Scientists across the country are trying to figure out how to reuse nuclear reactor fuel. The goal is to help reduce nuclear waste as the industry expands in order to meet rising energy demands.
A team at Idaho National Lab is getting $7 million from the U.S. Department of Energy for its research. It’s just one of many nuclear energy projects the federal government is supporting.
“We’re just trying to keep the material that we have in the fuel cycle and not let it sit in a cask somewhere and just do nothing,” said Toni Karlsson, a research scientist at the national lab in remote eastern Idaho.
The team is testing if one type of nuclear fuel can be reused. It’s basically table salt with some plutonium or other radioactive elements.
“In essence, it could be used over and over and over and over and over again,” Karlsson said.
But first, her team is studying the risks of reusing the fuel in a molten salt reactor. That kind of reactor isn’t used widely today, but Karlsson said we could see more of them as the industry grows.
The goal is to take more waste out of the system. Since 1950, commercial U.S. reactors have generated about 90,000 metric tons of used fuel, according to the Energy Department.
Nuclear fuel isn’t recycled on a commercial level today in the U.S., unlike France, and after decades of pushback to storing waste within Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, the country lacks a central storage facility for the waste.
The federal government is exploring several campuses across the country, including in Idaho and Utah, but there have been concerns that nuclear waste could threaten water supplies.
”The feds and the nuclear industry have had decades to solve this, and they haven’t,” Leigh Ford, executive director of the Snake River Alliance, said on the group’s website. “We shouldn’t be the dumping ground for their failures”.
Karlsson said recycling fuel could reduce the need for storage and make the country less reliant on imported nuclear fuel materials.
“It has the potential to have a closed fuel cycle, meaning the energy you're putting in, you continue to put in, so the country becomes more self-reliant,” Karlsson said.
As the country invests more in the nuclear industry after decades of stagnation, fuel is often in short supply. Reactors typically rely on uranium of some kind, most of which is imported. In 2023, federal data shows that Canada, Australia and Kazakhstan provided the U.S. the largest shares of uranium for nuclear reactors, followed by Russia and Uzbekistan.
Karlsson said her team could help add more reusable fuel options to the market down the line. The project is funded for three years, with potential to expand, though Karlsson said signing off on a new nuclear fuel source can take up to 20 years.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Boise State Public Radio, Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Northern Colorado, KANW in New Mexico, Colorado Public Radio and KJZZ in Arizona as well as NPR, with support from affiliate newsrooms across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Eric and Wendy Schmidt.
