Jake DeWitt
Co-founder & CEO, Oklo Inc.. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveengineer@jakedewitte ↗LinkedIn ↗oklo.com ↗
Jacob "Jake" DeWitte co-founded Oklo Inc. in 2013 to commercialize compact fast-fission reactors and advance nuclear fuel recycling. He holds a PhD in nuclear engineering from MIT and previously conducted reactor design and analysis at GE, Sandia National Laboratories, and Urenco.
2shows
2appearances
30statements
22resolved
16supported
1contradicted
73%fully supported
Everything Jake DeWitt said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
DeWitte: Nuclear regulations are ~100 pages versus millions of guidance pages
“So the big thing we saw was we've built this massive inertia of millions of pages Of effectively regulatory guidance is what it's called. Basically recommendations on how to meet the regulations, which minds you are maybe a hundred pages or so. But you've buil…”
DeWitte: Oklo micro-reactors cost between $30M and $40M to build
“Oh, I mean you know, if you put the reactor inside of it, kind of depends a little bit on the exact sighting and how much work needs to go into it, but somewhere between 30 and forty million dollars.”
DeWitte: 15MW Oklo reactors can generate power below 4-5 cents/kWh
“It's a little more expensive, but if you move that to the 15 megawatt size range, then yeah, you can get the prices down to sort of below four, four or five cents kilowatt hour.”
DeWitte: No Plant Applying Directly to the NRC Has Ever Come Online
“Since the NRC was formed no plant that has submitted its initial original application to the NRC has ever come online. All the plants that are operating today submitted their applications, their initially, their initial application, sorry, to the Atomic Energy…”
DeWitt: Nuclear requires the least materials per lifetime gigawatt-hour
“And when you look at that, nuclear by far requires the least of all energy sources available to us today. And it's a significant difference in advantage.”
DeWitt: Fast reactors can reduce nuclear waste storage timelines to centuries
“Fast reactors in particular have some neat attributes where they can not just use this fuel efficiently, but they can use waste from other reactors and themselves quite efficiently and economically so, right? That's been one of the big hangups and holdups for …”
DeWitte: Oklo reactors operate up to 20 years on one fuel load
“So fuel, one load of fuel can last you up to 20 years.”
DeWitte: Existing US Nuclear Waste Could Power Country for Over 100 Years
“For over a hundred years.”
DeWitt: Oklo submitted a 600-page NRC application instead of 10,000+ pages
“Instead of being a 10,000 plus page document, it was, you know, 600 pages. It was, which by the way, mind you, is actually still a higher page per megawatt count than other plants, so it doesn't scale perfectly like that, but still significantly more efficient…”
DeWitt: All US commercial nuclear waste fits on one football field
“Nuclear power has produced, you know, a lot of energy for decades right? Producing 20% of our energy for, well, I don't, 30 plus, 40 plus years, and then before that as well. And the amount of waste it's produced would fit on a football field, being like, you …”
DeWitte: Nuclear requires the least lifecycle materials of any energy source
“When you think about the amount of materials that are required to make energy levelized over its life cycle, nuclear requires the least. So it should be the cheapest and the most sustainable just because it uses the least materials.”
DeWitte: Oklo reactors can achieve over 98% operational uptime
“I mean, you'll turn it off occasionally for servicing different parts of it, but you're talking about a system that's going to be up and operational more than 98% of the time, or at least has the potential to be.”
DeWitte: EBR-II safely shut itself down during 1986 total loss-of-cooling test
“In fact, on April third, 1986, they put it through these phenomenal. Like basically full scale safety system tests where they challenged this thing in, in crazy difficult ways. They ran it at full power. They locked the control rods out, the things that go in …”
DeWitte: EBR-II produced power at 3¢/kWh and recycled its own waste
“Mind you, it also did these really cool things where it was able to produce power at three cents kilowatt hour. And it recycled its own waste.”
DeWitte: Nuclear power requires 10 to 100 times less land than other energy sources
“By and large, you can use 10 to a 101 hundred times less land to make the energy that you would otherwise get from other sources.”
DeWitte: Nuclear fission systems will power human space exploration by 2050
“So I think that by that timeframe, you're going to see Basically nuclear systems powering, you know, human advancement in space as well.”
DeWitte: Thorium and Uranium Reserves Could Power Earth for 10B+ Years
“Between thorium and uranium reserves, we could power the planet for well over ten billion years.”
DeWitt: Large Western nuclear builds face multi-billion-dollar cost overruns
“The challenges with new builds, especially in Western countries with these big, Light water cooled, in other words, just water cooled power plants that produce like a thousand megawatts, you know, they're years behind schedule, billions of dollars over budget …”
DeWitt: Nuclear systems produce heat much more cheaply than electricity
“Nuclear systems fundamentally produce heat that we then do things with. And so they actually produce heat much more cheaply than they even produce electricity.”
DeWitt: Very few Western nuclear applications succeeded in the past 40 years
“There have been very few successes in the last 40 years where plants that have submitted their initial applications to not just the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but any Western regulator and had those plans actually built and operated.”
DeWitt: Advanced reactors will see only small-scale deployments before 2027
“Yeah, I think you're right on the timeframes for what that looks like in that five-year window. I think we start to see deployments happen in, in, in smaller scales in that timeframe, but you're still talking about just a couple plans here and there.”
DeWitte: Nuclear Fission Releases 50M Times More Energy Than Fossil Combustion
“When you split an atom, it releases about fifty million times more energy than when you combust, for example, a fossil fuel.”
DeWitte: A Golf Ball of Uranium Can Power a Human Lifetime
“That's why you can take a golf ball of uranium and power your life with it.”
DeWitte: Oklo Reactor Footprint Ranges From a Few Thousand to 15,000 Sq Ft
“So the whole plant is, you know depending on the size range, cause you can go up to a couple, you know, a couple different size points in power output, but on the order of, you know, a few thousand square feet to, you know, 15,000 square feet.”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Jake's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 AMERICAN OPTIMISTLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Oklo Inc. | 1 | 17 | 73% 8/11 | full record on American Optimist → |
 CATALYSTLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Oklo Inc. | 1 | 13 | 73% 8/11 | full record on Catalyst → |