{"id":130477,"date":"2025-09-09T05:35:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T05:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/130477\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T05:35:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T05:35:10","slug":"americas-first-private-nuclear-fuel-recycling-facility-to-open-in-tennessee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/130477\/","title":{"rendered":"America’s First Private Nuclear Fuel Recycling Facility to Open in Tennessee"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nuclear energy is among the most promising alternatives<\/a> to fossil fuels\u2014if we can find a sustainable way to take care of the unwanted, radioactive waste generated by the process. Stakeholders from both the public and private sectors have suggested various solutions<\/a>, but a Tennessee firm will be the first to actually build and operate a U.S.-based recycling facility for nuclear fuel.<\/p>\n

In a statement<\/a> last week, Oklo Inc. announced plans to build the first private nuclear fuel recycling facility in the U.S., to be located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. If things proceed as planned, the facility will start recycling and producing fuel by the early 2030s. It will \u201cunlock\u201d the potential of more than 94,000 metric tons of stored used nuclear fuel around the country, the company said. It added that this would produce fuel \u201cequivalent to 1.3 trillion barrels of oil, or five times the reserves of Saudi Arabia.\u201d<\/p>\n

A nuclear history <\/p>\n

Tennessee\u2019s stake in nuclear power may be larger than most other states.\u00a0In 2023, about 48% of Tennessee\u2019s in-state electricity came from two nuclear plants, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration<\/a>. That dropped slightly to 32.3% in 2025, although that is still higher than the national average, at 18.1%. The state\u2019s latest nuclear reactor, Watts Bar Unit 2, came online in 2016.<\/p>\n

The Tennessee Valley Authority <\/a>(TVA), a federally owned company that supplies a huge chunk of energy to Tennessee and surrounding areas, is exploring options to deploy small modular reactors near Oak Ridge, the city where Oklo\u2019s fuel center will be located.<\/p>\n

Tangentially, Oak Ridge also hosts the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, an institution with deep involvement in nuclear science<\/a>. Some stakeholders have cited this historical relationship in expressing their support for the project, with TVA CEO Don Moul calling<\/a> Tennessee \u201cthe core of America\u2019s nuclear renaissance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know Tennessee is the ideal location for this project and [Oklo\u2019s] continued nuclear efforts,\u201d said Stuart C. McWhorter, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Economic & Community Development, in a release<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While Oklo promises to build the first private nuclear fuel recycling plant in the U.S., other commercial ventures already exist elsewhere. For example, the La Hague site<\/a>\u00a0in northern France has been treating spent nuclear fuel from Europe and Japan since 1976. Japan had its own reprocessing plant within the now-decommissioned Tokai Nuclear complex, which permanently\u00a0ceased operations<\/a> in 2014. Its successor, the Rokkasho Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Facility, has been stuck in limbo for over 30 years due to safety concerns. The United Kingdom had a similar facility, the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant, which shut down<\/a>\u00a0in 2018.<\/p>\n

An ambitious, \u2018big-picture\u2019 blueprint <\/p>\n

The facility will be the first phase of an \u201cadvanced fuel center\u201d in Tennessee, which Oklo calls \u201ca multi-facility campus aimed at supporting recycling and fuel fabrication.\u201d Specifically, the recycling facility would create metal fuel for other energy plants such as Oklo\u2019s Aurora Powerhouse<\/a>, a fast reactor currently under review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).<\/p>\n

To bring the plan to fruition, the company has recruited local authorities to get on board\u2014a strategy that seems to be working, given Oklo\u2019s ambitious plan to bring up to $1.68 billion in investments and 800 new jobs to Tennessee.<\/p>\n

For instance, the company stated it planned to recycle used fuel from TVA facilities. If that happens, it would be the first attempt by a U.S. utility company to repurpose used fuel into clean electricity.<\/p>\n

\u201cFuel is the most important factor in bringing advanced nuclear energy to market,\u201d said Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte in the statement. \u201cBy recycling used fuel at scale, we are turning waste into gigawatts, reducing costs, and establishing a secure U.S. supply chain that will support the deployment of clean, reliable, and affordable power.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nuclear energy is among the most promising alternatives to fossil fuels\u2014if we can find a sustainable way to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":130478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,16726,304,66],"class_list":["post-130477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-nuclear-power","tag-renewable-energy","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=130477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/130478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=130477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=130477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=130477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}