Advancing Nuclear Sustainability: Curio's Innovative Approach to Spent Nuclear Fuel

The Problem

Nuclear power plays a crucial role in clean energy generation, providing nearly 10% of global electricity and 25% of all low-carbon electricity worldwide. And yet, managing spent nuclear fuel remains a major challenge, with traditional approaches to nuclear waste management being limited by complex processes, high costs, and lasting environmental impacts.

The industry urgently needs innovative solutions to safely recover valuable materials from spent nuclear fuel, while ensuring long-term sustainability. The timing is right: public sentiment towards nuclear energy is strong, more than two-thirds of the world’s reactors are over 30 years old and require modernization, and the demand for new energy sources keeps rising.

The Technology

Curio's groundbreaking NuCycle® technology represents a significant advancement in nuclear fuel recycling. Their modular, integrated process is designed to be compact and proliferation-hardened, avoiding the production of pure plutonium streams while dramatically reducing waste volumes compared to existing processes.

Key technological achievements of Curio’s NuCycle® include:

Advanced head-end processing and fluorination steps producing enrichment-ready UF6.
Recovery of over 99% of uranium, significantly reducing high-level waste compared to direct disposal.
Production of approximately 0.9 wt.% uranium at market-competitive prices.
Material control and accountability system enabling less than 1% uncertainty in actinide accounting.
Capability to process various fuel types, including molten salts and nitride fuels.
Integrated safeguards-by-design principles.

These innovations not only support advanced reactor technologies by providing safe and sustainable domestic fuel stocks, but also decrease uranium mining requirements while enabling valuable radionuclide recovery for diverse applications.

The Boundless Solution – ISO-Compliant Life Cycle Assessment

Through the Department of Energy's Energywerx Voucher Program, Curio partnered with Boundless to conduct a comprehensive ISO-compliant Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of their NuCycle® technology.

Boundless’ ISO-Compliant LCA follows rigorous ISO guidelines and incorporates conventional LCA databases, tools, and scientific literature reviews. The LCA involves recruiting and deeply engaging three LCA experts for independent peer review, thorough sensitivity analysis ensuring data quality, the complete documentation of sources, and an extensive internal review to guarantee that all values align with Boundless’ data integrity promise.

Boundless’ ISO-Compliant LCA of Curio’s NuCycle® technology was conducted over a three-month period, with a cradle-to-gate system boundary. The resulting 80-page technical assessment showed major environmental benefits for Curio's recycled nuclear fuel (rNF) compared to conventional nuclear fuel. The study measured both greenhouse gas emissions and fossil energy use throughout the entire process, revealing:

For the complete fuel cycle (from production through electricity generation)

Curio's process produces 4.59 g CO2e per kilowatt-hour of electricity delivered, compared to 6.71 g CO2e for conventional nuclear fuel.
This represents a 32% reduction in both greenhouse gas emissions and fossil energy consumption.

For just the fuel production phase:

Curio's recycling process achieved an 88% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
It demonstrated a 64% decrease in fossil energy requirements compared to conventional production methods.

The findings are particularly valuable because they compare the environmental impact of Curio's recycling technology with and without shared processes like plant construction and operation. This approach gives a detailed analysis of the value of Curio's innovation within its competitive landscape.

This ISO-compliant LCA enables Curio to objectively demonstrate that its recycling technology offers substantial environmental benefits, independently generated by one of the most trusted Environmental Impact Assessment firms, validating the company’s sustainability claims.

“The ISO-compliant LCA identified transformative environmental benefits associated with Curio's technology,” stated Reagan Cerci, Research Analyst at Boundless. “By analyzing impacts with and without shared downstream processes, we isolated and quantified the specific environmental advantages of their recycling methodology. The results demonstrate that Curio's innovation directly contributes to decarbonization in the nuclear sector while addressing critical challenges in nuclear waste management.

The Outcome

Boundless’ ISO-compliant LCA demonstrated that Curio's NuCycle® technology achieves substantial environmental improvements across both cradle-to-grave and cradle-to-enrichment analyses, with GHG reductions of 32% and 88% respectively compared to conventional nuclear fuel. These findings have proven instrumental in:

Validating the technology's potential for reducing the environmental impact of nuclear power generation
Supporting engagement with regulatory bodies and industry partners through independently verified performance data
Identifying key process optimization opportunities, particularly in the areas of raw material inputs and energy efficiency
Strengthening Curio's market position through a highly recognized and scientifically-rigorous assessment that meets the international gold-standard of environmental impact assessments

This partnership exemplifies the DOE's commitment to advancing clean energy solutions through programs like Energywerx, while demonstrating how environmental assessments are key to risk-mitigation and their value to support the commercialization of innovative technologies.

"Curio is in the process of commercially deploying our state of the art advanced used nuclear fuel recycling technology – NuCycle. NuCycle is not only the most economical approach to the fuel cycle, but the most environmentally responsible path as well. On top of this, our NuCycle technology has ISO-compliant analysis backing us up," said Curio CEO Edward McGinnis.