The definitive purchase agreements are for high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU). They follow a letter of intent between Oklo and Centrus signed in June, with fuel deliveries from Centrus’s American Centrifuge Plant in Pike County, Ohio, scheduled to begin in 2029.
Oklo will make prepayments for future HALEU deliveries to support construction of new US uranium enrichment capacity with Centrus. The HALEU purchase is supported by Meta’s prepayment for future Oklo power production and secures fuel for the first phase of the planned 1.2 GW power campus to support Meta’s data centres. An agreement with Oklo linking prepayment for power with advancement of project development was one of three agreements signed by Meta in January this year to secure up to 6.6 GW of nuclear capacity.
The funding means Oklo is able to advance fuel procurement with Centrus for the planned Ohio campus, which is to include multiple Aurora powerhouses: Oklo’s sodium-cooled fast-neutron reactor that uses heat pipes to transport heat from the reactor core to a supercritical carbon dioxide power conversion system to generate electricity. The reactor is based on the operating heritage of the Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II), which ran at Idaho National Laboratory (INL) from 1964 to 1994.
In early 2020, it was announced that the US Department of Energy had granted Oklo access to HALEU recovered from fuel from the EBR-II, following a competitive process launched in 2019: at that time, no commercial facilities in the USA were capable of producing HALEU. The DOE, via INL, established a supply from the repurposed EBR-II material. This is to be the fuel for the first Aurora powerhouse, which is to be built at INL.
The agreements with Centrus build on the allocation of EBR-II fuel and marks a major step toward scaling Oklo’s power business beyond its first reactor, securing HALEU for the first phase of the Ohio power campus, future Aurora deployments, and later refuelling of the Aurora-INL, the companies said.
Last year, Centrus announced plans for a major expansion of its plant in Piketon, Ohio, building additional centrifuge cascades to expand its HALEU production capacity as well as meeting other enrichment needs. The latest agreements and prepayments help to further propel the company’s centrifuge manufacturing process which is part of that expansion. Centrus has now secured USD5.4 billion in customer contracts and commitments to purchase LEU and HALEU from the new capacity.
“Securing fuel is essential to scaling our power business beyond our first reactor in Idaho,” said Oklo CEO and co-founder Jacob DeWitte. “These agreements support our initial Ohio deployments and provide fuel for future Aurora powerhouses. Meta’s support helps advance fuel procurement for the Ohio campus and our work to deliver new, clean, reliable power to the grid.”
“These definitive agreements demonstrate that Centrus is ideally placed to meet and support the upcoming substantial commercial demand for HALEU,” said Centrus President and CEO Amir Vexler. “Oklo’s prepayments, which add to the others we have previously received, will help fund our build-out as we scale Centrus’s proven American Centrifuge technology and qualified manufacturing processes for commercial production. Together, we are accelerating the restoration of America’s uranium enrichment leadership.”
