In the United States, approximately 94,000 tons of nuclear waste have accumulated. New technologies are being developed that make it possible to extract valuable components from these materials, including reusable fuel and isotopes that are in demand across various industries.

Features of Nuclear Waste Management in the USA

Despite having the world’s largest nuclear reactor capacity, since the 1970s the United States has followed a conservative approach to nuclear fuel reprocessing and has abandoned the use of breeder reactors. As a result, the country has amassed a significant amount of high-level radioactive waste, which is traditionally viewed as a dangerous and useless material requiring long-term isolation.

However, this waste contains a mix of radioactive elements and their isotopes with considerable value. Spent fuel retains about 90% of its uranium and plutonium, as well as isotopes such as strontium-90, rhodium-103, palladium-105-110, and americium-241, which are used in medicine, industry, and both space and terrestrial technologies. The market value of just these isotopes is estimated at around $24 billion, while the value of uranium and plutonium reaches into the trillions of dollars.

Storage Challenges and New Solutions

The potential value of nuclear waste complicates the task of its storage. It is necessary to ensure not only safe isolation but also the possibility of later recovering valuable materials. To address this, the REDUCE project (Recover Elements – Destroy Undesirables – Create Energy) has been launched, aiming to reduce waste stockpiles by reprocessing and burning them in fission reactors.

Accelerated Reprocessing Technology

The REDUCE project is being implemented with the participation of SHINE Technologies, Argonne National Laboratory, and Case Western Reserve University, with support from the U.S. Department of Energy. The main goal is to accelerate the chemical process of separating nuclear elements, which is traditionally carried out using the PUREX method. This method involves dissolving spent fuel in nitric acid and separating elements using gravitational columns, a process that is time-consuming and resource-intensive.

REDUCE improves this process with PaCERS (Packed Centrifugal Equipment for Radiochemical Separation), which uses centrifuges generating acceleration over 1000 g. This allows for much faster separation—the process takes seconds instead of hours, requires less liquid, and enables the extraction of short-lived isotopes while also preventing plutonium accumulation.

Perspectives and Final Goals

The project aims not only to recover nuclear fuel and isotopes but also to rapidly reduce the stockpiles of waste in the United States within decades rather than millennia. Materials unsuitable for commercial use are planned to be irradiated with neutrons in future reactors or special facilities, transforming them into short-lived elements that decay within years or even minutes.

Thus, spent nuclear fuel is increasingly seen as a valuable resource containing numerous useful materials that can be extracted and utilized, rather than simply stored or destroyed.