Deep Isolation’s long journey of making nuclear waste burials a real thing. Nuclear energy creates radioactive waste. While this waste can be recycled, we need a safe way to store the leftovers.

Deep Isolation finished a three-year study funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. According to the study, burying the waste in deep underground boreholes is a safe and cost-effective option.

The company analyzed packing the waste into its Universal Canister System and placing it in deep vertical or horizontal holes. Every setup tested cost less than the project target of 0.1 cents per kilowatt-hour. Long-term safety estimates were also positive. Projected radiation doses stayed far below the standard 10 millirem-per-year limit.

Nuclear Waste Disposal

Deep Isolation’s commercial pilot project demonstrating its underground nuclear waste disposal; Photo: Deep Isolation

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The research team included Argonne National Laboratory, Oklo Inc., and Case Western Reserve University. Researchers learned that waste disposal must be planned alongside the recycling process itself.

“This project shows the value of designing recycling and disposal systems together rather than treating waste management as a downstream consideration,” said Jesse Sloane, Executive Vice President of Engineering at Deep Isolation. “Working alongside Argonne National Lab and Oklo, we developed a technically grounded disposal pathway that could support the economics of future fuel recycling while safely isolating the resulting waste. These findings give us another important building block toward an integrated and sustainable nuclear fuel cycle.”

Closing the Loop

The Department of Energy is currently exploring recycling as a new energy resource at its Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses. Meanwhile, Oklo is planning to recover usable fuel through pyroprocessing to power its advanced fast reactors.

“Closing the fuel cycle is about unlocking the full value of used nuclear fuel — recovering its energy potential and extracting isotopes, while safely and permanently managing what remains,” said Ed Petit de Mange, Vice President of Fuel Recycling at Oklo. “This three-year study shows what’s possible when we design recycling and disposal together: an integrated approach that can meet rigorous safety standards while keeping disposal costs low. That’s the model we should work toward as we build the infrastructure for a more complete nuclear fuel cycle.”