Commercial nuclear reactor race

Just a couple of weeks ago I published material about Google building something like a nuclear nuclear power plant. Small reactors, far out in the desert. And the emphasis is not on power, but on stability and waste-free operation. And now Oklo Inc. with the support of Sam Altman from Open AI, presented a kind of nuclear-heated swimming pool for those interested.

With the support of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and creators of ChatGPT, Oklo Inc. — a company that reprocesses nuclear fuel and uses it in its micro-fission reactor called Aurora — plans to commercialize the product.

Nuclear reactor as a community center

Since the Aurora project is focused on remote areas, Oklo is developing a concept in which the reactor site will be a community center. Places where winters can be long and harsh often impact the mental well-being of residents. And the appearance of such a comfortable place for communication will be an additional advantage.

For those of us born in the '90s, the thought of swimming in the indoor pool at the local nuclear power plant probably brings more to mind Homer Simpson, but Oklo says it's completely safe.

We live in a curious time, when the risks of the past are becoming the norm. Private nuclear reactors, brain implants, artificial intelligence. The world is changing, but humanity is still moving step by step towards a technological singularity.

But it is not only safe, but also environmentally friendly. The microreactor produces virtually no greenhouse gases and does not create nuclear waste. Quite the contrary. The reactor uses recycled nuclear fuel, and actually reduces the amount of existing nuclear waste.

Community reactor concept

The microreactor is largely designed with a “fire it and forget it” ideology. It is called a “microreactor” not only because of its small footprint, but also because of its small power of 1.5 MW – enough to power about 1,000 homes under ideal conditions. It is different from the small module reactor (SMR), which is designed for approximately 50-125 MW of power. Traditional nuclear reactors can produce 500 MW, all the way up to the giant Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Japan, which produces 8,200 MW (8.2 GW).

It is designed for continuous operation for 20 years without the need for refueling

The Aurora microreactor is built with passive safety features and a sealed core. It has no moving parts and can cool on and off without human intervention. It is designed to operate continuously for 20 years before requiring refueling. Instead of using a pair of tweezers to pull out the green glowing rod – again, a la Homer Simpson – the entire core complex is removed and replaced with another sealed core containing the next batch of reprocessed nuclear fuel.

Fuel and efficiency

Aurora uses high-low-enriched uranium-235 (HALEU) fuel in its fast reactor design—meaning it uses high-energy neutrons to fuel a nuclear chain reaction. Traditional nuclear reactors use a moderator (usually water) to slow down neutrons to make chain reactions more controllable, stable and more predictable.

A byproduct of nuclear fission is heat. Aurora is equipped with waste heat recovery components to maximize its efficiency up to 90% overall. Heat exchangers can transfer heat to secondary systems where it can be used for other practical purposes, such as heating nearby buildings, the desalination process to convert seawater into fresh water, or directing heat to pastures and greenhouses. Or industrial complexes such as chemical plants or materials production.

Aurora is housed in a very unconventional nuclear reactor building. There are no huge cooling towers often associated with nuclear power plants. Instead, it's a simple A-frame building, about the size of a small house, and more like a miniature luxury ski resort. Solar panels on the roof help power the facility's non-nuclear systems, such as control panels and monitoring systems, making the facility almost completely self-sufficient.

Practical application of the Aurora reactor

Oklo's goal: to deploy the reactor in remote regions where traditional nuclear reactors are impractical or impossible. We are talking about isolated and remote settlements, military facilities and research centers.

The first deployment is set to take place near the Idaho National Laboratory (IDL) west of Idaho Falls. In 2020, IDL announced that it would provide Oklo with access to five tons of recovered spent nuclear fuel from the EBR-II reactor for the development and demonstration of the Aurora microreactor. HALEU extracted from EBR-II will go through a molten salt bath and electrolysis for purification before being mixed with low enriched uranium (LEU) and cast into small round ingots.

The U.S. Department of Energy just approved the conceptual design for Oklo's Aurora Fuel Fabrication Facility, and the company plans to have its first commercial Aurora power plant online by 2027.

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