Using the bully pulpit to energize the atomic energy industry

Part 1. Addressing the nuclear waste issue

Nuclear power has been steadily regaining its political and public popularity for about a decade and a half. A number of new laws, head of state actions and international commission decisions have made it clear that nuclear energy’s reliability, contributions to economic growth, safety and cleanliness are valuable features worth investment and deployment.

Approximately 70 new reactor designs are in various stages of development. Some will be able to be commercially prototyped within 5 years. These new designs aim to expand the base of customers that can directly benefit from nuclear fission energy’s proven capabilities. These new designs are often smaller – as much as 1000 times smaller – and incorporate features that make them more suitable for important energy applications like industrial process heat, ammonia production for fertilizer, distributed power generation and ship propulsion. 

Nuclear energy acceptance has improved dramatically, but with few exceptions, that acceptance has not resulted in new project completion. The amount of nuclear generated electricity produced each year has been roughly flat for two decades and is just now reaching the peak levels achieved prior to 2011.

On May 23, 2025, US President Donald Trump issued a set of four executive orders designed to address – not solve by themselves – the most important of the remaining barriers that have discouraged investors and boards of directors from making final investment decisions on new projects. The primary remaining barriers include cost, schedule, approval uncertainty and an accepted governmental solution to “the nuclear waste issue.”

The set of orders can be viewed as mutually supportive, which is necessary because the remaining challenges are sticky and not easy to address in isolation. 

This first-of-several posts on the topic of Executive Orders focuses on impacts on “the waste issue.”

Efforts to implement an acceptable nuclear waste solution have partly floundered on cost and schedule, but they have also become political hot potatoes as states and their representatives effectively rejected the notion of becoming the nation’s waste destination. 

Even when local communities fought for the proposed facility, the state’s powers that be erected sufficient barriers to halt all progress. Many nuclear energy experts have resisted plans to permanently dispose of used nuclear materials, arguing that many of the materials are rare and potentially valuable. They argue that used nuclear fuel should not be called “spent” since it contains about 95% of the initial potential energy of the mined uranium.

Aside: Atomic Insights is in this faction of nuclear energy experts. End Aside.

The order that directly addresses the nuclear waste issue is titled “Reinvigorating the Nuclear Industrial Base.” Section 3 directs the production of an interagency report that will lay out a policy for spent nuclear fuel and advanced fuel cycles that will include reprocessing and recycling. 

The contributing agencies are Energy, Defense, Transportation and OMB. It will be reviewed by the Chair of National Energy Dominance Council and the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. The report is due 240 days after May 23 (January 18, 2026). It’s easy to dismiss this requirement as just another report, but the reversal from a 50 year old policy and the tight deadline makes the effort worth watching. 

The directive to adopt science-based radiation limits will have an important effect on the cost and complexity of addressing “the waste issue.” The annual maximum dose rate to the most exposed person (worst case scenario) from a repository is just 15 mrem (0.15 mSv) above background. The difficulty – which generally translates into cost – of meeting the requirement is multiplied by the need to prove that the limit is not exceeded for the most exposed person for the first 10,000 years after the facility is sealed. There is even a limit for the first million years of 100 mrem/yr, which is also well below the average annual background dose for a US resident.

That incredibly low number and long performance requirement is not based on any science; it was selected for political reasons. As GAO reports dating back to the early 1990s prove, the chosen limit was a source of contention between the EPA and the NRC for several decades. It played an important role in the perceived need for a titanium-plated design and projected construction and operational cost of the defunct Yucca Mountain facility.

The 15 mrem (0.15 mSv) annual limit is just 5% of average background exposure, so the repository designer, builder and operator must be able to distinguish 315 mrem/yr from 300 mrem/yr. That almost absurd challenge is highly likely to change. A science-based limit will make compliance simpler and less costly without any reduction in protection for humans. 

Though not specifically mentioning the demonstration of nuclear waste disposal technologies, the orders to deploy advanced nuclear reactor technologies for national security and to reform nuclear reactor testing both direct the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense to make better use of federally owned land for testing. Testing disposal technologies along with recycling systems is a logical application of the spirit of those orders.

The federal government holds a large inventory of high level radioactive materials. Though they could conceivably be permanently stored using the existing Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, packaging and transporting the materials has proven to be significantly slower than planned. A solution capable of working together with recycling and reprocessing systems on the same site where the waste is currently stored would benefit both the government and the commercial industry.

Physical testing programs will help speed the implementation of acceptable, cost-effective solutions that join recycling systems with permanent disposal of the unusable leftovers from chosen processes. Physical demonstrations would give the US an advantage in the international market for waste disposal solutions; that is a market that is approximately 3-4 times larger than the US market alone.

Deep Isolation has developed a complete nuclear waste technology solution in partnership with some of the most experienced companies in the drilling, waste container and construction industries.  Their solution is ready for licensing. 

They issued a press release titled “Deep Isolation Welcomes Presidential Action to Reinvigorate U.S. Nuclear Waste Disposal Program” describing their support for the actions directed by the Executive Order. Their press release does not mention the potential benefits of a change to the radiation protection model because their system was developed to meet the existing regulations.

Deep Isolation’s technology solution is primarily based on a brilliant insight that combines a known need with a well-developed technology developed by a different industry for a different purpose. 

The world’s nuclear waste disposal scientific community long ago agreed that a deep geologic repository is an excellent final resting place for unusable, high level radioactive materials. The world’s oil and gas industry discovered long ago that there are abundant hydrocarbon resources in geologic formations located a thousand or more meters below the earth’s surface, far below the depth where there is any interaction with usable aquifers.

In their quest to reach more of the stored hydrocarbons, the oil and gas industry developed and refined highly capable, cost-effective drilling equipment operated by skilled teams that learned how to steer their drill bits with great precision. If drill bits can be accurately directed to geologic formations storing hydrocarbons, they can also be directed to rock layers that have been stable for millions of years.

A drilled deep borehole with a lengthy horizontal lateral can store a meaningful amount of material, especially when the material has been fully reprocessed or recycled in a method that removes valuable isotopes – including those that produce most of the thermal energy associated with used nuclear fuel.

The remaining steps for implementation of this solution is a more complete demonstration on federal land using federally owned materials. The collection of five Executive Orders that the President signed on May 23 will accelerate the availability and acceptability of full scale deep borehole disposal.

Aside: The fifth order in the collection – Restoring Gold Standard Science – doesn’t include the word “nuclear” in its title or even in its text, but it will play a role in achieving deployment success. End Aside.

Deep borehole disposal is certainly not the only technology that can accomplish the task, but it’s good enough to meet the need for a demonstrated, accepted, permanent solution to “the nuclear waste issue.” It’s arguably the most cost effective, complete solution available today that can meet the needs of nuclear nations, both large and small. Its success will be accelerated by the May 23 Executive Orders.

Successful implementation of the EOs directives around waste depends upon decisions made by Chris Wright, the Secretary of Energy. Secretary Wright has vast professional experience in the business of drilling deep holes with horizontal laterals. He understands its benefits and limitations. His understanding should contribute to the future implementation of a demonstration and deployment program that tests out this approach.

Disclosure: Atomic Insights is now affiliated with Nucleation Capital, my new venture fund, which is an investor in Deep Isolation. We are convinced that Deep Isolation’s deep borehole solution can help solve the nuclear waste conundrum, which itself would contribute to the success of nearly every other nuclear venture in our portfolio.

Nucleation’s Fund I is a uniquely accessible and affordable venture capital fund focused on investing into ventures innovating in advanced nuclear energy and carbon management with important technologies being developed by capable teams.