Recycled Nuclear Fuel Coming to a Plant Near You Soon

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Oklo Commences First Phase Construction on Nuclear Fuel Recycling Facility

September 5, 2025 Clark Savage

Highlights of the Podcast 

00:00 – Intro

00:13 – Oklo Commences First Phase Construction on Nuclear Fuel Recycling Facility

02:21 – Hyundai EV Battery Plant Raided by ICE: 475 Detained in Major Immigration Enforcement Action

04:44 – Treasury Secretary Bessent Says Fed ‘Must Change Course,’ Demands an Entire Review

10:22 – China Escalates Taiwan Provocations with Illegal Oil Drilling in EEZ

12:30 – OPEC+ Agrees in Principle to Increase Production in October

18:05 – Markets Update

21:29 – Outro

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Video Transcription edited for grammar. We disavow any errors unless they make us look better or smarter.

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Michael Tanner: [00:00:00] Recycled nuclear fuel coming to a plant near you soon. Next, on the Energy Newsbeat standup. [00:00:05][5.2]

Stuart Turley: [00:00:13] Oklo commences first phase of construction on nuclear recycling facility. This is huge and a significant step towards advancing U.S. Nuclear sector. Oklo on the New York Stock Exchange, OKLO, Oklo, has announced commencement of the first phase of construction of the nuclear fuel recycling facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. This initiative marks the initial stage of what could become a $168 billion advanced fuel center. That’s. Huge. I like this. Oklo CEO and co-founder Jacob DeWitt has highlighted the full transformative potential of the fuel is the most important factor in bringing advanced nuclear energy to market. And I think this is phenomenal. [00:01:03][49.7]

Michael Tanner: [00:01:04] No, I think it really is. And if we’re going to advance the nuclear segment of the energy infrastructure, this whole recycle aspect is absolutely huge because as you mentioned this article, the ability to recycle, use nuclear fuel into multiple other usable material that can be used for advanced fact reactors like their power house really, I think sets these guys apart from other players in this space and really pushes the industry forward. If we can’t recycle all this nuclear fuel, I mean, let’s just be honest at some point. We’re just gonna have all this spent nuclear fuel lying around. And I don’t know if we necessarily want that. Now the footprint’s a lot smaller. Either way, this is a great, great step forward for the nuclear business. And, uh, it’s great for, uh Tennessee. You see the, the Tennessee governor, Bill Lille Lee. He praised this development noting that Tennessee is well positioned to lead America’s energy independence. Not sure if I agree with that, but we’ve got some PR guy of the week right there, which is why we created the nuclear energy fund to support and expand our NAITs, our state’s nuclear infrastructure. We are proud to partner with Oklo and innovate in the future while bringing continued opportunity and prosperity to Tennessee facility. So we, Hey, it’s already Monday and we’ve got ourselves an IR guy of We [00:02:15][71.0]

Stuart Turley: [00:02:15] quote. So a governor is the IR honorary IR guy of the week. I absolutely love it. [00:02:21][6.2]

[00:02:21] Let’s roll to the next story. Hyundai EV battery plant rated by ICE. Michael, you can’t buy this kind of entertainment. 475 detained and major immigration enforcement action. On September 6th and dramatic escalation of an immigration informant, US Immigration Customs ICE conducted a large-scale raid on the Hyundai Electric Vehicle Battery Manufacturing Plant in Bryant County, Georgia, resulting in the detention of 475 individuals. I’m laughing at this, but it’s also very sad. This is a South Korea foreign ministry expressed concern over the treatment of its citizens. There are illegal aliens in the country working at a plant. Michael, if you’re hiring illegal aliens, you should be fined and shut down. This is absolutely stealing jobs, high paying jobs across multiple different things. So even though it was a battery overall, Hyundai’s investment in Georgia included joint vendors with LGSK on battery production, which exceeded its 12.6 billion. But think about the tax incentives that came in from the Inflation Reduction Act, or the Porculous Bill, in order to get this done. As a taxpayer, I am offended that this is going on. [00:03:47][86.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:03:48] Well, and to put some numbers on that, they were offered an estimated $2.1 billion in tax breaks and other incentives, which is why they scaled this plant of earlier. So that, I mean, this is also what just grinds my gears. We give you $2 billion in tax breaks, which comes from you, me and the listeners, AKA the tax paying base. And we then can’t even use that, those savings, to employ legal American citizens. That’s what kills me. [00:04:19][31.5]

