Nuclear company says it's proving waste can be turned into fuel

• The idea that waste can be reprocessed or recycled on a large scale is controversial, with nuclear experts expressing skepticism over its costs and vulnerability to theft by terrorists.

Driving the news: Curio asked four of DOE's national labs — Idaho, Oak Ridge, Pacific Northwest and Sandia — to examine its process using heat and chemical reactions to separate radioactive isotopes and fission products.

• At Oak Ridge, the company said, scientists used Curio's techniques for removing the outer protective layer from spent fuel rods to allow for treatment of the fuel inside.
• The pulverized product was sent to Pacific Northwest, where it was decontaminated and yielded enrichment-ready material while eliminating extra steps to convert and distill the material.
• At Idaho, scientists studied how plutonium and other elements could be extracted in ways that could thwart attempts to steal it to make nuclear bombs. Sandia is developing further safety and security measures.

What they're saying: "The significance of this is, we have now proven our process works and and that it's ready to be scaled up, and that we did it in the national labs," said Curio CEO Ed McGinnis, a former DOE acting assistant secretary for nuclear energy.

• McGinnis said the company plans to conduct an additional "scale-up" process with the national labs before seeking to put the technology on the market within a few years.
• "It's a little bit like SpaceX going from Grasshopper to Falcon 9 and then Starship," he said. "We want to get all the kinks out."

The other side: "There is no way to make any reprocessing completely proliferation-proof," said former Nuclear Regulatory Commission chair Allison Macfarlane. "And reprocessing will be exorbitantly expensive."