Oklo Books Reactor Vessel Capacity in North Carolina as Merz Tours Kyoto Fusioneering and the Nuclear Race Turns to Supply Chains
Two nuclear stories this week, one fission and one fusion, ended up being about the same thing. Who makes the heavy hardware, and where.
Oklo reserves forging capacity through 2035
Oklo reported third quarter 2026 results on November 6 and paired them with a manufacturing deal. It will reserve capacity at a planned U.S. Forged Rings campus in Hertford County, North Carolina, for large stainless-steel parts of its Aurora powerhouses: reactor vessels, lids and supporting structures. First finished deliveries are due in 2030, with capacity reserved through 2035 and options to expand. No financial terms were given.
USFR plans a site of more than 2,000 acres combining casting, forging, ring rolling, heat treatment, machining and inspection in one place, with rail access and its own barge port for oversized parts. Its CEO Giacomo Sozzi put the problem bluntly. Many of the largest steel parts for nuclear reactors are made overseas today. Very large forgings are a known choke point for any reactor build-out, and few plants in the West can make them.
The deal is separate from work already under way on Oklo’s first Aurora unit at Idaho National Laboratory. It is a bet on volume after that. CEO Jacob DeWitte framed it as planning beyond the reactor itself.
The numbers behind the bet: Q3 revenue was 1.86 million dollars and the loss was 22 cents a share, narrower than the 27 cents analysts expected. Oklo held 3.13 billion dollars in cash and marketable securities at the end of September and kept its 2026 guidance of 120 to 150 million dollars in operating cash use. Shares rose as much as 22 percent on the news, after a steep slide in the weeks before. Earlier this year Oklo won DOE startup authorization for its Groves isotope reactor in Texas, which we covered in July.
Merz looks at fusion’s plumbing in Tokyo
On October 29, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited Kyoto Fusioneering’s headquarters and R&D center in Tokyo, the company said on November 6. He saw a gyrotron, the high-power microwave source used to heat plasma, and parts of a fuel cycle system that recovers and purifies tritium and sends it back to the reactor.
Kyoto Fusioneering does not build a reactor of its own. It makes the systems every fusion design needs, whatever the magnet layout. Co-founder and chairman Satoshi Konishi made that the point of the visit. A fusion plant is not a power station unless plasma heating, fuel recovery and heat extraction all run reliably.
The German link is concrete. Kyoto Fusioneering has worked with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology on tritium handling since 2024, its European arm is based in Karlsruhe, and during the Merz trip it agreed with Proxima Fusion, the German stellarator startup, to expand joint work on next-generation gyrotrons and fuel cycle technology. It also plans to take part in Germany’s Fusion Hubs program.
The common thread
Fission startups have the licences moving and the cash raised. Fusion startups have the physics advancing. In both, the next limit is industrial. Big forgings, gyrotrons and tritium systems take years to qualify and have few suppliers. Countries that build that base now will host the plants later. Oklo’s 2030 delivery date and Germany’s fusion hub plans are both moves to get in line early.