The world is facing a renewed debate over nuclear energy and the management of radioactive waste, as governments and companies race to address pressing power shortages and the growing burden of spent nuclear fuel. In September 2025, the Trump administration in the United States unveiled an ambitious plan to fast-track the construction of commercial nuclear reactors, with the bold promise that a new wave of startups could make almost all radioactive waste from these operations disappear. The administration's efforts, which include a $1.7 billion investment by the company Oklo to build an Advanced Fuel Center in Tennessee, have reignited hopes and fears around nuclear recycling and safety.
Oklo’s plans are nothing if not audacious. The company announced that its new Advanced Fuel Center will rise on a plot of land in Tennessee that once played a pivotal role in the Manhattan Project more than 80 years ago. The first phase of this development, expected to be completed within five to seven years, will employ cutting-edge recycling machinery designed to transform radioactive reactor waste into usable fuel for power plants. Oklo’s CEO, Jacob DeWitte, described the company’s vision as a way to finally solve America’s nuclear waste problem. “We’re moving forward to actually bring this to scale and realizing the benefits of it,” DeWitte said, according to reporting by The Washington Post.
But what exactly is at stake? The United States currently has more than 90,000 metric tons of radioactive spent fuel, most of it stored in casks outside active and retired nuclear plants. If all this waste were gathered in one place, it would require a sprawling facility covering dozens of acres. “All of that spent uranium fuel from our reactors today is just a growing liability for our country,” said Energy Secretary Chris Wright during a congressional hearing in May 2025. Wright, who previously sat on Oklo’s board before becoming energy secretary, emphasized, “A lot of this waste and burden could actually be fuel and be of value to next-generation reactors.”
President Trump, seeking to address both the energy crunch and the waste dilemma, signed an executive order in May 2025 calling for the quadrupling of nuclear power in the United States and directing his Cabinet to “utilize all available legal authorities” to enable large-scale recycling of nuclear waste. Oklo’s CEO, DeWitte, was present in the Oval Office for the signing, highlighting the close relationship between the administration and the new wave of nuclear startups.
The core of Oklo’s and its main rival Curio’s approach is a technique called pyroprocessing, which involves placing spent fuel rods into molten salt and using an electric current to separate out usable fuel. This process, first developed at the Argonne National Laboratory in the 1960s, was shelved in the past due to concerns over high costs and the risk of producing weapons-grade materials. According to The New York Times, Oklo and Curio now argue that advances in technology and new safeguards make the process safer and more affordable, and that it could be used in a new generation of reactors that don’t require the same fuel purity as current models.
However, not everyone is convinced. Critics, including prominent nuclear scientists and nonproliferation groups, warn that the science backing these recycling claims has not been made public or peer-reviewed. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has redacted Oklo’s entire project plan at the company’s request, and results from federal lab tests of Curio’s technology remain confidential for security reasons. “These are the same technologies that were developed and rejected decades ago,” said Ross Matzkin-Bridger, a former senior adviser at the Energy Department and now head of the Nuclear Materials Security Program at the Nuclear Threat Initiative. “They have been rebranded with new names and slight tweaks, but they still have the same problems. The only thing new is misleading narratives that they have solved the safety, security, and waste management issues that make these technologies unworkable.”
The skepticism is not without historical precedent. The United States largely abandoned efforts to recycle waste for civilian reactors during the Carter administration, after technology shared with India was used to create its first nuclear weapon. Frank von Hippel, co-founder of the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, explained that the recycling machinery the US helped India build enabled it to separate plutonium from spent reactor fuel—a crucial step in making a bomb.
Former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, an MIT physicist, has also voiced strong concerns. He warned that the administration’s push to recycle plutonium from dismantled warheads could “threaten to create material that can be used in weapons in the US and abroad, drive up the cost of nuclear power, and raise the risk of a dangerous radioactive incident.” In July 2025, a group of 17 nuclear experts, NGO leaders, and former regulators sent a letter to congressional committee chairs warning that the US could “unintentionally foster the spread of sensitive nuclear weapons-related technology.”
Despite these warnings, industry proponents remain optimistic. They argue that more than 90 percent of the energy in nuclear fuel rods currently goes unused because conventional reactors can’t extract it before it becomes mechanically useless. Promoters of recycling liken this to “building a Porsche and junking it after one lap around the track.” Skeptics, on the other hand, say the latest technology is just a “new paint job on the same old, un-roadworthy jalopy.”
Meanwhile, the United States is not alone in grappling with the challenges of radioactive waste. In South Africa, on September 22, 2025, the National Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility was officially handed over from the South African Nuclear Energy Cooperative to the National Radioactive Waste Disposal Institute. Plans are underway to upgrade the facility to a high-grade nuclear waste storage site. This transition was marked by a milestone event at the Vaalputs Disposal Facility in the Northern Cape, where Koeberg’s Acting Senior Manager of Nuclear Fuel, Justice Gumede, shared an Operational Perspective of Nuclear Power.
The expansion, however, has prompted concern from local groups. Willem Symington, president of Agri Northern Cape, voiced apprehension on September 23, 2025, about the risks to nearby communities if strict safety protocols and operational rules are not meticulously followed. “Agri Northern Cape is not concerned about the facility as such. But the storage of radioactive materials is a very hazardous process. Agri Northern Cape is concerned if necessary protocols and strict adherence to the rules of operations are not met, there will be risks for communities adjacent to the facility,” Symington said, as reported by SABC News.
As the world looks to nuclear power as a potential solution to both energy shortages and climate concerns, the debate over how to handle radioactive waste—whether by recycling, long-term storage, or some combination—remains unresolved. The stakes are high, and the path forward is fraught with technical, ethical, and political challenges. For now, the promises of new technology and the warnings of history hang in a delicate balance, with communities and policymakers watching closely to see what happens next.