Stuart Turley: [00:04:19] And, and so when you want to sit back and go, well, why do I want to buy an Evie, I can understand. You remember Michael, when everybody was saying you got to buy an American car to support American and get behind America, you pull this kind of crap on me and you think I’m going to buy my third car is a Evie now with a Hyundai battery in it that’s hiring illegals. Bullcrap. This drives me nuts. [00:04:43][23.2]

Michael Tanner: [00:04:43] Absolutely. Let’s move to the next one. [00:04:44][1.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:04:45] Let’s go to Secretary. I love Secretary Besant. He is an absolute hoot. Secretary Besant says Fed must change course. Demands an entire review. And a bold op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. Secretary Scott Besant has issued a scathing critique of the Federal Reserve calling for a sweeping overhaul of the Central Bank’s operation. I love what he’s got to say. Come amid growing tensions between the White House the Federal Reserve. And again, I am not a fan of the Fed. I think the Fed needs to be disbanned. The Federal Reserve, for its part, is preparing to initiate interest rates cut this month to support a softening labor market, though officials have not signaled support for the deep deductions Trump has demanded, such as one-third percent from the current and four-three percent Walther are the other finalists for the chair positions. I personally think the one lady that committed appears to have committed fraud on her home loans needs to step down and she needs to go away. That’ll give Trump two picks that he can help get people in there. But I want to take it one step further. I think the Fed has lost their ability to be trusted by the US citizens and needs to be disbanned. [00:06:00][75.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:06:01] Yeah, I’m going to, I’ll go halfway down that road. I think what, what instead of disbanding the federal, the federal reserve, I think what Scott Besson laid out in his article, which is some critiques and changes that are needed to make to the fed, I completely agree. So what did he basically say he would like to, to happen? So first, what he wants is that basically misallocation of public funds and what he says that is, is basically you’re spending all of this money on your own police force or spending all this money on, you know, revamping your headquarters with, Hey, at some point we need to update headquarters of these places, but is now the right time to do that? Um, he also suggested that bank supervision responsibility should be left to other agencies who might be more in. Necessarily with what some of these banks need from a regulatory standpoint. And I think the critical piece that he brought up was limit its bond buying activity to crisis situational. Now the issue with that is what constitutes a crisis. If the crisis is in the, you know, crisis is in the eye of the beholder, meaning everything could be a crisis, so that’s where it’s like, if we’re just going to throw out words like crisis and worst ever and We need this to happen now. It’s like, well, those don’t mean anything. Those are just words we can take and use that on anything. We’ve seen a lot of this stuff. So I think the key with this, though, is what implications does this have specifically to the oil and gas sector? Higher interest rates harm highly capital-intensive sectors, both oil, gas, renewables, infrastructure-heavy sectors need lower interest rates in order to attract long-term capital. Because if you’re gonna go build a $50 billion LNG facility, if you are going to go make a large pipeline investment, you’re going to primarily need to access debt in the short term, almost like a bridge loan, to be able to get this going before things roll back in. I mean, look at the real estate business. The real estate businesses have been absolutely harmed by this. The other thing to point out is that the quantitative easing that has happened, or what we call QE12345, really brings instability to the commodity sector, specifically oil price futures, because now all of a sudden with this cheap energy, the supply and demand, specifically the supply side can become out of whack because all of a sudden we don’t know if it’s easy to get debt. It’s hard to sort of model, is this company going to go out and get all of this debt to go drill a new oil field? Are we going to increase offshore drilling? So I do think specifically when he’s talking about the instability that it’s led to the commodities market, I think is spot on. [00:08:31][149.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:08:31] Let me ask this question. So if Congress, the, the rhinos, the Republicans have failed to curtail spending since Bush, and you have nobody spending anything, and then the federal reserve, which is a privately held company that is making all the money off of the interest, off the interest rates that they charge. This seems like a scam and a Ponzi scheme that these people are not trying to cut the budget. These people are making all the money. Where’s that money going? [00:09:05][33.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:09:05] Yeah, I mean, again, I believe that there’s a need for a lender of last resort, so to speak. We saw, we’ve seen it a few times now where it’s been necessary. I believe like any organization that has authority that can’t necessarily be quashed because it was set up in a way to not allow that, it is going to always at some point sway from the original. I mean look at the office of the presidency. If you drop to George Washington today and looked at what power the president and the executive branch has, he’d roll over in his grave and say, we’ve gone, this isn’t America anymore. He, we need to rename it something else. So I think the problem is we always stray so far from the original meaning, and I think that’s the issue with, you know, this, you know, the federal reserve act of 1913, which established the federal reserve was written under the idea that we were always going to have an economy based in the early 1900s. Well, clearly we’re not there anymore. So yes, I think reform needs to come. I’m not going to go as far as saying, I think we need to end the fed. I do think we needed to audit the fed like, like our friend good Ram Paul says, but I do you think on some level, having a lender resort is very helpful. [00:10:16][70.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:10:16] I like the way you say that, but after we audit, you will probably be so offended at what you find you may want to get rid of it. But let’s go to the next story, Michael. China escalates Taiwan provocations with illegal oil drilling in their EEZ, which is their economy zone. In a bold move that’s highlighted political tensions in the South China Sea, China has been accused of installing drilling platforms and vessels in Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone, making a new Beijing gray zone tactics against the island. Holy smokes, Batman, as an investor in taking a look at chips being made in Taiwan, and you take a look, Taiwan has disabled or taken down their other nuclear reactor. They are energy dependent on all their imports. So this is actually a gigantic thing for an encroachment and to keep an eye on it. Now, I did ask in this, and so when I put in here, you take a look, I didn’t realize how much China was actually doing 4.3 million barrels per day in their own production. [00:11:26][70.3]

