Nuclear energy is the only large-scale method of generating electricity nation-wide without fossil fuels, and it does not emit greenhouse gases.  

Of the challenges that must be addressed in light of the anticipated expanded use of nuclear energy in the U.S. and worldwide, none is more important than dealing effectively with used nuclear fuel and high-level waste. Compared to other industrial waste, the amount of used nuclear fuel produced  per unit of electricity generated is relatively small in size. However, used nuclear fuel contains components that are radiotoxic for hundreds of thousands of years, and its disposal requires resolution of many political, social, technical, and regulatory issues.

Closing the fuel cycle

Today’s nuclear power plants run on a “once-through” fuel cycle: uranium is mined from the earth and made into fuel, the fuel is used in a nuclear reactor to make electricity, and the used fuel is then stored on site for an eventual move to final disposal in a geologic repository.  In a “once-through” fuel cycle, only about 5% of the fuel’s energy potential is used. Over 90% is discarded.

The Office of Nuclear Energy’s Fuel Cycle Research and Development (R&D) program aims to recycle used fuel so it can be used as fuel again, thereby “closing the fuel cycle.” The Fuel Cycle R&D program is charged with the investigation and preparation of tomorrow’s U.S. nuclear fuel cycle.  The program must advance the state-of-the-art associated with current safety standards, reduce the long-term risk and proliferation hazard of used fuel to the maximum extent practical, and ultimately deliver economical electrical power to the marketplace. The program also seeks to reduce the time-scale for managing high-level nuclear waste from many hundred thousand years (geologic time-scales) to centuries (engineering time-scales).

Long-term research

By conducting research and development focused on nuclear fuel recycling and waste management, the Fuel Cycle R&D program  develops options to current practices to enable the safe, secure, economic, and sustainable expansion of nuclear energy while reducing proliferation risks. The program’s focus is on long term, science-based research and development of technologies with the potential to produce transformational changes to the way in which the nuclear fuel cycle, and particularly nuclear waste, is managed.

Fuel cycle research is being conducted at numerous national laboratories, dozens of universities, and in the laboratories of international collaborators. This work will enable nuclear energy to play a growing role in meeting America’s long-term energy needs.