Episode 155 | Fast Fission | Oklo
The path forward for nuclear power in this country appears to be smaller. Small Modular Reactors are pre-fabricated, simpler, and walk-away safe. They also require a smaller investment and don’t appear to have the same financial and schedule risks as their larger cousins.
Santa Clara, CA-based Oklo believes their niche resides in the smaller end of SMRs. Their 15 MW “Aurora” powerhouse would be smaller than, say, NuScale’s 77MW units.
Brian Gitt, Oklo’s head of business development, says smaller is the path to commercialization. “By starting smaller, it really gives us a unique opportunity to simplify, build momentum, gain traction, and then build to larger-scale systems over time,” he says.
Oklo’s SMR is just one of the innovations the company is developing. Their facilities are built like cathedrals. They also plan to use a liquid metal fast reactor design that has been tested for over 30 years. Oklo says the reactor would be self-stabilizing, self-controlling, and cooled by natural forces while incorporating robust inherent safety performances.
Fast reactors, like Oklo’s can use fresh fuel and are also uniquely able to recycle nuclear fuel. We covered this topic in Episode 134. Oklo plans to deploy a fuel recycling facility to recycle used nuclear fuel from both their own plants as well as some of the 85K tons of fuel sitting at existing nuclear plants around the country.
“There’s enough spent fuel sitting there that could really power the U.S. for about a hundred years,” says Brian.
Oklo was first brought to my attention a few years ago when its founders, Jacob DeWitte and Caroline Cochran were featured in the 2017 documentary The New Fire. In 2022, Jacob and Caroline will be featured in Oliver Stone’s documentary Nuclear (Note—Episode 51 guest Joshua Goldstein was a writer on the film).
I asked Brian what a film like Nuclear means for the nuclear industry—widespread, mainstream acceptance of a technology that has been vilified in films like The China Syndrome.
“Environmentalists around the world are really waking up to the reality that nuclear power is the only 24/7, zero-emission energy source,” says Brian, “and if they’re wanting to tackle these big, global problems like climate change, it’s going to be necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
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