Michael Tanner: [00:11:27] Well, I mean, they just, they have a huge demand. And so they’re a little bit like the United States and the fact that our demand outstrips, you know, our actual current oil production, this illegal drilling. And it’s, it’s a little, you know, I don’t want to say convoluted because yes, this, this does appear. If you look at this on a map that they probably are overstepping the, what do they call the economic zone that’s near the protest islands. But it’s specifically, this is in the South China sea. It’s a part of the Lufang oil field, which is about 40 to 50 kilometers from the Dong shot Island, where the Chinese national oil corporation has installed multiple fixed platforms and drilling rigs. They, I think it’s, it’s really interesting. Taiwan, the Taiwan’s presidential office called for immediate stop. Okay. What, what can they do really besides say immediate stop? They, there’s not much they can do. Yeah, exactly. And I think if you look at maps of the region, we don’t have one here in the article, but it becomes apparent that they’re just slowly stepping, stepping, stepping as close as they get. And, you know, this is part of, of part of their overall plan to eventually take Taiwan back. [00:12:29][61.7]

Stuart Turley: [00:12:29] I think so. Let’s go to OPEC. Michael, I got a question at the end of this one here, but let’s take a look at this. OPEX Plus agrees in principle to increase production in October, in a move signaling strategic pivot towards reclaiming market share amid softening global demand. OPECK Plus has reached a preliminary agreement to boost oil production starting October 2025, and key members of the alliance, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, are set to discuss and likely approve addition of approximately 137,000 barrels per day during a video conference held on Sunday. The decision marks the beginning of the unwinding of the 1.6 million barrels per day voluntary cuts that were originally stated. The alliance which controls 40% of the oil global supply has gradually been easing restrictions. And Michael, I’ve got a real question for you because I’m seeing there’s a lot of people saying there’s lot of surplus out there that I’m not seeing. And then there’s a lot of people saying out there that, that OPEC does not have the spare capacity. I don’t think OPEK has a lot of spare capacity and in this graph, I put in a chart from Bloomberg. There’s only one country that has 2.5 million barrels per day, and that’s KSA, but they don’t have the capacity to be able to do it. So that’s a false number. So you sit back and kind of look at this. They don’t have a lot of spare capacity. [00:13:55][86.1]

