US nuclear developer Oklo and fuel services provider Centrus Energy Corp have signed a non-binding Letter of Intent (LOI) to secure domestically produced advanced nuclear fuel for Oklo’s upcoming commercial deployments. Under the terms of the agreement, Centrus will supply high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) to power up to five Aurora powerhouses at Oklo’s planned 1.2 GWe Clean Energy Campus in Southern Ohio, with deliveries scheduled to begin in 2029. Centrus will supply HALEU from its American Centrifuge Plant in Pike County.
The Aurora powerhouse, designed as a liquid metal-cooled, metal-fuelled fast reactor, builds directly upon the operational legacy of the Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II), which ran at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) from 1964 to 1994. It will use metallic HALEU metallic HALEU (specifically a uranium-zirconium alloy).
The Oklo Clean Energy Campus is a planned, multi-billion-dollar advanced nuclear power hub located in Pike County, Southern Ohio. The campus integrates local nuclear fuel production, next-generation small modular reactors (SMRs), and direct corporate backing. The financial foundation of the campus relies on a partnership announced with Meta Platforms in January.
Meta signed a long-term clean energy agreement to purchase electricity from the campus to power its regional data centres. Meta is providing upfront capital and power prepayments to help Oklo clear early-stage financial hurdles and secure its advanced fuel supply chain. Pre-construction planning and site characterisation are slated to begin in 2026. The initial phase of reactors is targeted to come online as early as 2030. The site will expand sequentially to deploy dozens of individual Aurora powerhouses, reaching the full 1.2 GWe by 2034.
Kiewit Nuclear Solutions acts as Oklo’s primary engineering, procurement & construction (EPC) partner and is currently focused on Oklo’s parallel project based at INL, where it is the Lead Constructor under a Master Services Agreement signed in July 2025. As part of the June 2026 Centrus fuel announcement, Oklo expanded its relationship with Kiewit through a new memorandum of understanding targeting the Southern Ohio Clean Energy Campus.
Kiewit’s primary objective in Ohio is to “modernise how advanced reactors are built”. They are mapping out the precise supply chains required to manufacture the parts offsite, ensuring components arrive in Ohio pre-assembled to guarantee rapid installation. Kiewit’s job is to ensure that once the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) gives the green light, the physical assembly of the Ohio campus is executed with factory-like predictability
The Oklo-Centrus LOI may include prepayments from Oklo to Centrus to support fuel supply for the campus buildout and will be further negotiated in a future definitive agreement. Centrus plans to leverage billions in private capital along with the previously announced $900m HALEU task order from the Department of Energy (DOE).
“This agreement aligns core elements of advanced nuclear deployment: power generation, fuel, and customer demand,” said Oklo co-founder and CEO Jacob DeWitte. “Southern Ohio brings together decades of nuclear experience and a highly qualified workforce that can move advanced nuclear from planning to deployment.” Centrus President and CEO Amir Vexler noted: “By connecting advanced nuclear power generation and customer demand with domestic HALEU production in southern Ohio, this agreement helps establish a foundation for a new US advanced nuclear energy hub.”
Meanwhile, Oklo is pressing ahead with its project at INL where it broke ground to begin site preparation for construction of the Aurora-INL powerhouse in September 2025. Civil construction crews are preparing the foundation, grading the site, and installing early infrastructure. The definitive target date for first commercial operations and reactor criticality is between late 2027 and early 2028. At the same time, Oklo is retrofitting the interior of its adjacent Aurora Fuel Fabrication Facility (A3F) to prepare for fuel assembly manufacturing. This serves as the operational testbed and regulatory blueprint for the entire company.
Oklo secured the initial Site Use Permit from the DOE and won the competitive award for 5 tonnes of EBR-II heritage nuclear fuel in 2019. This fuel will be used for the Aurora-INL. A Master Services Agreement naming Kiewit Nuclear Solutions as the lead constructor was signed in July 2025 with site preparation starting the following September.
In March 2026, Oklo signed an Operational Technology Agreement (OTA) with DOE, setting the operational framework outside traditional federal contracting constraints and in June, DOE approved Oklo’s Preliminary Documented Safety Analysis (PDSA). This gave the green light to proceed with advanced system designs. Kiewit meanwhile, is continuing civil site building while Oklo is submitting its final Combined Licence Application to NRC.
The timeline for this project is ambitious. Oklo is building this initial demonstration reactor under the DOE Reactor Pilot Program aiming to bypasses some upfront NRC backlogs. NRC rejected Oklo’s initial application in 2022 due to insufficient technical data. While federal mandates have forced the NRC to expedite reviews, regulatory friction remains Oklo’s highest risk factor.
