American Start Turning Radioactive Trash in Gold

Nuclear waste is actually super valuable resources, according to American curio curio Sritup.

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The new startup says that it can convert dangerous nuclear waste in freshly usable fuel and valuable metals and materials, such as rhodium and palladium, used in catalytic converters, and crypton-85 and Americium-241, used in electronic and smoke detectors.

The startup is LeakedAnd the General Manager was ED McGinnis, former procedure for nuclear energy assistants in the energy department. McGinnis says nuclear fuel is not hazardous waste, but precious treasure.

“After (nuclear fuel) is taken for about five years in the United States … You used only about 4% of that energy value,” he told me in the recent Techfirst podcast. “It’s even better than just that. Because the magic of uranium, when fiser, actually generate many of other very valuable isotopes: for medical purposes, for industrial processes. And on top of that … you have rare precious metals.”

In the United States, there are currently 94 commercial nuclear reactors that create nearly 97 gigawati power of low carbon: about 19% of the electricity of the nation. But most of the uranium and enrichment infrastructure relies heavily on Russia, which is not great for national energy security. And current flourishing in AI has technological giants like Microsoft, Google and Amazon looking for even more nuclear energy to encourage generative artificial intelligence of neutral carbon.

The solution, according to the curio, is in our toxic landfills landfills.

In the past, recycling of nuclear fuel to extract the remaining energy production was dirty and dangerous, using nitric acid and creating additional radioactive contamination. Curio’s process is dry electrochemical and pyroprocessing system, using heat and chemical reactions to separate isotopes and fission products, thanks to different boiling points and weights. Curio also applies electric currents for separate metal elements such as uranium and plutonium, exploiting the fact that almost all products from nuclear fission metals are or act like metals.

The result is clean, separate elements: uranium, which can be returned to the reactor as fuel, plutonium, which can be used at low weapons without weapons in newer types of reactors, such as rhodium, palladium, crypton, and more.

And uranium for reactor fuel?

“We’ll get a lot out,” Mcginnis says, to provide as much as a third of the entire American nuclear uranium annually from one facility. “

The United States currently have about 90,000 metric tons of highly radioactive fuel consumption and accumulates more at approximately 2,000 tons per year. Globally, the world has about 400,000 tons, of which only one third is processed.

So there are plenty of raw materials.

Assuming that works, even better news is to process materials that have a dangerous radioactive lifetime of 10,000 years to material that is only insecure for several hundred years. It is huge at multiple levels: less nuclear waste, and the remaining nuclear waste that is only insecure to hundreds, not thousands of years, which makes it much more politically palpable to find safe storage locations.

So: Will it work?

McGinnis is convinced that it does. And the Energy Department mainly finances the three-year demonstrian contract in the National Laboratory, which should be completed next year. If everything goes as planned, a commercial consideration plant could follow in three to five years.

And that could put now on two trails to solve its energy wrong and problematic dilemma of nuclear waste … plus offer a bunch of super-precious metals and isotopes. For example, Curio says his processing could provide 10% in the world of rhodium than waste itself.

Everything that could redefine how we fully watch nuclear waste: as a resource, strategic advantage and key board in a safe and clean energy infrastructure of the future.