Late last week, the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy awarded over $19 million to five U.S. companies to research and develop recycling technologies for used nuclear fuel.
“Used nuclear fuel is an incredible untapped resource in the United States,” said Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Ted Garrish. “The Trump Administration is taking a common-sense approach to making sure we’re using our resources in the most efficient ways possible to secure American energy independence and fuel our economic growth.”
Less than five percent of the potential energy in the nation’s nuclear fuel is extracted after five years of operation in a commercial reactor. Recycling used nuclear fuel could increase resource utilization by 95 percent, reduce waste by 90 percent, and decrease the amount of uranium needed to operate nuclear reactors.
Awardees are:
- Alpha Nur Inc. – will research and validate a process that will recover highly enriched uranium (HEU) from used nuclear fuel produced by U.S. based research reactors and transform it to a usable high assay low enrichment uranium (HALEU) form for reuse in small modular reactor designs.
- Curio Solutions, LLC – will develop a process designed to produce uranium hexafluoride gas from used fuel.
- Flibe Energy Inc. – will study the use of electrochemical methods to process used nuclear fuel.
- Oklo Inc. – will study heavy element deposition in molten salt to optimize a pyro-processing plant design.
- Shine Technologies, LLC – will develop a process design that incorporates transport, storage, and disposal together with hydro-processing of used fuel.