(The Center Square) – An advocate for developing nuclear energy in his home state, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has proposed a bill to advance nuclear fuel recycling, including research over its feasibility and safety.
The Advancing Research in Nuclear Fuel Recycling Act of 2025, cosponsored with Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-NM, would require the U.S. Department of Energy to analyze the costs, benefits, and risks of recycling spent nuclear fuel compared to interim storage solutions.
“Spent nuclear fuel has the potential to dramatically increase America’s energy, economic, and national security,” Cruz said. “Domestic recycling can reduce the space we need for spent nuclear fuel, enhance energy independence, reduce our dependence on imports, and broaden the supply of rare elements and isotopes used in medicine and advanced technologies.
“Recycling solutions will also reduce the burden on individual states from nuclear waste accumulation, and accelerate progress on nuclear energy, which is our nation’s cleanest baseload energy source. I’m proud to work with Sen. Heinrich on this legislation and I urge my colleagues in the Senate to pass this bill.”
The bill would direct the DOE to analyze the “practicability, potential benefits, costs, and risks, including proliferation, of using dedicated recycling facilities to convert spent nuclear fuel, including spent high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel, into useable nuclear fuels, such as those for commercial light water reactors; advanced nuclear reactors; and medical, space-based, advanced-battery, and other non-reactor applications,” according to the bill language. Recycling would involve taking spent fuel already being held in storage sites nationwide to use as fuel or input for advanced nuclear reactors, existing reactors, or commercial applications, according to the bill language.
The bill also would direct the DOE to investigate the risks of aqueous (PUREX and its derivatives) recycling processes with the practicability, potential benefits, costs, and risk of non-aqueous (such as pyro-electrochemistry) recycling processes.
It also instructs the DOE to implement additional regulatory, tracking and accountability methods for new recycled fuel and radioactive waste streams for byproducts of the recycling process, among other processes, and produce a report, with stated guidelines.
Cruz first introduced the bill last year during the 118th Congress, which went nowhere under Democratic leadership.
The bill is supported by multiple groups including the Nuclear Energy Institute.
“The U.S. nuclear industry supports efforts by Congress to advance used nuclear fuel recycling for its potential to enhance the sustainability and economics of existing and advanced reactors, to improve U.S. energy security, and to convert used fuel into waste forms that can be more easily disposed of in a permanent geologic repository,” NEI SVP and Chief Nuclear Officer Doug True said.
Last year, Washington, D.C.-based Curio, a tech development company dedicated to advancing a closed fuel cycle, announced it acquired $14 million in seed money to develop new nuclear waste recycling technologies, including NuCycle®. Its stated goal is to produce nuclear technologies for a closed and sustainable nuclear cycle to propel the United States “to become the leading nuclear energy exporter and supplier of nuclear fuel, energy, and next-generation radioisotopes and nuclides.”
“What we call ‘waste’ is, in fact, a valuable energy resource that can help strengthen America’s energy security, reduce long-term environmental burdens, and support advanced nuclear technologies,” Curio CEO Ed McGinnis said in a statement. “Thoughtful, science-driven approaches to recycling spent fuel are critical to unlocking that potential and ensuring the U.S. remains at the forefront of nuclear innovation.”
Oklo, a conglomerate supported by Fortune 500 and global companies, also supports the bill. “The proposed legislation reflects growing recognition of fuel recycling as a strategic pathway to strengthen U.S. energy security and enhance domestic supply chains,” Oklo cofounder and CEO Jacob DeWitte said in a statement. “Oklo is continuing to advance its own recycling initiatives, including plans for a commercial fuel recycling facility aimed at turning waste into a reliable domestic fuel source for its Aurora powerhouses.”
Oklo was the first company to receive an advanced reactor site use permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and received access to recycled fuel. It also submitted the first advanced reactor combined license application to the NRC in U.S. history.
It currently has three project sites. It obtained a permit from the DOE for its first site in 2019 and was awarded fuel for its first reactor from Idaho National Laboratory. It claims it has “the most regulatory traction of any advanced fission power system to date, targeting first deployment in 2027.”