Michael Tanner: [00:13:56] No, they don’t have a lot of spare capacity. And I think it’s, it’s I think this is an interesting move. I, I, this sort of plays against my theory of market share in terms of I’ve already been in, I’ve always been in the camp of, I don’t think they’re really doing this from a market share standpoint. I think they are doing this from a revenue standpoint, because they’re all looking to pivot away from revenues from oil into other sectors. But the problem is you have to increase production in order to get those higher revenues to dump into other things. So it’s sort of a short term dump for sort of longer-term diversification. I think this has a little bit to do with market share. Now, the other side of that equation is prices have fallen to the point where you need to make up those incremental barrels or dollars by producing more oil. And there’s a given a tank relative to how much oil we produce versus how much it drops. So I think the waters are getting a little murky here. I also think, to be clear, I think Saudi Arabia is probably in the back of its mind saying, Well, you know, not only can we increase a little bit of revenue by doing this, maybe there’s a little of market share we can gain back, but also President Trump really wants lower oil prices. He says he wants oil at 50, $55. Maybe this isn’t a bad idea to go ahead and put more oil on the market, maybe a side, side, side, side, side benefit is that we get on President Trump’s good side. I mean, it’s clear. [00:15:12][76.1]

Stuart Turley: [00:15:13] Yeah, I’m not real sure, but when you look at the members that are in the OPEC group, you have Iraq, Iran, and Russia and Venezuela, I believe Brazil. I have to go check fact checking myself as we do this, but you take a look at those and every single one of those countries use oil as they’re fed and when they need money, they drill oil. So it’s they it’s a it’s not a market share issue they just produce more oil and you got india and china that are willing to buy just about everything that’s been out on the on the market. [00:15:51][37.9]

