Oklo to Start Recycling Nuclear Waste in Tennessee

The company is ’turning waste into gigawatts,' CEO Jacob DeWitte said.

Empty nuclear waste shipping containers sit in front of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M. AP/Susan Montoya Bryan

Tennessee will be the site of the United States’ first privately owned nuclear fuel recycling plant, converting tons of radioactive waste into usable fuel.

Oklo Inc., a nuclear technology company, announced on Sept. 4 that it will build a $1.68 billion advanced nuclear fuel recycling facility on a 247-acre site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The plant will recycle spent fuel from nuclear power plants and is projected to create more than 800 new jobs in the process.

“By recycling used fuel at scale, we are turning waste into gigawatts, reducing costs, and establishing a secure U.S. supply chain that will support the deployment of clean, reliable, and affordable power,” Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte said in a statement. “Tennessee is showing the nation that recycling can be done to support new nuclear development and growth.”

Oklo is the fifth nuclear technology company to build in Tennessee with the state’s $70 million Nuclear Energy Fund, which supports nuclear power-related businesses and nuclear education programs in the state’s universities and research institutions.

“With assets like Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a rich history in the nuclear industry and leadership that stands ready to support Oklo’s next steps, we know Tennessee is the ideal location for this project and the company’s continued nuclear efforts,” Stuart McWhorter, commissioner of the state’s Department of Economic and Community Development, told The Epoch Times.

“[The creation of Tennessee’s Nuclear Energy Fund] shows our state is able and willing to help do whatever it takes to take America into the next steps of energy dominance. We know this is just the next step—not the final step—for our great state as it becomes a clean energy capital of the world, and we’re grateful to welcome Oklo to the Tennessee family.”

Currently, about 90,000 tons of nuclear waste generated by 94 nuclear reactors is stored throughout the United States at more than 100 sites in 39 states, according to a study by Gerald Frankel, professor of materials science and engineering at Ohio State University. Nuclear fuel begins in the form of uranium oxide pellets sealed within zirconium tubes, according to the study.

After about five years, the fuel no longer generates fission reactions but remains highly radioactive, at which point the materials are removed from the reactor and sealed in welded stainless steel canisters, typically on-site. According to Oklo, the energy that can be derived from this material equals about 1.3 trillion barrels of oil, five times the reserves of Saudi Arabia.

The original process for recycling spent nuclear fuel was developed in the United States in the 1950s, but it has not been put to use domestically because of legal and regulatory issues. During the Carter administration, the nuclear recycling industry was shut down over concerns about the proliferation of nuclear weapons from reprocessed fuel.

According to the terms of the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the Energy Department was to be responsible for the safe disposal of nuclear waste, but has thus far not received funding to build a planned repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

“[The Energy Department] is responsible for disposing of this high-level waste in a permanent geologic repository but has yet to build such a facility because policymakers have been at an impasse over what to do with this spent fuel since 2010,” the Government Accountability Office stated.

In the meantime, the volume of spent nuclear fuel continues to grow by 2,000 metric tons each year, prompting utilities to sue the government for breach of contract. And the United States, once a dominant global producer of nuclear fuel, has been dependent on imports since 1992 for most of the 40 million pounds of uranium required for its nuclear power industry.

Domestic production of uranium peaked in 1980, according to the Energy Information Administration. Currently, the United States’ foreign suppliers of uranium are Russia (12 percent), Kazakhstan (25 percent), Uzbekistan (11 percent), Canada (27 percent), Australia (9 percent), and other foreign nations (16 percent).

Companies such as Oklo say that recycling is the solution to both the storage and the supply problem and that the process has been in profitable use in other countries for decades. Orano, one of the world’s largest commercial recycling companies, is based in France with a U.S. subsidiary. It has reprocessed more than 40,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel worldwide since 1976.

Orano reprocesses spent fuel, which it collects from France, Japan, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany, to generate electricity in nuclear reactors, according to the company’s communications director, Curtis Roberts. The company estimates that 10 percent of France’s electricity comes from recycled nuclear fuel.

Oklo said it is currently in the process of acquiring licenses for the Tennessee recycling facility from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The facility in Tennessee is expected to begin producing fuel by the early 2030s, subject to regulatory approvals.

Oklo is also developing fast-fission power plants and is exploring opportunities with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), an electricity utility, to recycle the TVA’s used fuel and to sell electricity from Oklo plants in the region to TVA.

Testifying before Congress in June, Oklo’s chief technology officer, Patrick Schweiger, said more nuclear energy will be needed to meet the growing demand for electricity in the United States, particularly because of the expansion of data centers and the growth of artificial intelligence (AI).

“AI has triggered a Sputnik moment, accelerating the demand for dependable domestic power,” Schweiger said, citing reports that AI data centers would drive a 160 percent increase in power demand through 2030.

In addition to being the location for Oklo’s new recycling plant, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, became famous as a site of the Manhattan Project and the race to create a nuclear bomb during World War II.