Oklo plans $1.7B Tennessee plant to recycle nuclear waste to fuel

[Model of atom and elementary particles. Physics concept. 3D rendered illustration.]
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Oklo (NYSE:OKLO [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/OKLO]) said Thursday it plans to design, build and operate a facility in Tennessee to convert nuclear waste into fuel to power its own advanced small modular reactors, a first-of-its-kind recycling plant in the U.S. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-04/oklo-plans-1-7-billion-center-to-convert-nuclear-waste-to-fuel] it expects to cost $1.68B.

Oklo (NYSE:OKLO [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/OKLO]) said it has already completed a licensing project for the facility with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and is in the pre-application stage for bringing it into operation; it anticipates the plant will begin producing fuel for its SMRs by the early 2030s.

The company also said it is in talks with Tennessee Valley Authority to recycle waste from the utility's nuclear plants, and possibly to sell it electricity from its planned Aurora Powerhouse reactor.

More than 94K metric tons of used nuclear fuel are stored at U.S. power plants that could be recycled, and doing so would unlock the energy equivalent of 1.3T barrels of oil, the company said.

"Fuel is the single most important factor in bringing advanced nuclear energy to market," Oklo (OKLO [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/OKLO]) CEO Jacob DeWitte said. "By recycling used nuclear fuel at an industrial scale, we are turning waste into watts, cutting costs, and establishing a secure U.S. supply chain."

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