WASHINGTON--The U.S. Department of Energy's nuclear security office is developing a project to help other countries handle nuclear waste, an effort to keep the United States competitive against global rivals in disposal technology, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
The push comes as the United States struggles to find a solution for its own mounting nuclear waste inventories amid political opposition to a permanent dump site in Nevada, proposed decades ago, and concerns about the cost and security of recycling the waste back into fuel.
The National Nuclear Security Administration is considering helping other countries by using technologies that could involve techniques such as crushing, heating and sending a current through the waste to reduce its volume, the sources said. The machinery would be encased in a “black box” the size of a shipping container and sent to other countries with nuclear energy programmes, but be owned and operated by the United States, according to the sources, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.
"That way you could address a country's concerns about spent fuel without transferring ownership of the technology to them," said one of the sources.
The NNSA confirmed a project to help other countries with nuclear waste is underway but declined to provide details. “We are in the conceptual phase of identifying approaches that could reduce the quantity of spent nuclear fuel without creating proliferation risks - a goal with significant economic and security benefits,” NNSA spokesman Dov Schwartz said.
The effort is being led by NNSA Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Brent Park, a nuclear physicist and former associate lab director at the Energy Department’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, appointed by President Donald Trump in April. The NNSA declined a Reuters request for an interview with Park.
