Meta is making a big bet on nuclear power with Oklo

“This project will create jobs, stimulate domestic innovation, and strengthen American leadership in energy technology,” Urvi Parekh, head of global energy at Meta, said in a statement. “By investing in basic nuclear energy, we are helping to build a resilient and sustainable future for our communities.”

It is not unusual for utilities to negotiate long-term contracts for reactor fuel. But this is the first known incident in which a specialist has purchased the fuel that will generate the electrons he plans to purchase, says Kourosh Shirvan, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“The Oklo model they advertise is that they build, own and operate,” Shirvan says. “But I’m trying to think of any other customers that provide fuel other than the U.S. government. I can’t think of any.”

Oklo emerged last year as the poster child for a potential revolution in the United States in how nuclear plants are built. Until recently, the United States had neither started nor completed any new reactors in a generation. By the time the only new machinery at Southern Company’s power plant in north Georgia was commissioned in 2023 and 2024 — a pair of 1,100-megawatt Westinghouse AP1000 reactors, the leading conventional reactor design in the United States — the project was billions of dollars over budget and more than half a decade late. But the second unit was about 30% cheaper than the first, a sign of the efficiency gained by repeating the same design.

To solve this problem, a growing faction in the nuclear industry has proposed downsizing the reactors, such that building a 1,000-megawatt plant would require building multiple reactors of the same size, ultimately lowering the cost. Several of these companies, including Newscale Power and GE Vernova-Hitachi Nuclear Power, have focused on building scaled-down versions of the water-cooled reactors that make up the 94-unit U.S. fleet. But Oklo and its competitors such as X-energy, Google-backed Kairos Power, and Aalo Atomics have instead looked for a completely clean slate, seeking to commercialize experimental reactor models that use coolants such as sodium, molten salt, or high-temperature gas instead of water.

This type of design requires a different type of fuel such as Halyu, one that can burn more of the energy contained in the uranium than conventional reactors. The problem was that the only commercial sellers of HALEU were in Russia and China. The Meta deal will allow Oklo to finance the production of the fuel it needs as enrichment companies race to build the infrastructure to generate HALEU domestically.

The agreement solves the main challenge Oklo faced, but it is not the only one. The company has been a darling of retail investors since going public via a SPAC merger with a blank-check company in May 2024, and its market value soared to tens of billions of dollars last year as traders looked to bet on the future of atomic-powered data centers. But Oklo has yet to generate any real revenue, the company’s Securities and Exchange Commission said filings It has not yet resubmitted its application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In October, an anonymous former NRC official said he oversaw the latest attempt to gain approval in 2022. Bloomberg Business That the company “is perhaps the worst applicant the NRC has ever made.” Oklo, in turn, has criticized the NRC for standing in the way of new technologies, and said she plans to resubmit her application soon.

Still, the Meta deal shows that “we are finally moving to a situation where we address some of the fundamental problems,” said Chris Gadomski, principal nuclear analyst at consultancy BloombergNEF.

“It’s time,” he said. “Either way, it’s a company to watch out for.”