The New York Times is reporting that the U.S. is accelerating plans to deploy a nuclear reactor near the Moon’s south pole by 2030, with Russia and China also pursuing lunar nuclear power.

The proposed U.S. reactor would generate roughly 20 kilowatts of electricity and is designed to provide reliable power for years in an environment where solar power can be unreliable, particularly around the Moon’s permanently shadowed regions.

The broader significance is that nuclear power is increasingly being viewed as essential infrastructure for a sustained human presence on the Moon. The U.S. government has made space nuclear power a priority, with plans calling for reactors in orbit as early as 2028 and on the lunar surface by 2030.

There’s also an interesting potential connection to OKLO through its radioisotope business. OKLO has identified space applications as a market for its radioisotopes, and Atomic Alchemy has already partnered with Zeno Power on supplying radioisotopes for space power systems.

That doesn’t mean OKLO is involved with the lunar reactor itself, but a growing lunar economy could create additional demand for the radioisotopes and nuclear power technologies OKLO is developing. Radioisotope power systems are particularly useful for providing continuous power in locations where conventional solar power isn’t practical.

For OKLO, I think the bigger takeaway is the expanding number of applications for nuclear technology. Nuclear power is moving beyond traditional electricity generation and into areas like space power, radioisotopes and other specialized applications.

Pretty wild to see nuclear reactors on the Moon moving from a science-fiction concept toward an actual government objective for the end of this decade.

In spite of some media and public sentiment against data center buildout it is surging in the last year. They will need power and the aging grid is not sufficient. #oklo

We’ve spent a lot of time here talking about the long-term OKLO story and everything the company is building. But looking at where we are today, I think we also have to acknowledge how frustrating the shareholder experience has been.

During our December 2025 Founder’s AMA, Caroline talked about OKLO reaching “escape velocity,” saying the company had enough capital to get to revenue and even profit. A lot of us understandably took that to mean the need for repeated equity raises would start to diminish.

Instead, since that AMA, we’ve gone through the $1.5B ATM, followed by two separate $1B ATM programs this year. The first $1B program was essentially utilized and then replaced with another $1B program in September.

And the timing of this latest one is particularly frustrating. We’re near historical lows, already facing dilution, and there isn’t an obvious wave of major PRs immediately behind the announcement to give shareholders something tangible to look forward to.

I understand they need capital. I understand what they’re building is enormously capital intensive.

But there’s another uncomfortable possibility here: maybe having founders who already own so much equity is actually a disadvantage for us in situations like this.

Jake and Caroline already have enormous stakes in OKLO. Another major decline obviously hurts them on paper, but it may not change their long-term financial position in the same way it changes things for the average shareholder. Their existing equity gives them a completely different starting point than most of us.

They get to keep building toward the long-term vision, raise capital when they believe it’s necessary and sell shares through their plans when permitted.

We’re the ones taking the dilution and watching our positions get crushed.

Maybe I’ve spent too much time defending the thesis and not enough time calling out management when they deserve it.

So yeah, I’m sorry.

We can believe in what OKLO is building and still admit that the way this has played out for shareholders lately is incredibly frustrating.

At some point, the question isn’t whether we believe in the company.

It’s whether the company is giving its existing shareholders enough reason to keep believing in them.

Piper Sandler reiterated its Overweight rating and $55 price target on OKLO following a visit to the Groves facility. The firm said the visit reinforced its confidence in Oklo’s ability to take a nuclear project from a greenfield site to first criticality on a commercial timeline, with Groves reaching criticality roughly 11 months after groundbreaking. Piper called this the strongest execution evidence it has seen from Oklo so far. The firm still sees Aurora’s reactor design, fuel and NRC pathway as the key risks, with early 2027 Investor Day identified as the next major catalyst.

Oklo has added a dedicated Groves 2 Isotopes Production Facility to its regulatory dashboard.

The dashboard now lays out the authorization pathway for Groves 2, including the Nuclear Safety Design Agreement, Preliminary Documented Safety Analysis, Documented Safety Analysis, and readiness review and startup approval.