Michael Tanner: [00:15:51] No, it’s absolutely true. I think it’s fascinating. And I think this is, this is we’re going to enter a really interesting time for oil prices and I think its going to be interesting, but let’s go ahead and jump over and talk about oil prices a little bit more before we do that. Let’s quickly pay the bills as always. Thank you for checking us out here on the world’s greatest website, www.energynewsbeat.com. Stu and the team do a tremendous job, making sure that website stays up to speed everything you need to know to the tip of the spear. Subscribe to our Substack, theenergynewsbeat.substack.com, the best place to get a daily dump of what’s going on in Stu’s mind when it comes to the energy business guys, we’re about to cross 1200 subscribers. We really appreciate everybody who supports us there the energy newsbeat.substack.com go ahead and sign up and if you want sign up for a paid subscription to be a great way to support the show and also get some extra free or benefits as well. We’d also like to shout out friends of the show, Reese Energy Consulting. And we love them over there, guys. ReeseEnergyConsulting.com. The midstream experts. I’m telling you guys, if you have any, if you touch the midstream space in any way, whether you’re upstream, whether you’re in the mid stream space or you’re downstream and you need help working with the mid-stream space, guys, these are experts. They have over 300,000 years of experience when it comes to working in the midstream space. They have answered and probably solved every problem that you’re dealing with. And if they haven’t solved the problem, that means probably nobody solved the problem. And they’re in the best position to help you solve that problem. Their clients range from two people in a garage all the way up to the largest publicly traded company. So if you’re wondering, are you a fit for them? The answer is yes. ReeseEnergyConsulting.com. And finally, guys, it’s never too early to start thinking about your 2025 taxes, guys. Taxes are key. And In our opinion, oil and gas is the best way, investing in oil and gasses is tvhe best way to lower your tax burden, get a little bit of dividends, and diversify your portfolio into some hard assets. And so… Highly recommend going to investinoil.energynewsbeat.com. Fill out our oil and gas portfolio survey, fill out our tax calculator to figure out what your tax burden is, and then depending on if you qualify or not, we will send you a bunch a bunch of information or what it means to invest in the business and also maybe point to you in the right direction to start and kick off some conversation guys. Invest in oil.energynewsbeat.com, but let’s, let’s go ahead and stew and look at some top line indices here. S and P 500 on Friday was down about three tenths of a percentage point. NASDAQ basically flat, two and 10 year yields, 2.3 and 2 percentage points respectively. That has a lot to do with a terrible, terrible jobs report that came out. Dollar index down to about half a percentage point. Bitcoin sitting at about $111,000. Crude oil took an absolute dump, down 2.5 percentage points or about a $1.61 down to $61.87. Brent oil all the way down to $65.39. Natural gas down about 8, 8 tenths of a percentage, point $3.04. XOP, which is our E&P securities contract, dropped about 2 percentage points down to 129.64. OIH, which are oil food services, was actually down a little bit less, down one full percentage point, down to 255.13. I mean, from an oil side, guys, it did not. Look terribly good on Friday, Stu. A lot of what happened on Friday had to do with this report that here, as we actually record this Sunday afternoon, oil production from OPEC would increase. And so we covered that a little bit in the news segment, but I think that’s what’s driving the sentiment right now of prices. I mean, it’s been very clear, Stu, that this administration wants lower oil prices. It’s kind of funny. And this is something that is maybe due for a longer It’s one of the reasons I love people in the oil and gas business, because they’re principled. We weren’t principled, we would be the Democrats biggest fans because under democratic administrations, our revenues go up. I mean, this all president Trump does is continue to not bash the oil and gas business, but kind of bash its own lead revenue driver, which is oil prices. And yet we stand up here and still sing his praises. So it’s one of the things I love about the oil and gas business, because I feel like it’s actually some principled folks here, but it’s not looking good for the business when it comes to where prices are going, we saw Conoco Phillips last week talk about laying off. 20 to 25% of its staff guys. That’s unbelievable. It’s the theme of the year so far consolidation and layoffs. And it’s going to cause a lot of people to get out of the business. So it’s gonna be very fascinating there. We also see rig counts drop on Friday. We actually saw an increase of, of one rig, which we, you know, you know, is close enough to being flat, but, but not terrible there. So it’s pretty unbelievable from that standpoint. We’re down about 45 rigs year over a year, which continues to fall. So we internationally, we saw about three rigs drop in Canada. We actually saw about six rigs drops. So that’s really all I’ve got to do. Nothing really else interesting on the map. We, you know natural gas prices continue to kind of be all over the place. But, but really besides that, I don’t really see any, there wasn’t really anything too crazy on the market that happened. What one of my favorite segments of the week’s do, what should people be worried about. [00:20:36][285.3]

Stuart Turley: [00:20:37] Well, I’m going through and I’m picking about 15 different companies and different topics for writing stories that I’ve got coming up around the corner and in those stories, there’s a common theme, where do I invest? And so, and I’ll be looking at this, trying to make sense out of this. I’ll, uh, putting more of that kind of where do, I invest in the sub stack and taking a look at where trends are going, I see that the. Huge increase in gas turbines is a fantastic thing. One of the biggest questions I have, Michael, is how real is the AI demand for data centers? Because all of these requests are out there, but how many of them are going to be truly unfolding? Here’s a big question right now. It’s like, holy smokes, we don’t know. [00:21:25][48.8]

Michael Tanner: [00:21:26] It really is a big question. It’s going to be very interesting to see how all of this plays out. But with that, guys, we’re going to go and let you get out of here. Get back and start your week. We appreciate you starting with energy newsbeat stand up for Stuart Turley on Michael Tanner. We’ll see you tomorrow guys. [00:21:26][0.0][1270.3]