US startups Oklo and Standard Nuclear have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to form a strategic alliance aimed at strengthening the US advanced nuclear fuel supply chain. The agreement establishes Oklo’s first third-party offtake pathway for recycled materials. It directly supports US government efforts to repurpose domestic nuclear waste and surplus weapons-grade plutonium into clean energy feedstock.
Standard Nuclear will explore sourcing reprocessed uranium (RepU) and uranium-transuranic (U/TRU) material streams from Oklo’s planned fuel recycling facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. These recycled material streams will serve as critical feedstock for Standard Nuclear’s manufacturing of TRISO (Tristructural Isotropic) fuel, needed for advanced reactors. Both companies were recently selected by the Department of Energy (DOE) for advanced negotiations under the Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program. They will jointly evaluate the facilities, licensing, and transportation required to convert surplus US plutonium into commercial advanced reactor fuel
The US currently holds nearly 100,000 tonnes of used nuclear fuel. Oklo’s recycling technology aims to harvest the remaining 95% of untapped energy left in used fuel assemblies.
“Oklo’s fuel strategy is built around turning used nuclear fuel and surplus nuclear materials into usable fuel for reactors and power plants,” said Oklo co-founder and CEO Jacob DeWitte. “The collaboration with Standard Nuclear helps support the domestic supply chains needed to deploy advanced nuclear at scale.”
Standard Nuclear CEO Kurt Terrani noted: “Standard Nuclear is committed to developing a secure, domestic supply chain for advanced nuclear fuel. This partnership represents a compelling pathway to source feedstock materials for our TRISO fuel manufacturing and radioisotope power systems and is an important step in strengthening domestic fuel feedstock supply sources.”
Oklo was founded in 2013 by MIT graduates Jacob DeWitte and Caroline Cochran. The company is named after the Oklo region in Gabon, Africa, where the world’s only known natural nuclear fission reactions occurred 1.7bn years ago. Its aim is to commercialise fast-fission technology and design small modular reactors (SMRs) that can run on fresh or recycled nuclear waste, generating energy for data centres and industrial sites.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman became an early investor in 2015 via Y Combinator and served as Chairman. He took Oklo public in May 2024 through a merger with his SPAC, AltC Acquisition Corp. He stepped down as Chairman in April 2025 to eliminate conflicts of interest, freeing OpenAI and other tech firms to pursue massive AI energy supply contracts with Oklo.
Oklo’s flagship product is the Aurora Powerhouse, a compact liquid metal fast reactor designed to produce 15-75 MWe. Oklo’s planned fuel recycling facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee aims to support a commercial pathway for recovering selected materials from used fuel for advanced fuel manufacturing and isotope applications, including for healthcare, industrial, space, defence, and research uses. Alongside feedstock supply, Oklo is advancing Pluto, a plutonium-fuelled fast test reactor designed to prove that surplus military materials can serve as a bridge fuel for commercial energy rather than remaining a long-term storage burden.
Standard Nuclear is a private advanced nuclear fuel company headquartered in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The company emerged in 2024 out of the bankruptcy assets of the Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC), purchasing its core fuel technologies and production facilities at auction for $28m. The company is supported by national security venture firms such as Decisive Point and Andreessen Horowitz. It is focused on securing a domestic advanced fuel supply and raised $140m in a Series A round in early 2026 to scale their facilities. Unlike companies that only fuel their own proprietary reactors, Standard Nuclear operates as an independent, reactor-agnostic producer of TRISO fuel aiming to manufacture high-durability fuel for various advanced commercial reactors, defence initiatives, and space power applications.
Although DOE’s Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program does not fund joint initiatives through direct cash grants, it acts as a non-monetary asset subsidy that dramatically lowers the upfront cost of fuel development. Under this federal framework, the government provides private companies with raw, weapons-grade materials from Cold War stockpiles at little to no cost. In exchange, the private companies must absorb the logistical, transportation, and processing expenses required to convert the material into commercial advanced reactor fuel.
DOE intends to allocate roughly 20 tonnes of surplus plutonium (consisting of 4.4 metric tons of metal and 15.3 metric tons of oxides) to private industry. For companies such as Oklo and Standard Nuclear, this provides a vast, pre-existing fuel supply that bypasses expensive and legally complex enrichment pipelines. DOE designed the programme as a regulatory “seal of approval”. Federal authorisation under this initiative signals to Wall Street that these start-ups have secured a viable fuel pathway, helping them unlock private sector funding. Being part of the programme also provides an accelerated, legally backed pathway toward a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) facility licence, heavily reducing long-term legal overhead costs.
Because DOE requires the private sector to fund and handle 100% of the operational burden, Oklo and Standard Nuclear combined forces to make the infrastructure economically viable. Oklo uses its advanced recycling technology to chemically process DOE’s raw plutonium metal and oxides into usable transuranic material streams. Standard Nuclear takes Oklo’s processed output at their Oak Ridge facility and provides the physical manufacturing infrastructure to turn it into TRISO fuel elements. Under their new alliance, the two companies jointly fund and evaluate the extreme security, heavy packaging, and highly regulated transportation logistics required to move military-grade plutonium across the country.
While the programme eliminates the cost of the raw material, it introduces steep operational hurdles. Moving and processing weapons-usable plutonium demands huge security budgets. Neither firm has the historical commercial-scale experience to meet DOE’s stringent material accountability safeguards. The programme also faces intense pushback from political opponents and non-proliferation advocates. They argue that distributing 20 tonnes of plutonium to private startups poses a significant nuclear proliferation risk.
