Ed McGuinness, CEO of Curio.
Photo courtesy of Curio.
Ed McGinnis knows a lot about the nuclear waste problem in the United States. He worked at the US Department of Energy from 1991 to 2021 and was directly involved with the US government’s failed effort to build a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
“I certainly have tire marks on my back” from trying to get the United States to develop and implement a long-term nuclear waste storage plan, McGuinness told CNBC in a phone call in June.
“Essentially, both sides have said it’s politically infeasible” to find a permanent solution, McGuinness told CNBC. “But in the meantime, we have a huge, huge outstanding problem, representing almost the biggest ball and chain on the ankle of the US nuclear power sector trying to transition to the next generation of reactors.”
This undated image taken on February 22, 2004 shows the entrance to the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, located in Nye County, Nevada, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
AFP | AFP | Getty Images
McGuinness no longer works for the government, but is still working to solve the nuclear waste problem at the head of a startup called Curio, founded in 2020 by brothers Yechezkel and Yehuda Moskowitz as part of their investment holding Synergos Holdings.
The brothers founded Curio to develop next-generation advanced nuclear reactors. After some research, they decided that there were already many companies innovating in this space, but much less competition to address the nuclear waste problem.
The United States generates about 2,000 metric tons of new nuclear waste annually, adding to the roughly 86,000 tons already generated. Reprocessing nuclear waste is one way to make it less radioactive, but there is only enough capacity in the world to process 2,400 tons per year, and most of that is in France (1,700 metric tons) and Russia (400 metric tons).
The ten-person, pre-revenue startup is still in the very early stages of a capital-intensive, long-term build. But it aims to have a pilot facility operational in six years and a commercial nuclear waste processing facility by 2035, McGuinness told CNBC.
Curio’s commercial plant will have a capacity of 4,000 metric tons when fully built. It will cost $5 billion to build and will be the size of an NFL football stadium.
“We’re going to take ownership of all 86,000 metric tons and the federal government and the public will never see this high-level radioactive material on their books again, we’ll take the brunt of it,” McGinnis said. “And we would take the trash and turn it into products and treasures. This is our line of business.”
Ed McGuinness, CEO of Curio.
Photo courtesy of Curio
Turning trash into treasure
Calling the fuel that comes out of conventional reactors waste is wrong, according to McGuinness, because only 4 percent of the potential energy value has been used. But it is dangerous, with enough radiation to harm humans for roughly a million years.
Curio has developed a chemical process it calls NuCycle to turn nuclear waste into usable products, such as fuel for advanced nuclear reactors, as well as isotopes that can be used for other functions, such as generating ingredients to create space power sources missions and energy sources for small batteries.
The process reduces the amount of radioactive waste to less than 4% of what it started with. That waste would only require about 300 years of storage, McGuinness told CNBC.
“Essentially, there is a treasure trove of products and goods waiting to be mined from this so-called waste.”
“Essentially, there is a treasure trove of products and commodities waiting to be mined from this so-called waste,” McGinnis told CNBC.
Curio is currently “refining and validating the chemistry,” McGinnis said. Some of this work involves collaborations with scientists at national laboratories across the country, but these partnerships are in their very early stages.
Critically, Curio’s technology will differ from an existing process called PUREX (plutonium extraction with uranium) “which, among other things, separates and extracts plutonium in a clean stream,” which could be a problem under nuclear non-proliferation treaties.
“We have a process where we never release pure plutonium,” McGinnis said. “We will never do that because we want to have a process that is security-hardened against proliferation.” We have built-in self-defense.”
Jim Geary, facility manager at the Waste Receipt and Processing Facility (WARP), examines a shipment of three TRUPACT shipping containers at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation on June 30, 2005 near Richland, Washington. Each container contains 14 55-gallon drums of transuranic (TRU) waste that has been processed and will be shipped to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.
Jeff T. Green | News from Getty Images | Getty Images
One of the most challenging aspects of dealing with nuclear waste is convincing local community members to accept a facility in their backyard. “Public communication is very, very important,” McGinnis said.
Curio said it is engaged with multiple states to locate its facility there, but declined to name them. But he believes the economy would benefit many local communities. “A facility like ours would employ over 3,000 good-paying full-time jobs,” McGinnis said.
McGuinness also says that negotiations for a recycling facility will be easier than those for permanent storage.
“I led efforts to meet with countries, trying to convince them why they should accept material that will be there for 10,000 years. It’s a very, very difficult thing,” McGinnis said. “I can understand why NIMBY communities see this as a big problem. But then again, it’s apples and oranges.” (NIMBY is an anachronism for “not in my backyard.”)
What independent experts say
The US needs to explore new and innovative technologies to solve the nuclear waste problem, Steve Nesbitt, former president of the American Nuclear Society, told CNBC.
“When the advanced reactors start operating, it makes more sense (for me) to develop and implement the recycling of these materials,” he told CNBC. It’s possible to recycle waste and put some elements of that recycled waste back into the existing nuclear reactor fleet, but “that’s more appropriate for some advanced reactor designs,” he told CNBC.
He said he “definitely” knows McGuinness, but added that “Curio is keeping his cards pretty close to the vest, for now.”
Curio’s goals are great, said Ashutosh Goel, a professor at Rutgers who has done research on dealing with nuclear waste through a process called “immobilization.”
“Yes, what Curio is aiming for is ambitious. But isn’t that the case with everything in nuclear?” Goel told CNBC. “If we are serious about reducing our carbon footprint and still meeting the nation’s energy needs, we cannot achieve that goal without nuclear power.”
Goel doesn’t know Curio or McGinnis personally, but he does know them professionally. “Ed is a well-known leader in the field of nuclear energy through his leadership roles at the US Department of Energy. So I am hoping for positive things from Curio,” said Goel.
Curio is making smart moves early on, according to Ben Sipiti, a nuclear engineer at Sandia National Labs who is working on a government grant proposal with Curio.
“I see Curio as having a good chance of making progress in this area because their approach uses lessons learned from the past,” Sipiti told CNBC. “They partner with national laboratories to take advantage of the latest research and development and the wide variety of expertise needed to succeed in the field.”
If Curio is successful, the work could be transformative for the industry as a whole.
“Once we get that resolved, in my humble opinion, I think that Tesla is going to make the nuclear industry fight back in a way that we’ve never seen because it’s such a heavy ball and chain on the nuclear sector — it affects public opinion, acceptance. economy, investors,” McGuinness said. “So when we finally show a no-nonsense, thoughtful solution to the back end, that’s when I think the nuclear sector moves forward.”