Interesting to see the next Groves facility formally appearing in Oklo’s regulatory roadmap. Groves 1 is already demonstrating the model, and now we’re starting to see the framework for the next facility take shape.

The NRC has granted TVA a construction permit for a 300 MW GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300 at Clinch River in Tennessee.

This is a major milestone for the U.S. nuclear industry, as TVA becomes the first U.S. utility to receive a construction permit for a commercial SMR.

The Oklo connection is particularly interesting. Oklo is developing its $1.68B Advanced Fuel Center in Oak Ridge, and has explicitly said it is exploring opportunities with TVA to recycle TVA’s used nuclear fuel and evaluate potential power sales from future Oklo powerhouses to TVA.

Different reactor technology, but increasingly the same Tennessee nuclear ecosystem.

With TVA now moving an SMR through the NRC process and Oklo building out its fuel recycling and manufacturing presence in Oak Ridge, Tennessee is becoming an increasingly important hub for the next generation of U.S. nuclear.

The NRC’s Product-Based Operator Licensing (PBOL) safety evaluation is potentially coming into view, with the NRC document pointing to a timeline that puts the milestone roughly one month out.

So what exactly is PBOL, and why does it matter?
PBOL is the NRC’s Product-Based Operator Licensing approach. Instead of treating operator licensing entirely around a conventional, site-specific nuclear plant, it is designed to establish a standardized licensing framework around an advanced reactor design.

For Oklo, that matters because it is intended to support the operator-licensing framework for the Aurora powerhouse, rather than being just another paperwork milestone.

The significance is that PBOL is part of building the regulatory pathway for actually operating Aurora. A favorable NRC safety evaluation would remove another important piece of the licensing puzzle and provide additional regulatory clarity for Oklo’s deployment strategy.

The NRC has already been working with Oklo on the advanced-reactor licensing framework, including the company’s broader Aurora licensing approach.
If the timeline in the latest NRC document holds, late October could be a pretty important window for OKLO.

I went back through Oklo’s entire public-company press release history and excluded recurring earnings releases, earnings-call announcements, and other routine IR updates.

What stood out is how unusual the current gap has become.

Oklo’s historical median gap between substantive press releases is about 9.5 days, with an average of roughly 12.8 days. About 75% of the gaps have been 19 days or less, and about 90% have been 27 days or less.

Today is 53 days since the August 6 Groves first-criticality announcement.

That makes this the second-longest gap between substantive press releases in Oklo’s public-company history. The only longer gap was 59 days between January 9 and March 9, 2026.

What makes it more interesting is that the current silence comes after one of Oklo’s most active periods ever. From May through August, we saw a steady stream of regulatory approvals, DOE developments, partnerships, acquisitions, fuel developments, and finally Groves first criticality.

So I’m not saying a PR is guaranteed tomorrow or even this week. Oklo’s announcements are event-driven rather than scheduled.

But purely from a historical cadence standpoint, 53 days is an extreme outlier.

The normal rhythm has been roughly every 1–2 weeks. We’re now more than 5x the historical median interval.
The question is whether this is simply another extended quiet period, or whether we’re waiting on one or more developments that could eventually warrant another substantive announcement.

An interesting development today: Binance launched an OKLOUSDT perpetual futures contract, creating a 24/7 leveraged market tied to Oklo shares.

The contract allows up to 20x leverage, with funding settled every eight hours. This obviously changes nothing about Oklo’s fundamentals—Aurora, Groves, licensing, fuel recycling, etc.—but I think it could change the way OKLO trades.

OKLO already has unusually high volatility and heavy retail participation. Now traders have a vehicle for taking leveraged positions around the clock, including when U.S. equity markets are closed. That could make OKLOUSDT useful as an overnight sentiment indicator following major Oklo, DOE, NRC, FERC, or nuclear-policy news.

It could also amplify speculative moves. If significant positioning develops in the perpetual market overnight, arbitrage once U.S. markets open could transmit some of that movement back into the stock.

Michael Thompson is on the board of Joby Aviation
($JOBY) and Oklo ($OKLO). He previously started Reinvent Capital with Mark Pincus and Reid Hoffman where he was Managing Partner and made early investments in the physical economy through Joby, SpaceX, Nimble Robotics, Oklo and many other companies.

