Oklo’s $25M Move into Radioisotope Production to Expand Advanced Nuclear Revenue Stream

Oklo has moved to acquire Atomic Alchemy, a U.S. firm specializing in high-value radioisotopes, in a $25 million all-stock transaction. The acquisition will add radioisotope production capabilities to Oklo’s advanced reactor and fuel recycling operations, creating a new revenue stream and strengthening the resilience of the isotope supply chain, the company said.

Radioisotopes, unstable atoms with excess energy in their nuclei, are essential across medicine, industry, and research. In healthcare, they drive nuclear imaging and cancer treatment. Technetium-99m, produced from molybdenum-99, is widely used for detailed diagnostic scans, while iodine-131 is employed in treating thyroid cancer. In industry, radioisotopes have critical safety and quality assurance applications to, for example, enable non-destructive testing methods such as detecting structural flaws in jet engine components and precisely measuring material thickness.

However, because they are produced by neutron or proton bombardment in reactors or cyclotrons, radioisotopes are challenging to produce, often have short half-lives, and need specialized facilities to meet high and diverse demands. Currently, most radioisotopes rely on a small number of aging reactors, such as the High Flux Reactor in the Netherlands and the BR2 reactor in Belgium. While these reactors, along with a limited network of other facilities, form the backbone of global radioisotope production, they are nearing the end of their operational lifespans, with many facing license expirations by 2030, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). 

Supply challenges today are compounded by a reliance on international reactors that face frequent maintenance delays and unexpected shutdowns, which, in the U.S., have spurred a shortage that leaves the nation dependent on foreign sources. A wave of private-sector companies has recently stepped in to fill critical supply gaps in the market. According to the IAEA, the radiopharmaceutical market, in particular, valued at $5.5 billion in 2022, is projected to double by 2030. The agency suggests more than 150 companies are currently developing diagnostic and therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals.

A New Revenue Stream for Fast-Reactor Developer Oklo

For Oklo, the market presents a lucrative new market through which it can leverage its technologies’ unique attributes. Oklo’s business model centers on deploying its liquid metal-cooled sodium fast reactor technology in three reactor sizes (15 MW to 100 MW). The company says it is fielding a significant project pipeline that includes letters of intent (LOIs) for about 2,100 MW in dedicated power across multiple sectors. Earlier this week, the company said it signed LOIs with two (unnamed) major data center providers for up to 750 MW. Among its already publicized initiatives is a pre-agreement to procure up to 500 MW with data center firm Equinix, a 50-MW partnership with oil and gas firm Diamondback Energy in the Permian Basin, a 100-MW commitment to Wyoming Hyperscale’s data center campus, a potential micro-reactor pilot at Alaska’s Eielson Air Force Base, and new commercial plants in Southern Ohio.

For Oklo, however, another core ambition is to leverage fuel recycling to enhance its business model economics. “Fast reactors have the unique ability to recycle used fuel, and we’ve been actively pursuing this to diversify our fuel supplies and capitalize on the benefits of fuel recycling,” explained Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte during the company’s second-quarter earnings call in August.

The company has made substantial headway in demonstrating its pyroprocessing technology, including a successful end-to-end recycling process with Argonne National Laboratory in July. Progress is meanwhile ongoing to further Oklo’s Aurora Fuel Fabrication  Facility at Idaho National Laboratory. The fabrication facility will fabricate fuel for Oklo’s first commercial powerhouse—anticipated to be deployed in 2027—using high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) sourced from from the former EBR-II reactor.

Essentially, Oklo’s pyroprocessing process will involve converting spent nuclear fuel from light water reactors (which is in the form of ceramic oxide) first to a metallic form. That initial preparation step removes the oxygen and prepares the fuel for the electrochemical separation. The metallic spent fuel is then placed in the molten salt environment, to which an electrical current is applied. This electrorefining process selectively separates the different components of the spent fuel, including the uranium, transuranic elements (such as plutonium and minor actinides), and fission products, including a range of radioisotopes. 

Oklo has been investigating the potential to harvest these valuable radioisotopes through a strategic partnership with Idaho-based Atomic Alchemy, first announced in May. “Our partnership entails work on using the fast neutrons we produce for radioisotope production, as well as partnering with them to process co-products from the recycling facility that can be packaged and sold into various industrial, medical, and other markets,” DeWitte said.

A Diversity of Byproducts

Atomic Alchemy, a small company founded in 2018, has so far been working to address radioisotope shortages through its proprietary Versatile Isotope Production Reactor (VIPR). The reactor’s design emphasizes efficiency and scalability, which could prove pivotal in addressing chronic shortages, the company says.

VIPR is capable of producing more than 40 economically valuable isotopes with minimal operational costs, it notes. These include actinium-225, which is typically used for targeted cancer therapies, strontium-89 for bone cancer pain relief, and ytterbium-176, which is converted to lutetium-177 for treating neuroendocrine tumors and prostate cancer. In addition, it could produce strontium-90, which serves as a heat source in radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) for spacecraft, and plutonium-238, which could be integral to energizing long-duration space missions. Serving the clean energy, industrial, and defense front, the reactor could produce tritium, essential for nuclear weapons maintenance and fusion research, and cobalt-60 used widely in sterilization and radiography.

Atomic Alchemy’s technologies, pivotally, can also perform neutron transmutation doping of silicon (NTD), which is “considered a ‘gold-standard’ process that utilizes the neutrons produced in a nuclear reactor to convert some of the silicon atoms into phosphorus via nuclear transmutation,” Oklo noted.

“We believe NTD offers a superior method for semiconductor doping because an entire ingot can be doped prior to wafering; the dopant is distributed uniformly throughout the ingot; large volumes of semiconductor material can be irradiated in batches; the process can be used on more than one type of semiconductor; and NTD allows for fine-tuning the amount of dopant added,” it said. “Given the current high level of demand for state-of-the-art semiconductors, we believe NTD capabilities may be transformative to the semiconductor industry.”

Oklo said the business value of the acquisition reinforces its position as a “leader in advanced nuclear technology, combining energy production and critical material supplies into a unified, high-value creation approach.”

It effectively expands Oklo’s “business and market reach” into new sectors, including biotech, pharmaceuticals, space, defense, and semiconductors. “Oklo expects to begin generating revenue from radioisotope production following the proposed acquisition, with initial revenues anticipated prior to completing the first radioisotope production reactors,” it noted.

—Sonal Patel is a POWER senior editor (@sonalcpatel, @POWERmagazine).