Federal and state records show Oklahoma is pursuing a full nuclear-fuel-cycle campus involving reactors, fuel recycling, interim storage and deep-borehole disposal

Federal and state records show Oklahoma is pursuing a full nuclear-fuel-cycle campus involving reactors, fuel recycling, interim storage and deep-borehole disposal. Officials have not identified six interested Oklahoma communities, although Mangum public records confirm that city considered pursuing the project.

 Miami News-Digest 

Oct. 1, 2026

OKLAHOMA CITY — Six Oklahoma communities have expressed interest in hosting a proposed federal nuclear-energy campus, according to state officials, but their identities remain undisclosed as Oklahoma competes for a project that its own federal filing says could include nuclear reactors, spent-fuel recycling, interim storage and permanent disposal of high-level radioactive waste thousands of feet underground.

A review by Miami News-Digest of U.S. Department of Energy records, Oklahoma's application, state public-information materials and municipal records also found that at least one Oklahoma community — Mangum, in Greer County — has publicly considered pursuing the project.

An official Mangum City Commission agenda for Aug. 26 called for discussion and possible action on creation of a proposal to attract what the agenda called a "Nuclear Lifestyle Innovation Campus" to the Mangum area. The agenda contemplated a possible executive session under Oklahoma's economic-development provisions. The record establishes Mangum's interest in pursuing the project, but it does not establish that Mangum is one of the six communities later referenced by state officials.

Oklahoma has not publicly identified the six...

The Oklahoman reported Sept. 30 that about 100 representatives from at least 20 Oklahoma communities participated in an earlier state meeting and that six communities subsequently indicated they were willing to host the entire campus. Outgoing Oklahoma Secretary of Energy and Environment Jeff Starling said the information was expected to be forwarded to the federal government but declined to identify the communities.

The location is only one of several unanswered questions surrounding an undertaking that could represent a fundamental change in Oklahoma's energy industry.

Oklahoma does not operate a commercial nuclear power plant. Yet the state's formal response to the Department of Energy proposes an "integrated, full-lifecycle nuclear enterprise" encompassing uranium conversion and enrichment, fuel fabrication, advanced reactors, isotope production, recycling of used nuclear fuel, interim storage and permanent radioactive-waste disposal.

The waste component is not incidental.

Oklahoma's application identifies "waste disposal as key enabler, not an afterthought" and proposes a back-end fuel-cycle system specifically for used-fuel recycling, interim storage and permanent waste disposition. The filing names nuclear developer Oklo as a prospective reactor and fuel-cycle partner and Deep Isolation, working with Oklahoma-based Occlusion Nuclear Solutions, as the proposed waste-disposal partner.

The state told the federal government it wants Oklahoma to become the first state to establish a permanent disposal solution before beginning commercial nuclear deployment.

The proposed method is deep-borehole disposal.

Rather than constructing a large mined repository with extensive underground tunnels, the concept described in Oklahoma's filing would place packaged radioactive material in deep drilled boreholes. The application says remaining high-level waste from recycling would be immobilized, sealed in standardized canisters, lowered thousands of feet underground and permanently sealed in geologically suitable formations.

The scale described in the application is significant but remains conceptual...

Engineering analyses cited by Oklahoma estimate that disposing of residual high-level waste produced over the operating life of the proposed Oklo recycling facility could eventually require approximately 70 to 94 boreholes. The state's plan contemplates beginning with one to three boreholes, adding two to five annually during a ramp-up period and expanding incrementally over decades as waste is produced. The application estimates the underground footprint of those boreholes at approximately 0.024 to 0.033 square miles under the assumptions used in the proposal. 

Those numbers are projections contained in Oklahoma's application. They are not evidence that a repository has been licensed, that a site has been selected or that the estimated number of boreholes will ultimately be built.

No Oklahoma disposal site has received federal authorization...

Material could come from outside Oklahoma

The potential origin of the nuclear material is another important distinction worth noting.

Oklahoma's application says an initial deployment would focus on Oklahoma-generated waste streams. But the same filing says the proposed system could be scaled to handle other legacy and advanced-reactor spent nuclear fuel and selected Department of Energy defense-related waste if its disposal inventory were expanded later. It further states that the system could support additional "regional or national waste management needs," subject to future Oklahoma policy decisions.

Federal officials have described the larger Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus program in broader terms.

In Sept. 15 written testimony to Congress, Theodore Garrish, the Department of Energy's assistant secretary for nuclear energy, said a campus could encompass conversion, enrichment, fuel fabrication, recycling, storage and disposal. He said that, in practice, the envisioned lifecycle begins with irradiated material being relocated from sites around the country to a campus for storage, recycling and disposal.

That does not mean Oklahoma has agreed to accept every commercial reactor's spent fuel, nor does it establish how much out-of-state material would reach an Oklahoma facility. Oklahoma's own filing conditions possible expansion on future policy decisions.

But the federal and state documents establish that the program extends beyond research into hypothetical waste-management techniques. Storage, recycling and disposal are among the functions contemplated by both governments.

State website uses narrower description

That record creates a question about how the project is being described to Oklahomans.

On its official NLIC website, the state answers the question "Is this a nuclear waste dumping ground?" by saying no and describing the project as a research, advanced-manufacturing and training campus. It then says, "Storing the country's used fuel is not what it is for," and says that is not what Oklahoma applied to host.

There is an important factual basis for part of that distinction. The proposed campus is substantially broader than a waste repository. Oklahoma envisions reactors, laboratories, manufacturing, isotope production, workforce training, enrichment, recycling and other activities in addition to waste management.

But Oklahoma's filed application also expressly proposes interim storage and permanent waste disposition, while DOE's congressional testimony envisions irradiated material moving from sites around the country to an NLIC for storage, recycling and disposal.

