Dive Brief:
- Two US-based small modular reactor startups — Nano Nuclear Energy (NASDAQ: NNE) and Oklo (NYSE: OKLO) — debuted on U.S. stock exchanges last week.
- Nano began trading at $4/share on the Nasdaq on Wednesday, generating about $10.25 million in gross proceeds, while Oklo debuted at $15/share on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, generating $306 million in gross proceeds, the companies said.
- Both companies are developing very small fission reactors that use high-assay, low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, to generate electricity or process heat. Nano is also working to stand up a North American nuclear fuel transportation company and develop a domestic source of HALEU to serve the U.S. advanced nuclear industry.
Dive Insight:
Nano and Oklo are working to commercialize SMRs much smaller than those being developed by companies like NuScale, whose modular plants can generate up to 924 MWe at a single site, or TerraPower, whose 345-MWe reactor has a thermal storage component that can put out 500 MWe for up to five and a half hours.
Nano is working on two microreactor designs, known as Zeus and Odin. Zeus is a solid core battery reactor that can produce direct heat for industrial and extractive processes or electric power for behind-the-meter or grid-connected applications. Odin is a low-pressure coolant reactor designed to operate at higher temperatures and with fewer moving parts than conventional water-cooled reactors.
Zeus and Odin will both produce 1 to 2 MW of electricity, the company said. Both designs are based on reactors used in U.S. and NATO naval vessels, according to Recharge.
Nano “intends to use the net proceeds from [its IPO] to continue the research and development of its proprietary micro nuclear reactor designs,” the company said.
Nano also has business lines devoted to nuclear fuel transportation and domestic production of HALEU.
Advanced Fuel Transportation is “the exclusive licensee of a patented high-capacity HALEU fuel transportation basket developed by three major US national nuclear laboratories and funded by the Department of Energy,” the company says.
Nano subsidiary HALEU Energy Fuel is part of the Department of Energy’s HALEU Consortium, which aims to develop reliable, commercially competitive U.S. sources of HALEU, the fuel of choice for several advanced fission reactor designs. The effort got a boost this month when Congress banned imports of uranium from Russia, which currently supplies the bulk of commercially available HALEU.
Nano plans to build a HALEU facility at Idaho National Laboratory. The first NRC-approved U.S. HALEU facility, operated by a subsidiary of Centrus, began producing small quantities of the fuel in Ohio late last year.
Oklo is developing a liquid-metal-cooled, metal-fueled fast reactor that can run on recycled waste fuel. Known as Aurora, it will provide 15 MW of electrical power, has the potential to scale to 50 MWe and can operate for up to 10 years without refueling, the company said.
Oklo’s chair is OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who has touted nuclear energy as a source of 24/7 clean power for the booming AI industry. Altman also chairs Helion, a nuclear fusion startup.
Oklo signed a “pre-agreement” earlier this year to provide up to 500 MW of power to data centers operated by Equinix, according to Data Center Dynamics. Oklo also has an LOI with Diamondback Energy to supply power to its Permian Basin oilfield operations.
Nano’s share price ended the week at $4.51/share, about 13% higher than its $4/share IPO price. Oklo closed out Friday trading at $8.45/share, down more than 50% from its $15.50/share open.
