What good is a next-generation reactor if nobody will sell you the fuel to run it? That question has shadowed Oklo’s growth plans longer than any engineering problem has. On November 12, 2026, Oklo and Centrus Energy signed multiple definitive, multi-year contracts for high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, the specialized fuel Oklo’s Aurora reactors need. Fuel will ship from Centrus’ American Centrifuge Plant in Pike County, Ohio, with deliveries starting in 2029. Oklo’s own announcement and a same-day report from World Nuclear News confirm the contracts turn a letter of intent signed back in June 2026 into something binding, with Oklo making prepayments to help Centrus build new enrichment capacity.
From Letter of Intent to Signed Contract
Back in June, Oklo and Centrus had only a non-binding letter of intent. Now they have what Oklo calls “multiple definitive, multi-year contracts.” That is a real change in status, not just a press release repeating old news. The agreements secure enough HALEU to power up to five Aurora powerhouses for multiple years, support the first phase of Oklo’s planned 1.2 GW Ohio campus, and even help refuel Oklo’s first reactor at Idaho National Laboratory down the road.
Money moves both ways. Oklo will prepay Centrus for future HALEU deliveries, and that prepayment is itself funded by tech giant Meta, which separately agreed in January to prepay Oklo for future electricity from the Ohio campus. Centrus says the deal brings its total customer contracts and commitments for low-enriched uranium and HALEU from its new capacity to $5.4 billion.
“Securing fuel is essential to scaling our power business beyond our first reactor in Idaho,” said Oklo co-founder and CEO Jacob DeWitte in the companies’ joint announcement. Centrus President and CEO Amir Vexler framed it from the supplier’s side: “These definitive agreements demonstrate that Centrus is ideally placed to meet and support the upcoming substantial commercial demand for HALEU.”
The Deal at a Glance
| Detail | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Fuel plant | Centrus’ American Centrifuge Plant, Pike County, Ohio | Oklo, World Nuclear News |
| Reactors covered | Up to 5 Aurora powerhouses, multiple years of fuel | Oklo |
| First deliveries | 2029 | Oklo, World Nuclear News |
| Ohio campus size | 1.2 GW, backed by Meta | Oklo |
| Centrus total contracts | $5.4 billion in LEU and HALEU commitments | Oklo |
Why Oklo’s HALEU Fuel Problem Is Finally Easing
HALEU is enriched to between 5% and 20% uranium-235, well above the fuel in today’s commercial reactors. Most advanced reactor designs, Oklo’s included, need it. For years there was no commercial source of it inside the United States at all, according to World Nuclear News, which pushed the Department of Energy to help build one. The DOE awarded Centrus a contract in 2019 to construct a demonstration centrifuge cascade, then picked the company in 2022 for a follow-on contract to bring that cascade into production.
Oklo’s first reactor dodges that bottleneck entirely. It runs on HALEU recovered from the old Experimental Breeder Reactor II, which operated at Idaho National Laboratory from 1964 to 1994, not on freshly enriched fuel. That recycled stockpile is finite. A campus of multiple Aurora powerhouses in Ohio needs an actual production line, which is exactly what Centrus’ Piketon expansion is meant to supply. This deal is the fuel offtake that gives that expansion a paying customer.
What’s Not Locked In Yet
- The Ohio campus is still in planning and engineering. No construction has begun there, unlike the Idaho site, according to Nuclear Engineering International.
- Before any Ohio reactor can run, Oklo still needs a Custom Combined License from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. That review is legally allowed to take up to 25 months under the ADVANCE Act.
- Oklo’s Idaho reactor is targeting criticality between late 2027 and early 2028. Ohio’s 2030 fuel-to-power target depends on that date holding, since Oklo plans to copy the Idaho design rather than license a new one from scratch.
- Neither company disclosed the dollar value of the new contracts or the prepayments inside them.
- Centrus still has to build the added enrichment capacity these contracts are meant to help finance. It is not yet producing HALEU at the scale this deal assumes.
Who Benefits and How
This is a supply contract between companies, so the people who feel it first are workers, not ratepayers.
- Centrus’ Piketon expansion was projected, when it was announced, to add 1,000 construction jobs and 300 permanent operating jobs in Ohio, on top of the plant’s existing 150 positions, per World Nuclear News. Those are projections tied to a buildout still underway, not jobs that exist today.
- Oklo expects its Ohio campus to need more than 700 construction workers across the deployment of several reactors, with each completed Aurora powerhouse supporting roughly 40 to 50 permanent jobs afterward.
- Meta’s data centers are the end customer for the power, not households. Meta’s prepayment for future electricity is what frees up Oklo’s cash to prepay Centrus for fuel in the first place, so the chain runs from a tech company’s server farms back to a uranium plant in southern Ohio.
- Every other US advanced reactor developer gains something too: a second working example of a domestic HALEU buyer-seller relationship, at a time when that fuel has been one of the industry’s tightest constraints.
The real test is not in Ohio. It is in Idaho. If Oklo’s first Aurora reactor reaches criticality on schedule in late 2027 or early 2028, the company will have both a proven design to copy and a fuel contract ready to feed it. If that Idaho startup slips even a few months, the already tight run to a 2030 Ohio deployment gets harder, not easier, and this week’s contracts will matter less than the reactor they are meant to fuel.
Sources
- Oklo: Oklo, Centrus Secure Fuel Supply for Aurora Powerhouse Deployment in Ohio (Nov. 12, 2026)
- World Nuclear News: Centrus, Oklo deal secures fuel for Ohio reactor deployment (Nov. 13, 2026)
- World Nuclear News: Centrus, Oklo HALEU agreement to support reactor deployment (Jun. 19, 2026)
- Nuclear Engineering International: Oklo in Centrus fuel deal (Jun. 23, 2026)