales.
Oklo, which was formed in 2013 and went public in 2024, has connections at the highest levels of the federal government.
U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright served on the company’s board of directors from April 2024 until taking his role in the Trump administration earlier this year. A public financial disclosure report shows Wright drew more than $45,000 in directors fees and forfeited between $250,000 and $500,000 in unvested Oklo stocks when he became energy secretary.
Oklo has dealt with some setbacks in the past. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2022 rejected its application for a license on its Aurora powerhouse reactor, citing lack of information, but commissioners left the door open for the company to take another stab at approval in the future.
And in recent months, Oklo has made progress on several fronts.
It announced earlier this year it was in the “pre-application” stage of talks with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the Department of Energy in August selected Oklo and a subsidiary for three reactor pilot projects. The company broke ground on its first Aurora powerhouse reactor plant in Idaho in September and is among the picks for a federal pilot project to build advanced fuel lines.
Officials across federal, Tennessee and local governments cheered last month’s announcement that Oklo would build a fuel recycling plant in Oak Ridge. There’s public money on the line for Tennesseans.
Tennessee’s dedicated nuclear fund approved a $13 million award to the company in return for those commitments. The fund also approved providing nearly $3 million to the city of Oak Ridge for the value of some land to be transferred for the Oklo project.
Oklo aims to be a trailblazer that lays out a path in the U.S. for commercially viable advanced reactors.
Similar reactors operate in both Russia and China, but the powerhouse would be the first example in the U.S., according to a report from The Washington Post.
Ed Petit de Mange, senior director of fuel recycling at Oklo, told Oak Ridge City Council members in an October meeting the company’s plans for East Tennessee feature multiple phases. He described the project as “a fuel campus,” noting that “we also have some interest to site some nuclear generation on the same property.
Renderings on display at a Sept. 4, 2025 news conference show the $1.68 billion nuclear fuel recycling facility California-based Oklo plans to build in Oak Ridge.
“The purpose of the facility, though, is really to secure a reliable domestic fuel supply for the nuclear industry,” he said. “And we see that this really aligns well with some of the other industrial entities that are here in the community or that are coming to the community.
“We are not speaking of (reactors) in a definitive sense at this point, because we have not signed an agreement with a customer,” he aded.
As a fuel fabricator, Oklo could end up a customer of Orano, a nuclear fuels company that announced last year its plans to make the largest investment in Tennessee history with a uranium enrichment facility in Oak Ridge, he added.
“The current site includes land for possible future powerhouses, contingent on an agreement with TVA or another customer as the offtaker,” Oklo spokesperson Bonita Chester told Knox News in an email.
Oklo’s fuel recycling center likewise would break new ground in the U.S., which historically has been reluctant to move ahead with similar projects amid concerns from scientists and policy professionals who say plans to scale up the recycling technology rest on unproven ideas.
Fuel recycling also has been a target for nonproliferation activists, who say there are significant risks with the methods Oklo would use.
Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte stood by Trump as he signed the order.
“It has benefits with regard to fuel availability, so it means there’s less of a demand for mining fresh uranium ore,” Petit de Mange said of reprocessing. “There’s more opportunity to build more nuclear generation sooner, so that obviously has benefits in terms of emissions and being able to gain more energy availability in this country.”
He described what he said are safety advancements in the recycling process.
“It also reduces the lifetime of the waste products,” Petit de Mange said. “So, it’s actually reducing the volume of the waste that comes out of reactors.
“The small amount of waste that is remaining has a considerably shorter lifetime than the fuel as it is just coming straight out of the reactors,” he said.
Other plans for Oklo’s Oak Ridge campus include manufacturing plant components.
Oklo plans to start operations in Oak Ridge in 2030 and accelerate production the following year, Chester said in a statement to Knox News.
Mariah Franklin reports on technology and energy for Knox News. Email: mariah.franklin@knoxnews.com. Signal: mariahfranklin.01
Ed Petit de Mange, senior director of fuel recycling at Oklo, speaks to Oak Ridge City Council members on Oct. 2 about the company’s plans for land at the former K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant site in west Oak Ridge.