The documents therefore leave an unresolved question about the eventual scope of material that could be transported into Oklahoma. They do not support describing the project solely as a nuclear-waste repository; neither do they support excluding nuclear-waste storage and permanent disposal from the project's proposed functions.

Six states are now participating

The federal competition has also changed since Oklahoma first announced its selection.

DOE announced July 28 that Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Idaho had been selected from 28 responses submitted by 26 states to continue exploring Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses. West Virginia subsequently signed an agreement with DOE in September. The department's current website now lists six states with memorandums of understanding.

Oklahoma's public NLIC website, however, still describes Oklahoma as one of five states competing for three campuses and lists only the original five states.

The discrepancy appears to reflect the later addition of West Virginia rather than a change in Oklahoma's underlying status.

A memorandum of understanding is not a construction permit, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license or authorization to begin receiving nuclear material. DOE describes the agreements as steps toward possible host agreements and continued exploration of the concept.

Significant federal legal questions also remain.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act, as amended in 1987, directs the federal government's permanent-repository work toward Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission says the law identifies Yucca Mountain as the single candidate site for characterization as a potential federal geologic repository. The Yucca Mountain licensing proceeding remains incomplete.

Garrish acknowledged that obstacle in his Sept. 15 testimony, telling Congress that the Innovation Campus concept could not be fully implemented without congressional action because current law limits DOE's ability to deploy broader back-end fuel-cycle solutions.

Any actual Oklahoma project would also face site-specific regulatory, environmental and licensing requirements.

State and federal officials have emphasized the economic potential. DOE told Congress that a full-scale Innovation Campus could attract as much as $50 billion in capital investment, generate as much as $10 billion in state and local tax revenue and create nearly 22,000 jobs. Those figures are federal projections for a fully developed campus, not documented employment at an identified Oklahoma site.

Starling has separately discussed employment projections reaching roughly 25,000 jobs in connection with the Oklahoma effort. KJRH reported Sept. 30 that Starling expects broader economic effects beyond direct campus employment and that multiple municipalities have approached the state because of the project's potential benefits.

The distinction between direct jobs, construction employment, supplier jobs and broader statewide economic effects remains important until a detailed economic-impact analysis and a specific site are available.

The state's own federal application repeatedly makes community participation part of its proposed siting model.

Oklahoma told DOE that final siting would depend on site-specific characterization, regulatory review and "extensive, collaborative engagement" intended to ensure the project is developed with potential host communities rather than imposed upon them.

Its stakeholder-engagement section goes further.

The state proposes community advisory councils, design workshops and feedback processes and says participation would occur at major decision points "from application and site screening through siting, permitting, design, and early operations."

Oklahoma's filing also recognizes that permanent disposal may pose the most difficult public-acceptance challenge. It says local residents may have concerns about safety, property values and long-term liability and acknowledges that geologic-disposal programs elsewhere have been delayed or defeated when communities lacked trust or felt they had not been engaged early enough.

The proposal specifically says consultation with Oklahoma's federally recognized Tribal Nations must begin before site selection and account for sovereignty, cultural values and land-use concerns. 

Those commitments place added significance on the state's decision, at least for now, not to publicly identify the six interested Oklahoma communities.

There is no evidence in the records reviewed by Miami News-Digest that any of the six has been selected as the final Oklahoma location. There also is no evidence that DOE or the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has licensed construction of an NLIC, an Oklahoma spent-fuel recycling facility or an Oklahoma permanent high-level-waste repository.

Mangum provides the first public trail

Mangum nevertheless shows how the process has begun reaching local government.

Its Aug. 26 special-meeting agenda explicitly proposed discussion of attracting a Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus to the Mangum area. 

The agenda cited provisions of Oklahoma law allowing an executive session where public disclosure of certain economic-development discussions could interfere with development of products or services.

The document does not establish what commissioners ultimately decided, whether a questionnaire was submitted or whether Mangum is one of the six communities later cited by Starling. Those questions require additional municipal or state records.

What it does establish is significant: Before state officials publicly disclosed that six Oklahoma communities were interested in hosting the project, at least one Oklahoma city had already placed pursuit of a Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus on the agenda of its governing body.

For the other communities, the public record remains incomplete.

The next consequential records will include the questionnaires submitted by prospective host communities, any site-screening assessments, correspondence between state officials and local governments, geological evaluations, and whatever Oklahoma transmits to the Department of Energy as the federal process advances.

Until those records or the communities themselves become public, identifying the remaining locations would be speculation.

What can already be established is considerably more precise.

Oklahoma is not merely considering a conventional nuclear power plant. Its formal federal proposal seeks a much larger nuclear-fuel-cycle complex that could manufacture fuel, operate advanced reactors, recycle irradiated fuel, temporarily store nuclear material and permanently dispose of residual high-level radioactive waste in deep underground boreholes.

At least six Oklahoma communities, state officials say, are interested in hosting the larger project. Their names have not been released.

And although much about the project remains preliminary, the question of where Oklahoma might put it has moved beyond the hypothetical.

Reporting and verification note: Miami News-Digest reviewed the State of Oklahoma's Nuclear Innovation Campus response to DOE, Oklahoma's official NLIC website and FAQ, current DOE NLIC materials, Sept. 15 congressional testimony from DOE Assistant Secretary Theodore Garrish, Nuclear Regulatory Commission materials concerning the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and Yucca Mountain, the City of Mangum's Aug. 26 official meeting agenda, and contemporary reporting by The Oklahoman/Oklahoma Energy Today and KJRH. The review was current as of Oct. 1, 2026. The article does not identify Mangum as one of the state's six interested communities because no primary source reviewed establishes that connection.

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