Oklo announces plans for Groves-2

This week, Oklo revealed the details of the next chapter of its Groves project. Those plans will build on the company's previous progress through the Department of Energy's Reactor Pilot Program, will be enabled by the DOE's follow-on Nuclear Energy Launch Pad Program, and will focus initially on medical isotope production.

The background: In 2025, the DOE kicked off its Reactor Pilot and Fuel Line Pilot Programs in response to President Trump's Executive Order 14301. These programs aimed to fast-track a wide variety of nuclear demonstration projects through DOE authorization rather than Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval.

In March 2026, the DOE, through the National Reactor Innovation Center at Idaho National Laboratory, announced the establishment of the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad program, an initiative that essentially extended and expanded the opportunities created by those pilot programs.

Since then, NRIC has announced two rounds of selections for the Launch Pad program. The first round included four companies, and the second round included eight. Importantly, in its announcements, NRIC did not detail how the involved companies planned to leverage the opportunities of the program. A few companies (like Nusano and Raven Flint) elected to reveal some of their plans, but most have not.

The news: On Wednesday, Oklo became the newest Launch Pad participant to provide the public with some details on its plans.

In August, Oklo achieved criticality with its Groves Isotope Test Reactor through the Reactor Pilot Program. Groves is a 15-MWt pool-type, water-cooled, nonpressurized demonstration reactor located at a greenfield site in Lockhart, Texas, built up by Oklo throughout the program.

Oklo's next reactor project, dubbed Groves-2 Forge, aims to build directly on the lessons learned from Groves. With Groves-2, the company plans to "integrate isotope irradiation and processing capabilities," with an initial focus on lutetium-177-an isotope used in various cancer treatments. The company also plans to use Groves-2 for the production of other medical isotopes, though it has not specified which isotopes in particular. In September, the company announced that it had received 2 grams of enriched ytterbium-176, the stable isotope that decays into Lu-177.

Oklo said that it plans to transition Groves-2 from pilot operations to commercial-scale isotope production "with the appropriate [NRC] licenses for commercial operation." It did not provide further details on the transition from DOE to NRC licensing frameworks.

The company confirmed to Nuclear News that its ongoing work will continue to be supported by its Reactor Pilot Program project, saying "Oklo will use the Groves facility to conduct testing and gain additional operating experience."

Quotable: About the company's isotope plans, Oklo cofounder and CEO Jacob DeWitte said, "Groves showed how quickly a new reactor could be built and brought to criticality through close collaboration between the private sector and DOE. Groves-2 Forge will build directly on that foundation by adding the capabilities needed to irradiate target materials and process and prepare valuable isotopes."

Other DOE projects: Groves-2 adds to an already packed catalogue of projects currently being undertaken by Oklo. The company had two other projects involved in the Reactor Pilot Program: Aurora, a 75-MWe, liquid metal-cooled, metal-fueled fast reactor for which ground was broken at INL in September 2025, and Pluto, a plutonium-fueled sodium fast reactor. The company is also working on a fuel project through the DOE's Fuel Line Pilot Program called the Aurora Fuel Fabrication Facility.