US Plans to Start Recycling Nuclear Waste

Empty nuclear waste shipping containers sit in front of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M., on March 6, 2014. AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan

Despite growing recognition that nuclear energy may be the most viable solution in the United States’ quest for reliable low-carbon electricity, the nuclear power industry is struggling to overcome major hurdles—among them, what to do with radioactive spent fuel.

But new efforts to recycle nuclear waste in the United States, held up for decades by legal and regulatory hurdles, could resolve that issue and more if it is allowed to flourish.

Nuclear energy has been stifled for the past 50 years by bureaucratic hurdles that have virtually stalled the construction of new nuclear plants in the United States. These stem from public fears following the reactor meltdowns at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima and from concerns about the toxicity of used nuclear fuel and its potential reuse in nuclear weapons.

Recently, however, a rare bipartisan consensus has emerged in support of nuclear power. Speaking at the 29th U.N. Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP 29), summit host Jeyhun Bayramov called for “the safe, secure, equitable, and affordable expansion of nuclear energy,” confirming that environmentalists now see nuclear energy as acceptably “clean,” alongside wind and solar.

But reviving the United States’ dormant nuclear power industry is another matter.

In terms of priorities, “there exists the threat of climate [change] on the Democratic side, and certainly energy security, geo-strategic [concerns], Russia, and China from the Republican side, that now we see commitments to triple nuclear by the United States and COP 29, along with 20 other countries,” Ed McGinnis, CEO of Curio, a company that plans to recycle fuel in the United States, told The Epoch Times.

“But where is the order book? Where’s the door being knocked down by the U.S. utilities for these advanced reactors?” McGinnis said. “I would argue the reason why is because they’re put in an impossible position.”

If utilities can navigate the difficult process of getting regulatory approvals and permits, and then raise enough capital to build a new nuclear plant, they are still faced with the need for a reliable supply of fuel. And once the fuel is spent, they need a safe and secure way to dispose of it.

Since 1992, the United States has been dependent on imports for most of the 40 million pounds of uranium needed to fuel the country’s nuclear power industry.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, domestic production of uranium—the fuel source for nuclear plants—peaked in 1980. As of 2022, the foreign suppliers of uranium are Russia (12 percent, despite the embargo), Kazakhstan (25 percent), Uzbekistan (11 percent), Canada (27 percent), Australia (9 percent), and other foreign nations (16 percent).

America Chooses Storage Over Recycling

Nuclear fuel, which takes the form of small ceramic pellets composed of enriched uranium-235 and uranium-238, powers reactors for five years before it is spent. During this period, only about 4 percent of the material is used in the fission process.

In the United States, the remaining product, more than 85,000 metric tons of which has been produced to date, is removed from reactors as radioactive waste and submerged in water on-site to cool for several years until it has lost some of its radioactivity. It is then packaged into dry containers and stored indefinitely, usually on the grounds of the power plants.

Today, there are more than 60 dry cask storage sites across 34 U.S. states, according to the Center for Arms Control and Proliferation.

By the terms of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is responsible for the safe disposal of nuclear waste. But thus far, the DOE has left that task to electric utilities while it awaits funding to build storage sites, such as the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

“DOE is responsible for disposing of this high-level waste in a permanent geologic repository but has yet to build such a facility because policymakers have been at an impasse over what to do with this spent fuel since 2010,” the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported.

Meanwhile, the volume of spent nuclear fuel that utilities have kept in temporary storage continues to pile up by an additional 2,000 metric tons each year, prompting utilities to successfully sue the government for breach of contract.

Uranium pellets during a tour of a Nuclear Waste Management Organization facility in Oakville, Ontario, on Dec. 12, 2023. The Canadian Press/Frank Gunn

“If we don’t solve the waste problem, the utilities are not going to knock down the door ordering a bunch of reactors,” McGinnis said. “If they buy a reactor, they’re automatically agreeing to have stranded nuclear waste on their site.

“What is stopping that order book from growing is the lack of the services and technologies that utilities need. They need the reactor, they need the fuel, and they also need the waste management.”

Repurposing Used Fuel

McGinnis, who worked at the DOE from 1991 to 2021, left government for private industry, taking a position at the head of a start-up company called Curio, which was founded in 2020 by Rabbi Yechezkel Moskowitz and his brother Yehuda Moskowitz.

Although Curio has developed its own innovative and “environmentally sustainable” recycling technology, the original process for repurposing spent nuclear fuel was developed in the United States in the 1950s and has been in profitable use in other countries for decades.

Orano, one of the world’s largest commercial recycling companies, has reprocessed more than 40,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel since 1976, much of which is placed back into reactors to generate electricity, according to the company’s communications director, Curtis Roberts.

Orano has operations around the world, including in the United States. The company has reprocessed used nuclear fuel at its French facility from countries including France, Japan, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany, and it estimates that 10 percent of France’s electricity comes from recycled nuclear fuel.

