Nuclear waste at power plants across the United States contains enough energy to power the country for more than 100 years. However, recycling of spent uranium fuel was banned in 1977 because President Jimmy Carter feared that nuclear reprocessing could lead to the production of more nuclear weapons.
Over the past 47 years, China, France, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom have all developed tools to recycle nuclear waste. In contrast, the United States planned to bury spent fuel underground and even built facilities, but abandoned the strategy without a clear alternative.
A short-term spending bill passed this week by the U.S. House of Representatives to avert a government shutdown includes the first major funding to commercialize technology to recycle nuclear waste.
The bill also earmarks $10 million for a cost-sharing program to help private nuclear startups pay for the expensive federal permitting process and scraps, according to a separate document from Congress explaining the bill's contents. For the first time, material recycling companies are explicitly eligible. 1,050 page bill It was past Wednesday.
„There is growing commercial interest in nuclear fuel recycling,“ said Craig Pearcy, chief executive of the American Nuclear Association. “What Congress is doing is providing support to begin exploring regulatory pathways to make this a commercial reality.”
It's a relatively small down payment to help launch an industry that could ultimately require billions of dollars to get off the ground. However, it received support from both countries and was included in the spending bill. republican party and Democratic Party This represents a shift in what was once one of the most polarizing issues regarding nuclear power. This funding was a particular priority for Rep. Chuck Fleischman (R-Tenn.), a nuclear energy supporter; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.N.Y.) is also an influential figure on the left. came out recently Support the recycling of nuclear waste.
„This is a big deal,“ said Edward McGinnis, who spent 30 years working in nuclear power at the Department of Energy before becoming chief executive of fuel recycling startup Curio. „This is the first time that recycling and reprocessing is eligible for funding. That says a lot. It's bipartisan and reflects how much the nuclear policy landscape has changed.“
![Waste basket in spent nuclear fuel pool. Photographed in December 2022 at the Orano-La Hague nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in northwestern France.](https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/65ea3b9223000032005500cb.jpeg?ops=scalefit_720_noupscale)
![Waste basket in spent nuclear fuel pool. Photographed in December 2022 at the Orano-La Hague nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in northwestern France.](https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/65ea3b9223000032005500cb.jpeg?ops=scalefit_720_noupscale)
Lou Benoist (via Getty Images)
Reprocessing spent nuclear waste involves extracting and processing dangerous isotopes such as plutonium, which can be used in bombs.
Allied Corporation, a conglomerate that is now part of chemical giant Honeywell after a series of mergers over the years, built some of the nation's first reprocessing facilities in Barnwell, South Carolina, in the early 1970s.
And in April 1977, Secretary Carter was supposed to be a show of personal restraint aimed at giving the United States the moral high ground to urge other countries not to develop further enrichment capabilities. Banned Recycling nuclear waste. The move comes three years after India became the first country to develop an atomic bomb since many countries around the world signed the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
In 1978, the Department of Energy began studying whether the federal government could permanently bury all nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. President Carter's successor, President Ronald Reagan, lifted the ban on nuclear reprocessing. But the billions of dollars Allied lost on the facility deterred other companies from building recycling plants in the United States.
Instead, President Reagan signed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982, transferring responsibility for spent nuclear fuel from the power companies that generate the waste to the federal government, and leaving private companies to figure out how to dispose of the waste. removed incentives.
Meanwhile, construction of new nuclear reactors in the United States slowed, and large reserves of uranium throughout the western United States and in trading partners such as Canada provided sufficient fuel.
![Georgia Power's Plant Vogtle nuclear power plant in Waynesboro on January 20, 2023.](https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/65ea3bc922000036004b7a8a.jpeg?ops=scalefit_720_noupscale)
![Georgia Power's Plant Vogtle nuclear power plant in Waynesboro on January 20, 2023.](https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/65ea3bc922000036004b7a8a.jpeg?ops=scalefit_720_noupscale)
But in the 1990s, President Bill Clinton's administration struck a deal with post-Soviet Russia to buy nuclear fuel made from dismantled nuclear weapons. Unable to compete with cheap imports, many domestic enrichment industries have closed down.
In the early 2000s, the United States planned to build new nuclear reactors as part of an effort to reduce emissions and reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels. Under President George W. Bush, who also pushed for the completion of construction of the Yucca Mountain storage facility, Congress funded the creation of a research program on nuclear recycling called the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative.
In 2006, this program folded into: Global nuclear energy partnershipa U.S.-led effort to promote safety standards around the world and restrict which countries can purchase uranium enrichment technology.
When President Barack Obama took office in 2009, the Democratic government funds removed For new waste recycling research from the Department of Energy's budget. The Obama administration then canceled the Yucca Mountain storage project, later at the direction of the Federal Government Accountability Office. concluded This was a political decision made by then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.N.V.) to appease Nevada voters.
Because federal law establishes Yucca Mountain as the nation's first nuclear waste repository, the United States could not consider alternative sites to bury spent fuel until Congress changed the law.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission abandoned work For rules that will finally give nuclear recycling companies guidelines to secure a license in 2021.
„At some point, they're going to have to pick it up again,“ Pearcy said.
He said the funding included in the latest bill could put pressure on officials to restart the process.
„It doesn't have to happen overnight. I don't think commercial recycling will happen within the next 10 years,“ Pearcy said. “But it makes sense to start removing regulatory barriers now to allow commercial recycling.”
Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has disrupted energy markets as European democracies seek to stop buying natural gas and oil from Moscow. The soaring price caused by a short-term misshipment of fuel has highlighted an important advantage of nuclear power. The idea is that nuclear reactors only need to be refueled every few years, protecting countries from fluctuations in the price of globally traded fossil fuels.
There was one problem. That's because Rosatom, the Kremlin's state-owned nuclear company, remained the world's largest exporter of nuclear technology and the only commercial vendor of a key type of uranium fuel needed for next-generation nuclear reactors. Russia's dominance in nuclear energy remains untouchable to Rosatom, even though the United States and its allies have sanctioned virtually all major energy exports from Russia.
The Biden administration is I started spending millions. To produce more of a rare type of fuel called High Analysis Low Enriched Uranium, or HALEU (pronounced HALEU). Hey-Roux). The House spending bill also includes $2.5 billion to domestically produce both conventional nuclear fuel and HALEU.
But the White House has so far barred HALEU funding from companies that make fuel from nuclear waste. The Department of Energy previously told HuffPost that it could not guarantee that HALEU, which is made from nuclear waste, would meet purity standards required for new reactors.
But the agency already recycles its own waste to produce HALEU, about half of which so far has gone to Oklo, a California-based nuclear reactor startup that also As a unique fuel, we are currently developing technology to commercialize reprocessing with a plan to recycle all HuffPost previously reported.) Department of Energy Said The plan is to complete reprocessing of all 10 tons of HALEU from the old research reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory in 2028.
„We are currently using taxpayer dollars to do reprocessing,“ McGinniss said. „We've known how to reprocess since we surprised Oppenheimer. They're already doing it.“