SITE RESTORATION | OAK RIDGE REPURPOSED
Table 1: Grants from the Nuclear Energy Fund Company
Grant
BWXT Enrichment Operations Tennessee Tech University Orano USA
Oak Ridge/Roane County University of Tennessee
Roane State Community College Type One Energy Group
$715,000 $1.08m $6m
$5m $1.5m
$462,000 $4.5m
Date 15 April 2025
15 October 2024 4 September 2025
4 September 2024
22 April 2024 22 April 2024
21 February 2024
For infrastructure improvements if Orano receives licensing approval
Notes
June 2024: Kairos Power
Kairos Power announced a $100m investment at ETTP in June 2024 for a new reactor design, rather than fuel production. Kairos Power wants to deploy 500 MW of capacity of its fluoride salt-cooled high-temperature reactor (KP-FHR) by 2035 and June 2024 saw it receive approval for a construction permit for the Hermes Low-Power Demonstration Reactor. Less than a year later, in May 2025, Kairos was celebrating pouring of the first nuclear safety- related concrete. The company already had a non-nuclear Engineering Test Unit (ETU) – its third – under construction at an adjacent area and in July 2025 ETU-3’s reactor vessel was installed.
September 2024: Orano In September 2024 Orano USA named Oak Ridge as the site of a new uranium enrichment facility, termed Project IKE. The new facility was said to be the single largest investment in Tennessee’s history and will become one of the largest uranium enrichment plants in North America. Orano provides 12% of global uranium enrichment
Below:
The Bulk Shielding Reactor, known as Building 3010, and the Low Intensity Test Reactor, known as Building 3005 are some of the structures at ORNL that have been demolished Source: US DOE
capacity through its Tricastin fuel enrichment site in France and is expanding that capacity by 30%. The new ETTP site will be similar in size to Tricastin. It will be sized for annual full production capacity of several million SWU. (In 2023, US utility demand was 15 million SWU). The plant will be designed for both low-enriched
uranium and LEU+. Orano says that “With appropriate levels of federal support, a HALEU facility to enrich uranium for fueling certain advanced reactors could be co-located with the LEU facility on the Project IKE site to achieve cost and process efficiencies.”
The new 750,000 square feet (70,000 m2
) facility will be
located on a 920 acre (383 Ha) site on ‘green field’ DOE land on the Roane County side of Oak Ridge. DOE was in the process of transferring the property to the City of Oak Ridge’s Industrial Development Board (IDB) for potential development when the land was identified as a good prospect for Project IKE. The ownership transfer from DOE to IDB is expected to be completed by early 2026. Orano USA has begun the licensing process with the US
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC pre-licensing meeting was completed on 10 December 2024. The Project IKE team submitted a Letter of Intent to the NRC on 29 January 2025, with an expected licence application submittal in early 2026. The licensing process can last up to three years, though new NRC efficiencies may shorten that period. Orano says that “With the timely completion of required milestones, facility enrichment operations could begin in the early 2030s”.
April 2025: BWXT Enrichment Operations In April 2025 BWXT Enrichment Operations, a subsidiary of BWX Technologies, Inc., announced plans to establish a facility to manufacture centrifuge assemblies in Oak Ridge. BWXT said it plans to invest at least $45m in a new facility and it has acquired 96.53 acres (39 Ha). That site is part of BWXT’s long-term plans to support
fuel production for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) defence programme. BWXT already has two sites in the state: the recently expanded Nuclear Fuel Services in Erwin (where it recently invested $122m) and a newly acquired facility in Jonesborough.
September 2025: Oklo In September 2025 Oklo Inc announced plans to build a privately funded, commercial nuclear fuel recycling facility at ETTP. The company said it would be the first phase of a $1.68bn advanced fuel centre that would provide fuel for the nuclear energy company’s Aurora design. Oklo highlighted that the 94,000 tonnes of spent nuclear
fuel stored at power plant sites around the country contain reserves of recyclable fuel equivalent to about 1.3 trillion barrels of oil. It wants the Tennessee facility to begin producing metal fuel for Aurora plants by the early 2030s. “Fuel is the most important factor in bringing advanced
nuclear energy to market,” said Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte. “Tennessee is showing the nation that recycling can be done to support new nuclear development.” The company plans to build on approximately 250 acres of land at ETTP. ■
40 | October 2025 |
www.neimagazine.com
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