Would you like to visit your local nuclear power plant and maybe go swimming in its indoor pool? Or hang out and look at art… Maybe even just sit with friends and enjoy a cup of coffee in the warm glow of nuclear energy?

With the support of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and creator of ChatGPT, Oklo Inc. – a company that recycles nuclear fuel and uses it in its nuclear fission microreactor called Aurora – says this will be possible. Not only possible, but in Oklo’s plans.

Because Aurora’s design is suited to remote areas, Oklo envisions the reactor site serving as a community center. Places where winters can be long and harsh often have an impact on the mental well-being of residents. By adding this type of comfortable social venue, Oklo considers it another added benefit.

For those of us who lived through the ’80s and ’90s, the idea of ​​swimming in an indoor pool at your local nuclear power plant probably gives us mental images of Homer Simpson eating glowing green donuts. Oklo assures us that it is completely safe. Not only will it be safe, but the microreactor will produce almost exactly zero greenhouse gas emissionsnor will it produce nuclear waste. Using recycled nuclear fuel actually reduces the amount of existing nuclear waste.

Oklo

The microreactor is essentially designed with a sort of “fire and forget” ideology. It is called a “microreactor”, not only because of its small footprint, but also because of its low power of 1.5 MW, enough to power around 1,000 homes in ideal conditions. This differs from a Small module reactor (SMR), which is designed for a production of approximately 50 to 125 MW. Traditional nuclear reactors can produce as little as 500 MW, up to the gargantuan Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Japan which produces 8,200 MW (8.2 GW).

The Aurora microreactor has passive safety features and a sealed core. It has no moving parts and can cool and shut down without human intervention. It is designed to operate continuously for 20 years before needing refueling. Rather than using a pair of pliers to remove a green light rod – again, like Homer Simpson – the entire core is simply removed and replaced with the next batch of recycled nuclear fuel.

The Aurora uses high-grade low-enriched uranium (HALEU) 5-20% uranium-235 fuel in a fairly unique fast reactor design – that is, it uses high-energy neutrons to sustain the nuclear chain reaction. Traditional nuclear reactors use a moderator (usually water) to slow down neutrons to make chain reactions more manageable, more stable and with higher probability, given that they use a much lower enrichment of 3 with 5% uranium 235.

A byproduct of nuclear fission is heat. The Aurora is equipped with waste heat utilization components to maximize its efficiency up to 90% overall. Heat exchangers can transfer heat to secondary systems where it can be applied to other practical uses like heating neighboring buildings, desalination process to convert seawater into fresh water, pasture and greenhouses. Or industrial applications like chemical manufacturing or materials production. The list is long.

The Aurora is housed in a very non-traditional “nuclear” building. There are no huge cooling towers often associated with nuclear power plants. Instead, it’s a simple A-frame building the size of a small house that looks much more like a fancy, miniature alpine ski chalet. Solar panels on the roof help power the facility’s non-nuclear systems, such as control panels and monitoring systems, making the site almost entirely self-sufficient.

And that’s Oklo’s goal: to be deployed in remote regions where traditional nuclear reactors are impractical, if not impossible; Isolated and remote communities, military installations and research outposts.

Idaho National Laboratory

Its inaugural deployment will take place at the Idaho National Laboratory (IDL) near Idaho Falls. In 2020, IDL announced that it would give Oklo access to five tons of spent nuclear fuel recovered from the EBR-II reactor to develop and demonstrate the Aurora microreactor. HALEU recovered from EBR-II will go through a molten salt bath and electrolysis to be cleaned before being mixed with low-enriched uranium (LEU) and cast into small circular ingots.

The U.S. Department of Energy just greenlighted Oklo’s conceptual design for the Aurora Fuel Fabrication Facility, and Oklo plans to commission Aurora’s first commercial power plant by 2027.

Currently, no microreactors are deployed in real-world applications, although other companies like Westinghouse eVinci microreactor are also poised to be rolled out in the coming years.