Apr 6, 2022 · 41m · american-optimist
Oklo's Amazing Small Reactor That Can Reuse Nuclear Waste · Joe Lonsdale
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Host Joe Lonsdale interviews Oklo co-founder and CEO Jacob DeWitte about revolutionizing clean energy through compact Aurora micro-reactors that recycle nuclear waste. They discuss technical passive safety, regulatory challenges, economic scaling, and the path toward energy abundance.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Joe holds 30.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Joe as informed peer 4.6 Guest teaching 5.0 Guest disagreement 0.7 Joe pushing back 1.0
speaking balance: gold is Joe, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 14:57 Jake corrects Joe's definition of 'going critical'
Jake immediately reframes Joe's alarmed phrasing around 'going critical,' explaining that criticality simply denotes normal, steady-state power generation rather than a disaster.
Hardest push from Joe ▶ 35:06 Joe challenges the NRC's catch-22 rationaleJoe aggressively questions the regulator's demand for additional operational case studies on a novel design before permitting the company to build the reactor.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 17:55 Jake details the EBR-II passive shutdown demonstrationJake educates Joe on the landmark 1986 EBR-II test where operators locked the control rods and killed all active cooling, demonstrating natural thermal expansion self-shutdown.
Joe holds their own ▶ 39:23 Joe breaks down Russian intelligence funding of Western environmental groupsJoe brings his own intelligence and geopolitical domain knowledge to explain how Russian state disinformation campaigns strategically fund Western anti-nuclear advocacy.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Joe as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Joe pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Educational Path & Industry Stagnation | 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Joe demonstrates business domain knowledge by comparing nuclear regulatory bloat to financial regulatory capture like BlackRock and sharing his father's industrial experience at Raychem. Jake agrees with the premise and elaborates on the historical brain drain in the nuclear sector. | |
| Bypassing Guidance Documents & NRC Acceptance | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Jake explains how millions of pages of guidance documents bound the industry to obsolete designs rather than the concise underlying statute. Joe draws a parallel to 3D-printed housing startup Icon navigating outdated municipal building codes. | |
| Technical Design & Passive Safety of the Aurora Reactor | 3 | 6 | 0 | 1 | Jake walks through the physics of liquid metal cooling, uranium-zirconium fuel, and compact building footprints. Joe acts as an enthusiastic layman, asking clarifying questions about temperature and joking about installing a reactor in a Texas basement. | |
| Aurora Powerhouse Footprint, Costs, and Economics | 4 | 4 | 0 | 1 | The conversation covers the financial and operational specs of the 1.5MW to 15MW Aurora designs. Joe benchmarks the projected sub-five-cent per kilowatt-hour economics against California's peak grid electricity rates. | |
| Addressing Radiation Fears & The EBR-II Precedent | 3 | 8 | 2 | 1 | Jake gently corrects Joe's usage of 'going critical' by explaining that criticality is normal operation, then walks through passive thermal expansion and negative reactivity feedback. He recounts the 1986 EBR-II safety test where cooling was cut with locked control rods. | |
| Reusing Spent Nuclear Waste & Public Perception Shift | 4 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Jake provides a technical explanation of how fast neutrons fission transuranic actinides in nuclear waste without moderation. Joe asks Jake to steelman the most common anti-nuclear objections regarding economics and timelines. | |
| Land Efficiency, Clean Abundance, and Supply Chain | 6 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Joe cites land-use comparison charts between renewables and nuclear and discusses lifecycle material intensities. Jake elaborates on global uranium/thorium reserves and draws parallels between NRC inertia and FAA aircraft certification hurdles. | |
| Scaling Vision and Interview Conclusion | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Jake outlines Oklo's manufacturing scale-up targets for the 2030s and long-term space power capabilities. Joe offers support to base manufacturing in Texas and suggests using baseline off-peak nuclear power for direct air carbon capture. | |
| Follow-Up Update: NRC Denial and Oklo's Response | 7 | 5 | 1 | 3 | In a post-interview follow-up on Oklo's NRC license denial, Joe strongly criticizes the NRC's regulatory catch-22 and demonstrates deep geopolitical expertise by detailing Russian state funding of anti-nuclear and anti-fracking campaigns in the West. |
Statements from this episode (19)
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: 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…”
Lonsdale: Oklo is first advanced fission firm with NRC-accepted COLA
“I think you're the first advanced fission company to have a combined license application accepted by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.”
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.”
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: 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: 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: 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: Existing US Nuclear Waste Could Power Country for Over 100 Years
“For over a hundred years.”
DeWitte: Fast Reactors Efficiently Split Transuranic Actinides in Nuclear Waste
“Fast reactors, you don't slow them down. You let them run as they're born fast, which means they're harder to catch. You need a little more fuel, but because they're going faster, they're carrying more energy and that allows you to much more efficiently Actual…”
Lonsdale: Anti-Nuclear Environmentalists Are Likely Not Serious About Climate Change
“If someone believes that global warming is a big challenge, And then they haven't looked, they don't believe in nuclear. It seems like maybe they're not serious about the global warming stuff.”
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: 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…”