Saint John energy company says it hit milestone in recycling nuclear waste for energy

 A Saint John-based nuclear engineering company says it has hit a milestone in its aim to reduce waste coming from nuclear energy by turning that waste into usable energy.

The company — Moltex Clean Energy — is developing a process to extract usable energy from nuclear waste in what it calls the waste to stable-salt process. 

This process takes the "high-level waste" from existing nuclear fuel that comes from nuclear generating plants and creates new fuel out of it, said company CEO Rory O'Sullivan on Information Morning Saint John.

The company announced success this week in extracting what O'Sullivan called "long-lived hazardous materials" out of nuclear waste.

"Nuclear waste has been one of the big impediments of nuclear power because of that long radioactivity of the waste," O'Sullivan said.

And while there are existing processes to manage nuclear waste, that waste isn't generally well accepted by the public, "whereas the concept of recycling the waste, and getting more energy out of it, and reducing the amount of long-lived hazardous radioactive products is very appealing," he said. 

The company is aiming to use the process to power a 300 megawatt small modular reactor at the Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station. Moltex expects that SMR to be operational by the early 2030s.

The process — according to information released by Moltex — takes nuclear fuel and separates it. What starts out as a "bundle of fuel," which is 100 per cent "high-level" waste, becomes 98 per cent "intermediate" waste by removing what's called "fuel salt" and other products. 

The high-level waste accounts for roughly one per cent of the total waste, according to the company.

This extracted "stable salt" would be used to create energy and the leftover "intermediate waste" has a footprint three times less than the original fuel bundle, Moltex said. 

Reduced liability for future generations

Warren Mabee, director of energy and environmental policy at Queen's University, said the technology holds great promise. 

"This is one of the most important things I think that the nuclear industry has to figure out — how to deal with waste that comes from these plants," Mabee said.

"Despite the fact that nuclear energy is now more than half a century old, we really haven't cracked that nut. This announcement is just one step closer to hopefully having solved that problem."

O'Sullivan said that while putting nuclear waste in ground repository is safe, it's also a large and costly endeavour and that using parts of the waste for fuel makes more economic sense. 

The project is funded by the Federal Strategic Innovation Fund and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and has partnerships with national stakeholders, such as reactor supplier Candu Energy.