In 2027, Oklo plans to submit and clear its final Documented Safety Analysis (DSA) with DOE. Once approved, the adjacent A3F facility will begin manufacturing the metallic U-Zr fuel rods. The licensing and authorisation timeline for A3F is fast-tracked as it is regulated by DOE rather than NRC. Because the facility sits on federal land at INL and uses existing government-owned EBR-II fuel, it follows a special three-step DOE authorisation process.
As of mid-2026, the facility has progressed significantly ahead of typical commercial timelines. In December 2025 DOE approved Oklo’s Preliminary Documented Safety Analysis (PDSA) making the A3F the first facility approved under the DOE’s new Fuel Line Pilot Program. Oklo is currently finalising its Documented Safety Analysis (DSA), which is the third and final step of the safety authorisation review. Oklo has already begun retrofitting the facility and assembling the physical, non-nuclear components.
Upon approval of the final DSA, DOE will issue the official authorisation to operate and introduce nuclear material into the facility. Oklo expects the facility to be fully operational and fabricating its first metallic fuel rods between late 2027 and early 2028, aligning with the target date for operation of the Aurora-INL demonstration reactor.
Oklo is using the Idaho project as a standardised design reference. Instead of licensing a completely new plant for the Ohio project. The aim is to use the already-vetted Idaho blueprint to execute an accelerated “copy-paste” application with NRC. However, while Idaho is actively under construction, the Ohio Clean Energy Campus remains entirely on paper in the planning and engineering phase.
By focusing all its physical resources on finishing Idaho first, Oklo aims to clear the regulatory and manufacturing hurdles there, allowing them to rapidly deploy the standardised reactor modules to Ohio starting in 2030.
To hit that target, the transition from Idaho testbed to Ohio commercial deployment will have to be a “lightning fast” logistical sprint, unlike anything seen in the history of nuclear power. Oklo is betting everything on a high-speed, assembly-line manufacturing model to achieve this.
Assuming Oklo meets its current targets, and the Idaho reactor powers up for the first time in 2027-8, Oklo must immediately collect operational data, prove to NRC that the design for Ohio is completely safe in practice, and secure a final Custom Combined Licence for the Ohio site. The regulatory review alone for this step is legally mandated to take up to 25 months under the new ADVANCE Act.
In 2029, Centrus Energy delivers the first batch of raw HALEU fuel from its Piketon plant which then has to go to A3F for fabrication and be returned to Ohio to fuel the first Ohio Aurora powerhouses in 2030..This leaves Oklo with 12 to 24 months to take everything learned in Idaho, get federal approval, build the modules, and turn on the power in Ohio.
Even with factory manufacturing, Oklo is attempting an unprecedented feat. If a single part of the supply chain delays, if the Idaho test reactor experiences a minor valve failure during startup, or if NRC demands extra safety tests, the 2030 Ohio timeline will instantly be pushed to the mid-2030s.
In parallel and separately, Oklo recently signed a deal with Standard Nuclear which agreed to purchase reprocessed uranium (RepU) and transuranic materials from Oklo’s planned fuel recycling plant in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The $1.68bn Oklo Oak Ridge fuel recycling plant is currently in the planning, design, and regulatory review phase.
The primary function of the Oklo Oak Ridge fuel recycling plant is to recycle and reprocess used nuclear fuel from traditional commercial reactors. The facility will take used fuel assemblies from traditional light-water. Instead of using traditional aqueous reprocessing (which creates pure plutonium and poses proliferation risks), Oklo plans to use an electro-metallurgical recycling process to separate reusable actinides and uranium from other waste byproducts.
The reprocessed fuel yields two separate product streams. It extracts recycled uranium and transuranic materials that can eventually be cast into the metallic fuel rods needed to power Oklo’s own Aurora powerhouses. For the Broader Market it isolates alternative reprocessed uranium streams. Because Oklo’s own fast reactors cannot absorb all of the byproduct variations, third-party companies such as Standard Nuclear will buy this material to manufacture TRI-structural ISOtropic (TRISO) fuel for completely different types of high-temperature gas or molten-salt reactors.
This project has significant backing and involvement from DOE through technology partnerships, research grants, and raw material agreements. In May, DOE selected Oklo for advanced negotiations under its Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program. DOE plans to hand over some 20 tonnes of government weapons-grade surplus plutonium. Oklo and Standard Nuclear, will use the Oak Ridge framework to down-blend and process this into commercial advanced reactor fuel.
In February DOE funded the specific technology planned for Oak Ridge through competitive grants. DOE previously awarded a $4.5m ARPA-E grant to Oklo and the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) to develop the advanced sensors and machine learning systems needed to safely monitor the automated fuel recycling loops.
The technology for the Oak Ridge plant is being co-developed and de-risked inside DOE-owned laboratories. Oklo holds agreements with the ANL and INL to test the electro-refining chemistry before scaling it up to the commercial facility in Tennessee.
