Oklo files 10-Q: quarterly report (10-Q)

Overview

Oklo was founded in 2013 with the goal of developing a novel model to generate and distribute nuclear energy at scale. Our sodium-cooled Aurora powerhouses are at the center, within an integrated business that includes fuel fabrication, fuel recycling, and isotope production. We are building fast reactors that can meet the needs of individual customers, broader power grids, and the U.S.’s rapidly growing demand for electricity. Our ambition is to build a nuclear ecosystem within Oklo: power generation that creates additional demand for fuel, fuel fabrication, and recycling that enable powerhouse deployment at scale, and isotope production for valuable medical and industrial uses that generates reliable revenue and supports the continuing development of the entire business. Our business model allows us to learn at each step so that we may continually improve our designs, operations, and strategy.

Oklo stands apart from the legacy nuclear industry – we will primarily own and operate our powerhouses and directly sell our power to customers, rather than licensing our designs for others to build and operate. We are incentivized to design, build, and operate more efficiently because we will bear the costs of creating and operating our powerhouses. The opportunity for iterative improvement is inherent in our business model. The Aurora Powerhouse product line is expected not just to broaden our customer base, but also to provide shorter construction cycles and more frequent deployments – each an opportunity to learn and improve with the next project. Despite the distinct technical requirements across our suite of projects, there can be significant learnings related to construction, procurement, instrumentation, regulatory licensing pathways, and nuclear and non-nuclear operations.

Our fuel strategy is fundamental to our business plan. Aurora is designed to use fresh, recycled, and down-blended nuclear fuels, allowing us to pursue a diversified fuel strategy that can adapt to changing market conditions and use bridge solutions rather than depend on a single fuel type or supply chain. To enable our first deployment, we have secured five metric tons of HALEU produced from recovered uranium from previously irradiated EBR-II fuel. To enable future deployments, we are securing HALEU supply commitments from large uranium enrichers and partnering with early stage companies who are researching and developing innovative new enrichment methods. At the same time, we are building our fuel fabrication capabilities and actively investigating other paths to fueling, including potential government partnerships. We are also developing fuel recycling technology and aim to build facilities that can unlock the abundant residual energy in the U.S.’s large stock of used nuclear fuel, while also potentially recovering valuable isotope materials.

Our business advances in stages and we aim to develop this ecosystem through investments that build on each other. We believe that a strong ecosystem for nuclear energy will enable each of power, fuel fabrication, recycling and isotopes to achieve their respective business objectives. Our early facilities establish capabilities and lessons for later deployments within and across fields. Through the Groves Isotope Test Reactor, we have already gained valuable construction, siting, regulatory, and operating know-how. This is knowledge that can’t be gained from design alone and is informing subsequent isotope, powerhouse, fuel fabrication, and fuel recycling development. Oklo is pursuing an integrated nuclear business of lasting commercial value: the technology to supply power, the fuel to sustain growth, and the experience to continually improve – all in service of making nuclear energy available at the scale the U.S. needs.

Power

The fast fission reactor technology we are commercializing was demonstrated by the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (“EBR-II”), a fast fission plant that was operated by the U.S. government for 30 years. Our powerhouse product line, called the “Aurora,” builds on this legacy of proven and demonstrated technology. Our Aurora powerhouse product line is designed with embedded safety features, to be able to run on fresh, recycled, or down-blended fuel, and to initially produce 15-75 megawatts electric (“MWe”), with the potential to expand powerhouse size to produce 100 MWe and higher.

Because the Aurora powerhouses are designed to operate by utilizing the power of high-energy, or “fast,” neutrons, they will be able to tap into the vast energy reserves remaining in existing used nuclear fuel from conventional nuclear power generation facilities, which only use approximately 5% of the energy potential in the nuclear fuel before needing to refuel. The U.S. nuclear power industry has produced approximately 20% of U.S. electricity over the last 30 years and generated over 90,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel. We estimate that the existing energy reserves contained in the used nuclear fuel in the U.S. that could be made accessible through our fast fission reactor technology. Because fission is an energy-dense process, producing approximately 50 million times more energy than combustion, these potentially recoverable energy reserves are equivalent to approximately 1.2 trillion barrels of oil equivalent (BOE), nearly five times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia.

Development Milestones

We have achieved several significant deployment and regulatory milestones for our first Aurora powerhouse. Notably, we secured a site use permit from the U.S. Department of Energy (“DOE”) for the Idaho National Laboratory (“INL”) site and received a fuel award of five metric tons of HALEU produced from recovered uranium from previously irradiated EBR-II fuel from INL for a commercial Aurora powerhouse in Idaho ("Aurora-ID"). Since that time, we have secured and characterized DOE land at INL, and achieved further milestones, including:

• August 2025: Selected for DOE's Reactor Pilot Program ("RPP")

• September 2025: DOE approval for non-nuclear construction and Aurora-ID groundbreaking

• February 2026: Execution of Other Transaction Agreement ("OTA") with DOE for Aurora-ID

• February 2026: Approval of Nuclear Safety Design Agreement ("NSDA") by DOE

• April 2026: NRC Approval of Principal Design Criteria report

• June 2026: Approval of Preliminary Documented Safety Analysis ("PDSA")