Sam Altman-backed nuclear startup Oklo to start site work for Idaho microreactor
Rendering of a proposed Oklo commercial advanced fission power plant in the U.S.
Courtesy: Oklo Inc.
Nuclear startup Oklo is moving closer to initial construction of its first commercial microreactor, CEO Jacob DeWitte told CNBC in an interview.
Oklo has received the greenlight from the Department of Energy to conduct site investigations for the planned reactor at Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls, the company announced Wednesday.
The site investigations will focus on infrastructure planning, environmental surveys and geotechnical assessments.
“This sets the stage for doing all the initial site … prep work, and what I would call initial construction activities,” DeWitte said. He expects Oklo to break ground at the Idaho site in 2026, with plans to have the reactor up and running by the following year.
Oklo, however, still needs approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build and operate the plant after its first application was rejected in 2022. The CEO acknowledged there’s a risk the 2027 start date gets pushed out depending on how long the NRC review takes.
Oklo, which aims to build, operate and directly sell power to customers under long-term contracts, went public in May through a merger with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s SPAC, AltC Acquisition Corp. Altman serves as Oklo’s chairman.
Electric demand is projected to surge. The tech sector has been feverishly building data centers to handle the power-intensive computations needed for artificial intelligence, while domestic manufacturing is expanding and the economy becomes increasingly electrified.
The company said its microreactors, called Aurora, will have smaller and simpler designs that will range from 15 megawatts to as much as 100 megawatts or more. The average nuclear reactor in the U.S. currently is around 1,000 megawatts, according to the Department of Energy.
‘Industry has radically fallen short’
Oko’s stock has gained nearly 26% since Constellation Energy unveiled plans Friday to restart Three Mile Island nuclear plant to help power Microsoft’s data centers. Its shares are down 54% since its NYSE debut.
DeWitte said the Three Mile Island restart is a “testament” to how much the tech sector sees “energy going up and how important it is to lock in secure supplies of it.”
“What we’re seeing is hyperscalers taking the approach of trying to secure large capacity from existing plants to the greatest extent that they can, which makes sense, because some of that can be the nearest-term power delivery,” DeWitte said.
But the nuclear “industry has radically fallen short of its ability to keep up with the market interest,” DeWitte said. “The challenge has just been the industry’s offerings in terms of product, the business model and ability to execute have just been horrible,” he said.
“All of that is elements around which disruption has needed to take place to sort of change the paradigm,” he said. “And that’s where we really have taken a different angle.”
NRC review crucial
Oklo, however, has faced its own challenges. The NRC rejected Oklo’s first license application due to missing safety information. The company plans to file its application again in 2025, DeWitte said. It is currently in a preapplication review process, he said.
DeWitte attributed the denial of Oklo’s first application to disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic that prevented in-person audits. Oklo submitted its application on March 11, 2020, the day the World Health Organization declared a pandemic.
“Everything changed,” DeWitte said of the pandemic’s impact on the review process. “This missing information was largely missing through communication challenges,” he said.
The CEO acknowledged the NRC review could delay the 2027 start date for the Idaho microreactor: “There’s definitely risk. At the end of the day, we can’t control the NRC review timeline,” he said.
Oklo could get a tailwind from the recently enacted ADVANCE Act, which directs the NRC to speed up decisions on license applications to build and operate reactors.
Future business
DeWitte said Oklo’s business is not contingent upon when the Idaho plant goes online. The company has 1,350 megawatts of interest through letters of intent with potential customers, a 93% increase from 700 megawatts in July 2023, according to the company’s recent earnings presentation.
The CEO said Oklo aims to bring plants online “in multiples per year” starting in 2028 to 2029. “From there, it’s really a game about scaling up the supply chain accordingly,” he said.
Oklo’s microreactors are a good fit for data centers, which are built in individual halls with energy needs of less than 50 megawatts, about the size of the company’s plants, he said.
“They kind of build them out in modules that are pretty similar to what we power, that’s very much on purpose, and so we can build up with them,” DeWitte said.
Nuclear fuel has been a big constraint on Oklo, DeWitte said. In May, the U.S. banned uranium imports from Russia, which made up about 35% of the U.S. nuclear fuel imports. The Biden administration is investing $2.7 billion to stand up domestic production.
Oklo has a partnership with Centrus Energy, a U.S.-based nuclear fuel supplier. Centrus began enrichment operations in Piketon, Ohio, last October, but the domestic supply chain isn’t producing at the scale needed today, DeWitte said. However, Oklo said it has secured the fuel it needs for the Idaho plant.
The company’s reactors will have the ability to recycle fuel, which will help to diversify its supply chain, DeWitte said. But recycled fuel likely won’t be available in meaningful quantities until 2029 or beyond, he said.
Oklo posted a net loss of $53 million for the six months ended June 30. The company has not generated any revenue yet. That will come when it generates power at its first plant.
“Once we turn on that revenue operation, you’re usually locked into a 20-year — and in some cases, potentially longer — power purchase agreements,” CEO said. “You’re going to be getting the revenues for the next 20 years and then growing from there.”
Just like it says on the tin – retailers are advertising killer deals on the fun-to-drive Kia Niro EV, with one midwest auto dealer reporting more than $10,000 off the sticker price of the Niro EV Wind. That’s nearly 25% off the top line price!
SKIP THE STORY: get straight to the deals.
The Kia Niro EV gets overshadowed by its objectively excellent EV6 and EV9 stablemates – both of which are currently available with substantial lease cash and 0% APR financing, in fact – but that doesn’t mean it’s not an excellent little electric runabout in its own right.
