Ohio might soon get 2 new nuclear power plants

A California company has signed an agreement to open two nuclear power plants by the end of the decade on the site of a long-shuttered Southern Ohio facility built to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

Oklo Inc. announced this week it intends to build two small, advanced nuclear power plants on part of a 3,700-acre site south of Piketon that once was home to the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. They would be the first nuclear power plants built in Ohio in decades.

The two plants, if and when they’re built, would look and operate differently than traditional nuclear power plants, as they would be smaller and able to use the nuclear waste from other reactors as fuel, according to

WOUB Public Media.

At full capacity, the plants would provide up to 30 megawatts of power, with opportunities to expand, according to an Oklo news release. That’s enough to power nearly 25,000 homes, according to WOUB.

Oklo is planning to apply for a federal permit to build a nuclear power plant in Idaho that has a similar design to the two proposed Ohio plants, WOUB reported.

In 2020, the company applied for a federal permit to build the Idaho plant using a different reactor design, but officials turned down the application on the grounds that it “contain(ed) significant information gaps in its description of ... potential accidents as well as its classification of safety systems and components.”

Oklo anticipates submitting an application to the

Nuclear Regulatory Commission by 2025, company spokeswoman Bonita Carter told Power Magazine. While Oklo will take on the capital and operating costs for the plants, Carter told cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer that Oklo may apply for tax credits or incentives, such as federal clean-energy tax credits offered through the Inflation Reduction Act.

Carter said Oklo picked Southern Ohio because of its “growing economy and energy demands, favorable location, (and) great talent base.”

If built, the two facilities would be the first nuclear power plants built in Ohio in decades. The state currently has two traditionally designed nuclear plants in operation: Davis-Besse in Ottawa County and Perry in Lake County. Those plants are much bigger than the proposed Piketon plants: Perry’s maximum output is about 1,268 megawatts, enough power for about 1.4 million homes, while DavisBesse can produce 908 megawatts, which can power 1.1 million homes.

The U.S. Department of Energy, which owns the land, has worked to clean up the Piketon site since the diffusion plant closed in 2001. In 2018, the Department of Energy began transferring some cleaned-up parcels of the land to the Southern Ohio Diversification Initiative, or SODI, which signed the agreement with Oklo to build the plants.

SODI also is evaluating offering other parcels of land for potential future manufacturing or industrial facilities, according to the release.

“SODI is proud to partner with Oklo and see the land developed in a way that will provide benefits to the community and the entire region,” said Kevin Shoemaker, SODI’s legal counsel, in a statement.

There have long been environmental concerns about the Piketon site, which the federal government and private contractors operated from 1954 to 2001 to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons and, later, for nuclear power plant fuel.

In 2019, a nearby middle school was closed after a report was released revealing that previous testing at the school found traces of neptunium, a radioactive carcinogen, according to the Dayton Daily News. In 2006, the Daily News found poisoned groundwater, radioactive contamination, hundreds of accidental releases of uranium gas or toxic fluorine, and other toxins that leached from unlined landfills and ditches into groundwater and a nearby creek.

Federal cleanup efforts are expected to continue for at least another 11 years, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Caroline Cochran, co-founder and chief operating officer of Oklo, stated in an email that her company’s decision to build nuclear power plants on a noncontaminated part of the Piketon site “could actually be part of an acceleration of the cleanup that DOE is doing in the area.”

Cochran added that Oklo’s proposed nuclear plants are “very small” and don’t require water “to stay cool or safe.”

“The fundamental safety of the technology was demonstrated to naturally shut itself down naturally without radioactive release,” she wrote.