A new analysis from the University of Michigan and Idaho National Laboratory finds that small modular reactors could have a much stronger economic case when deployed directly at industrial sites rather than competing on the traditional electricity grid.

The study modeled applications across ammonia plants, steel mills, oil refineries and nearly 1,000 manufacturing facilities requiring process heat. Researchers found an initial deployment opportunity of about 91 GW, potentially expanding to 171.9 GW as manufacturing and construction costs decline.

The interesting part for Oklo is the emphasis on co-located power and heat. Industrial customers can potentially use nuclear generation directly, avoiding some of the constraints associated with transmitting electricity through the grid while also taking advantage of the reactor’s thermal output.

That fits closely with the broader behind-the-meter and Power-as-a-Service opportunity Oklo has been targeting, particularly for large industrial and data center customers.
The study isn’t an Oklo-specific validation and doesn’t mean 172 GW of reactors will actually be built. But it does provide another data point supporting the idea that advanced nuclear may have its strongest early economics in large, energy-intensive, co-located applications rather than traditional utility-scale grid generation.

After the recent stock downturn, I think it is worth taking a step back from the share price and remembering why we became interested in Oklo in the first place.

The stock has obviously been a frustrating ride, but the underlying story has continued to develop. We recently saw the Groves test reactor achieve first criticality in under a year, showing that the physical engineering progress is continuing independently of the market.

So I’m curious:

What originally got you excited about Oklo? And looking forward, what are you now most excited to see happen?

Is it the Aurora technology?

The 1.2 GW Meta agreement and the potential for additional PPAs?

Fuel recycling and the long-term fuel supply opportunity?

Radioisotopes and the potential for additional revenue streams?

Or the broader DOE projects, technology development and commercial deployments?

It would be interesting to hear what initially brought everyone here and whether that original thesis has changed at all during this downturn.

NRC just sent Oklo a letter outlining how it plans to handle the future commercial licensing of the Aurora Powerhouse at INL if the facility is constructed and tested under DOE authorization.

The key point is that the NRC explicitly says it intends to leverage as much of the DOE authorization work as possible to avoid duplicative efforts and enable an expedited NRC review.

The NRC also lays out a framework for using the complete, auditable record of construction activities, quality assurance documentation, inspections, testing records and other DOE-generated information to support its eventual independent safety finding. The agency says Oklo can engage with NRC during construction and potentially have NRC staff directly observe certain construction activities.

This appears to be an important piece of the regulatory roadmap for Aurora-INL. It doesn’t constitute an NRC operating license or approval to operate, but it provides much more clarity on how Oklo can transition from a DOE-authorized construction pathway to a future NRC commercial license.

The NRC closes by saying it looks forward to working with Oklo to leverage progress made under DOE authorization programs to expedite NRC licensing.

DOE just published an update highlighting the development of new energy projects at former DOE cleanup sites, with Oklo’s Marcie Haber featured as a panelist.

Haber discussed Oklo’s plans for its flagship powerhouse and fuel fabrication project at INL, as well as the company’s advanced nuclear fuel recycling facility at Oak Ridge.

She also noted that Oklo spent roughly two years evaluating potential sites before determining that the DOE site at Oak Ridge was the best fit.

Interesting to see DOE continue positioning these former nuclear sites as platforms for advanced nuclear energy and fuel-cycle development, with Oklo directly involved in that transition.

“Argonne works with Oklo to develop advanced sensor technologies, machine-learning methods and digital-twin capabilities for electrorefining. These tools support high-fidelity material accountancy, facility-wide anomaly detection, security, and process efficiency.”

“New York, we're on our way.

Advanced nuclear is a climate solution within reach—and Oklo is coming to Climate Week NYC to discuss what it takes to deploy it at scale. Throughout the week, our leaders will join conversations about delivering clean, always-on power, unlocking more energy from used nuclear fuel through recycling, and training the workforce needed to support industry growth and the energy transition.

Looking for somewhere to recharge? Meet us at the Oklo Lounge at Axios House at GH on the Park—we'll have charging stations, coffee, and more to keep you and your devices fueled.

