In this OPTO Sessions interview, I sat down with Craig Bealmear, CFO of Oklo, to unpack why small modular nuclear is suddenly moving from “why nuclear?” to “nuclear now.” Oklo’s core pitch is simple: customers don’t want to own a reactor—they want clean, affordable, reliable power. So Oklo plans to build, own, and operate its “powerhouses,” then sell electricity directly to customers via 20–30 year power purchase agreements (PPAs). The big unlock is sizing: 15, 50, and now 75 MW units that can be deployed behind-the-meter on a customer site, and scaled modularly (e.g., four 75 MW units for a 300 MW campus) with better uptime during maintenance. Craig also broke down the tech edge: Oklo’s design is based on EBR-II and uses liquid metal sodium coolant, enabling high-temperature operation at atmospheric pressure—less complexity, lower cost, and strong passive safety. On demand, the numbers are eye-opening: Oklo’s order book grew from ~0.7 GW to ~14 GW in ~18–20 months, driven heavily by data centers (Switch, Equinix, Prometheus), but also industrial, oil & gas, and the U.S. military. We also covered the fuel angle (HALEU and recycled fuel), the economics of recycling (storage fees, ~80% cheaper recycled fuel, and valuable radioisotopes), improving U.S. regulatory momentum (ADVANCE Act), and Oklo’s first target deployment at Idaho National Labs aiming for 2027/early 2028.