Nuclear waste recycling is a critical avenue of energy innovation
Companies, agencies, institutions, etc
the Nuclear Waste Fund
the Energy Department’s
the U.S. Treasury
Southern Company’s
Westinghouse
AP
NuScale Power’s
Kairos Power’s
TerraPower
GE Hitachi
State
Idaho National Laboratory
1.5-megawatt
Flibe Energy
Senate
Nuclear Energy
the Department of Energy
DOE
the DOE’s
Office of Nuclear Energy
the Versatile Test Reactor
Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy
People
Gen-IV
Bill Gates
Oklo
Elysium Industries’
Rita Baranwal
Biden
Groups
American
Physical locations
Yucca Mountain
Places
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Locations
the United States
Nevada
U.S.
Georgia
Oregon
San Diego
Alameda
Wyoming
California
New York
Alabama
Washington
Canada
Kazakhstan
Australia
Russia
Events
Fiscal Year 2022 Budget Request
Summary
Only a small fraction of nuclear fuel is consumed to generate electricity.Proponents of recycling envision reactors that use “reprocessed” spent fuel, extracting energy from the 90% of it leftover after burn-up. In fact, the self-professed “preferred fuel” for New York-based Elysium Industries’ molten salt reactor design is spent nuclear fuel and Alabama-based Flibe Energy advertises the waste-burning capability of its thorium reactor design.Whether advanced reactors rise or fall does not depend on resolving the nuclear waste deadlock. Nonetheless, incentivizing waste recycling would improve their economics.“Incentivize” here is code for “pay.” Policymakers should consider ways that Washington can make it more profitable for a power plant to recycle fuel than to import it—from Canada, Kazakhstan, Australia, Russia, and other countries.Political support for advanced nuclear technology, including recycling, is deeper than might be expected.
As said here by Tristan Abbey