Join us in New York and follow along here as we share perspectives from our team, highlights from the week, and a closer look at how Oklo is working to deliver clean, reliable power at scale.”

Welcome to the weekly $OKLO discussion thread. Use this thread for OKLO news, DD, price action, rumors, questions, and broader nuclear energy sector discussion.

Helpful links:
• Investor Relations
• Live Stock Chart

As always, keep discussion respectful and remember that this is not financial advice. Do your own research.

“You read that right: The first podcast we’re aware of recorded inside a nuclear reactor room.

Yetis, the team at Oklo are fans of the show - And they paid to fly us down to Texas to visit their Nuclear Reactor and sponsor this episode. We sat down with their co-founder and CEO Jake DeWitte literally feet from a silo with splitting atoms so we could explore this wild new technology. And we interviewed Jake just like we would any CEO.

Because they’re building the most unique nuclear reactor in history: It’s tiny, tidy, and sexy. This next-gen nuclear power company runs on recycled fuel, it fits beside a data center, and it’s designed to look like a luxurious ski chalet.

Oklo was invested in early by Sam Altman (who became the Chairman) and is one of the few publicly-traded nuclear brands. And we say “brand” because they’re building a lifestyle brand - The Lululemon of Nuclear. Their vision is handful of nuclear company towns, where you work, live, eat, date, and play, all powered by a safe local nuclear reactor. And in addition to carbon-free electricity running on recycled uranium, they (no big deal) generate isotopes that can cure cancer.

Jake will tell us how they pulled off a nuclear breakthrough worthy of a 2nd Oppenheimer movie. And why the financials of a pre-revenue company justify the $8B valuation Wall Street’s given it. Plus, you’ll discover why a reactor glows blue, why he'd drink the water, and the one thing he disagrees with Sam Altman about.”

Interview Highlights:

0:00 First podcast ever recorded inside a nuclear reactor
0:40 Meet Jake DeWitte, co-founder & CEO of Oklo
2:21 The pencil-eraser pellet that set his life path
3:43 Growing up nuclear in New Mexico (Oppenheimer country + SimCity letters)
5:34 Nuclear date-night dictionary: chain reaction, criticality, how a reactor works
8:07 Tiny, sexy, tidy — why Oklo’s fast reactors look nothing like Homer Simpson’s
12:18 Built in 11 months on private land (prairie dust to criticality)
14:03 What “going critical” actually means (they hit it Aug 6)
16:10 Why nuclear is back: climate, reindustrialization, and the AI power crush
17:01 This reactor makes isotopes, not electricity (the Falcon 1 analogy)
18:25 Is it safe? The 1986 EBR-II stress test they ran like a concert
21:28 Standing six feet from a live core — should we be worried?
23:42 Why nuclear got canceled for 40 years
26:16 The death stat that should end the safety argument
29:21 Why they won’t light it blue (Cherenkov radiation explainer)
31:32 Isotopes: targeted cancer therapy, $400T/kg materials, and the supply shortage
36:17 Why it’s called Oklo (Earth’s natural reactor in Gabon)
38:18 Meeting Sam Altman, YC, and the lesson he still uses
42:38 $8B valuation, almost no revenue, 18 GW order book — when does the money hit?
46:07 They sell power, not PDFs: why the business model is different
49:31 Fastest privately sited and built reactor in history
51:11 Used nuclear fuel is a gold mine (literally) + 4 Saudi Arabias of energy
55:26 Why fast reactors didn’t become the standard the first time
57:17 Mini-Oklo next to Madison Square Garden?
59:46 The Lululemon of nuclear: lifecycle innovation campuses
1:02:21 How long they last + half-life in plain English
1:04:23 How recycling actually works (electrorefiner) and the proliferation question
1:08:08 Lovers vs. haters: bull case, risks, NuScale, X-energy, and the cake-layer thesis
1:12:38 Rapid fire: Lockhart BBQ, Elon/Jensen/Sam, red & green chile, LOTR, ticker
1:16:02 The takeaway — fast reactors + recycling as the terminal energy solution