Oak Ridge council will meet with nuclear fuel recycling company officials on Thursday
By Donna Smith / Oakridger
Oak Ridge council will meet with nuclear fuel recycling company officials on Thursday
Oak Ridge City Council members will gather for a public meeting on Oct. 2 with officials of Oklo, a private nuclear company that wants to build a nuclear fuel recycling facility on 247 acres in Oak Ridge.
The work session will be at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Oak Ridge Chamber of Commerce building, 1400 Oak Ridge Turnpike. Council can’t take any official action at the meeting because it’s a work session.
Oklo officials announced plans on Sept. 4 to invest $1.68 billion and create 800 jobs. But before work can begin, the city of Oak Ridge must enter into a plan to free up nearly 106 of those 247 acres that city council had tentatively planned to use for the city’s first airport.
City council at its Sept. 8 montly meeting deferred action to take action on those acres until they meet with Oklo officials to get more information on the company’s plans for the property. If council decides to take action on the property, it will need to take place at a special called meeting or a future monthly meeting of council. The next regularly scheduled meeting of council will be at 7 p.m. Oct. 13 at the Central Services Complex, 100 Woodbury Lane.
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) had agreed to give Oak Ridge that 106 acres in the Heritage Center industrial park, which is the former site of the K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant. The GSA’s gift of the land to Oak Ridge came with a deed restriction that the land could only be used for an airport.
But in September 2024, officials announced that Orano USA would invest billions of dollars to build a centrifuge uranium enrichment facility in west Oak Ridge. Orano officials also reportedly asked city officials to relocate the possible airport site to forego any complications in the company getting approval for the facility from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The acres slated for the airport was located near Orano’s site.
City council agreed to forego plans to build an airport at the site, instructing City Manager Randy Hemann earlier this year to find the market value of that land and put it up for sale to a company in the nuclear industry.
That company may have been found in Oklo.
As previously reported, Hemann said the property’s fair market value was appraised at $1.9 million for 106 acres or about $18,000 an acre. City council was asked to vote to purchase the land at that cost with the Tennessee Department of Economic Development (TNECD) to provide the money and give the property to Oklo as incentive.
This article originally appeared on Oakridger: Oak Ridge council will meet with nuclear fuel recycling company officials on Thursday
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