“Unlike the United States, France has no need for interim dry storage of [light water reactor used nuclear fuel], since recycling the used fuel’s uranium and plutonium provides a viable management solution,” Roberts told The Epoch Times.

The Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation area at Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station in Vernon, Vt., on April 29, 2019. AP Photo/Jessica Hill

U.S. Nuclear Ambitions

When the United States first built out its nuclear power infrastructure in the 1970s, it had ambitions to build about 1,000 plants throughout the country. The plan at the time was to recycle the fuel, but the recycling industry was shut down over concerns in the Carter administration about the proliferation of nuclear weapons from reprocessed fuel.

Even though this policy was subsequently reversed in the 1980s, the industry has remained gun-shy ever since.

“For international policy reasons going back to Carter, not technical reasons, it was decided to no longer recycle,” McGinnis said. “President Reagan reversed that. But by that time, the companies that were recycling had lost a significant amount of capital as a result of the abrupt change of policy, and there was no appetite to go back in.”

A May report by legal analysts Jane Accomando, a partner at Morgan Lewis, and Patrick Pennella, an associate, concurs.

“Although several other countries and certain U.S. government facilities reprocess fuel, the United States has not developed a commercial reprocessing industry,” they stated.

“Although not prohibited by statute, the ability for a presidential administration to limit or ban commercial reprocessing creates significant uncertainty for private investors.”

A Bipartisan Change of Heart?

Recently, however, there are indications that the political winds may be shifting.

In October 2022, the DOE announced $38 million in grants to various universities and private companies to “reduce the impacts of light-water reactor used nuclear fuel (UNF) disposal,” as part of its Converting UNF Radioisotopes Into Energy program.

As part of this program, $5 million was granted to Curio for developing a commercial-scale recycling program through a process it developed called NuCycle, which also addresses non-proliferation issues.

“NuCycle shifts the current paradigm on ‘nuclear waste’ by recasting it as an asset and creates the commercial case for UNF recycling in the U.S.,” a DOE statement reads.

In April, the House Subcommittee on Energy, Climate, and Grid Security held a hearing to find alternatives for disposing of spent nuclear fuel, and discussions confirmed that the remaining impediments to nuclear fuel recycling are political rather than technical, according to Accomando and Pennella.

The hearing covered topics such as the $10.6 billion that taxpayers have paid out to date to pay utilities for the failure of the DOE to honor its obligations to remove nuclear waste in accordance with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

Recycling companies say there is great value in what they call “slightly used nuclear fuel.”

“Not only is there 96 percent of the energy value left to be able to repurpose for new fuel,“ McGinnis said, ”that five-year period of fissioning generates a number of highly valuable, highly sought-after isotopes: isotopes to fight cancer, for other medical uses, isotopes for industrial use, isotopes for national security, for space bases, and even some non-radioactive isotopes that have tremendous value.”

In addition, he said, there is enough energy remaining in spent nuclear fuel, if recycled, to meet the United States’ energy needs for the next 150 years.

“Used nuclear fuel is only waste if you waste it,” Roberts said.

Cooling towers from the Limerick Generating Station, a nuclear power plant in Pottstown, Pa., from the Pottstown-Limerick Airport on March 25, 2011. STAN HONDA/AFP via Getty Images

Through recycling, 96 percent of used nuclear fuel—the 95 percent that is uranium and 1 percent that’s plutonium—can be repurposed into new nuclear fuel or used for other purposes. The remaining 4 percent is sealed in glass and placed in metal containers for about 300 years until it decays to the original low level of radioactivity of the uranium first mined.

By comparison, current storage periods for non-recycled UNF range between tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of years.

But Roberts said that Orano is working to find uses for even some of this residual 4 percent, which contains “potentially useful materials such as krypton-85, strontium-90, americium-241, and rare-earth and lanthanide elements.”

Clearing Hurdles

Roadblocks, however, remain along the path to nuclear recycling in the United States.

While federal grants are currently available and private financing has been increasing over the past five years, UNF recycling companies say that it “ebbs and flows” depending on technological developments and the supply and demand for nuclear fuel, but even more so on government policy.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees the United States’ nuclear power industry, “identified 23 gaps in its own regulations for reprocessing, which it never has completely resolved,” Roberts said, although “the means to overcome those gaps have largely been identified.”

In addition to regulatory issues, there is also U.S. law to contend with.

“Any effort to take a new look at this valuable national resource and take a recycling sustainable approach wasn’t really possible because you would have to change the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, and that would take bipartisan support,” McGinnis said.

“It wasn’t until just the past three or four years where we have this unique moment where there is strong bipartisan support for nuclear.”

He said he plans to demonstrate proof of concept on existing nuclear waste by the end of next year and, if the legal and regulatory hurdles can be cleared, to begin commercial nuclear recycling at scale in the United States within the next decade.