The last time I had a Niro EV tester, my kids loved it, I liked that it was quicker and more tossable than I expected it to be, and my wife liked the fact that “it doesn’t look electric. It looks normal.” And, with well over 200 miles of real world range (EPA-rated range is 253 miles), it was more than up to the task of commuting around Chicago and making the trip up to the Great Wolf Lodge in Gurnee and back without even needing to look for a charger.
It’s not the primary family hauler I’d choose – but as a second car? As a primary car for a slightly smaller family (1-2 kids, instead of 3-4)? The Kia Niro EV Wind, with a $42,470 MSRP, seems like a solid, “can’t go wrong” sort of choice. You know?
You won’t even have to pay that much, though. Raymond Kia in Antioch, Illinois is advertising a $42,470 Niro EV for $32,431 (that’s $10,039, or about 24% off the MSRP), and several others are advertising prices in the $33,000 range.
And, while we’re at it:
Kia Niro EV gallery
SOURCE | IMAGES: CarsDirect, Edmunds, Raymond Kia.
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Many school districts who used EPA funding to help purchase Lion Electric school buses are now stuck with broken down or unsafe vehicles – but Lion’s new Canadian investors seemingly have no plans to make things right.
“All four Lion buses that we own are currently parked and not being used,” Coleen Souza, interim transportation director of Winthrop Public Schools, told Jay Traugott over at Clean Trucking. “Two of them are in need of repairs which would cost us money which we are not willing to invest in because the buses do not run for more than a month before needing more repairs.”
The story is much the same at other US school districts who deployed Lion Electric buses over the last few years – and the trouble they describe isn’t isolated to a single component or system. One district we spoke to had onboard chargers that failed almost immediately after being plugged into a L2 AC charger. Another that spoke to Traugott reported emergency door gaps, power steering failure, loss of power, and braking issues.
As bad as the revelations of safety and drivability issues and $250 million in unresolved debt have been, it’s the objectively stupid design choices that have been the most shocking.
“Lion built an auxiliary diesel heater to heat the bus, essentially writing the manual as they went,” explained a school superintendent in the midwest, who asked not to be named. “It was fascinating to watch but there were design flaws with the heater. For example, the intakes pointed downward and we’re driving across rural roads and the intake sucks in that dirt.”
“Using a diesel-powered heater to warm an electric bus also somewhat defeats the purpose of going 100% zero-emissions,” added Traugott.
Despite a new electric school bus rebate and a fresh cash injection from Vincent Chiara, president of Quebec real estate powerhouse Groupe MACH, and Lion director Pierre Wilkie, however, it seems like no help is coming.
It just gets worse and worse
Despite early speculation – some of it my own, in fact – that the new investors would take the Canadian government up on its offer to help subsidize more electric school bus production and honor the company’s outstanding warranty claims, it appears the only vehicle line the new investors are interested in reviving are the the Class 8 electric semi manufacturing operations in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec.
The US school districts who spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars in the hopes that Lion buses would help decarbonize their fleets and reduce students’ exposure to harmful diesel emissions? Many of them are back to using diesel, while others are trying to get their deposits back so they can buy something else.
Here’s hoping any school districts on the fence for electrification recognize that their are very real, very well-engineered, and very financially sound electric school bus manufacturers out there who can deliver on their promises.
SOURCES: Chicago Tribune, Clean Trucking, Electrical Business.
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Mitsubishi is partnering with Ample and Yamoto Transports to deploy an innovative new battery swap network for electric cars in its Japanese home market — but it’s not just for electric cars. Mitsubishi Fuso commercial trucks are getting in on the action, too!
Despite a number of early EV adopters with an overdeveloped concept of ownership, battery swap technology has proven to be both extremely effective and extremely positive to the overall EV ownership experience. And when you see how simple it is to add hundreds of miles of driving in just 100 seconds — quicker, in many cases, than pumping a tank of liquid fuel into an ICE-powered car — you might come around, yourself.
That seems to be what Mitsubishi thinks, anyway, and they’re hoping they’ll be your go-to choice when it’s time to electrify your regional and last-mile commercial delivery fleet(s) by launching a multi-year pilot program to deploy more than 150 battery-swappable commercial electric vehicles and 14 modular battery swapping stations across Tokyo, where the company plans to showcase its “five minute charging” tech in full view of hundreds of commercial fleets and, crucially, the executives of the companies that own and manage them.
A truck like the Mitsubishi eCanter typically requires a full night of AC charging to top off its batteries, and at least an hour or two on DC charging in Japan, according to Fuso. This joint pilot by Mitsubishi, Mitsubishi Fuso Trucks, and Ample aims to circumvent this issue of forced downtime with its swappable batteries, supporting vehicle uptime by delivering a full charge within minutes. The move is meant to encourage the transport industry’s EV shift while creating a depository of stored energy that can be deployed to the grid in the event of a natural disaster — something Mitsubishi in Japan has been working on for years.
Trucks like the eCanter already serve a number of roles throughout the global truck market, including municipal waste collection, regional delivery support, and more.
The pilot is backed by Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s “Technology Development Support Project for Promoting New Energy,” with local delivery operator Yamato Transport testing swappable EVs for delivery operations on both its eCanter light-duty trucks and Mitsubishi Minicab kei-class electric vans.
Electrek’s Take
Electrifying the commercial truck fleet is a key part of decarbonizing city truck fleets – not just here in the US, but around the world. I called the eCanter, “a great product for moving stuff around densely packed city streets,” and eliminating the corporate fear of EV charging in the wild just makes it an even better product for that purpose.
Here’s hoping we see more “right size” electric solutions like this one (and more battery swapping tech) in small towns and tight urban environments stateside somewhat sooner than later.
SOURCES | IMAGES: Mitsubishi, Fuso.
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