The US Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy, in February 2026, backed the use of nuclear fuel recycling nationwide because it wants more secure fuel supplies for advanced reactors and less reliance on foreign sources, and it plans to do that by funding nuclear startups to develop recycling technologies, building on ARPA-E CURIE, that can recover usable material and support production pathways for HALEU.

For this purpose, the Energy Department’s nuclear energy office allocated more than $19 million to five companies that want to turn America’s spent reactor fuel into fresh feedstock, a sign that Washington now treats a long-frozen idea as a supply-chain priority.

The funding went to Alpha Nur, Curio Solutions, Flibe Energy, Oklo, and SHINE Technologies, and each project requires a minimum 20 percent cost share and a timeline of up to three years. That structure moves projects beyond science experiments toward pilot-ready engineering, a requirement investors often demand before financing expensive nuclear facilities.

However, the bigger story lies outside waste management. The US needs new reactor fuel types quickly and wants to reduce dependence on foreign enrichment. DOE has already extended Centrus’ contract to continue producing high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU) for advanced reactors, one of several moves aimed at building a domestic supply.

Meanwhile, a May 2025 White House executive order told federal agencies to maximize nuclear fuel efficiency through recycling and reprocessing and to rebuild the nuclear industrial base as a national policy goal.

A market that finally “prices” waste

For decades, utilities stored spent fuel on-site because the U.S. never opened a permanent repository and because reprocessing raised proliferation and political risks. Yet next-generation reactor developers now pitch faster neutron designs and compact plants that can use fuels outside the standard light-water playbook, and that shift has made fuel availability a board-level concern.

Used nuclear fuel recycling now appears investable because HALEU shortages, ARPA-E CURIE targets, DOE Office of Nuclear Energy grants, advanced reactors’ fuel needs, and nuclear startups’ timelines all converge within a single policy window. Investors see a rare alignment: government money de-risks early technology, and a growing reactor pipeline creates a plausible customer base.

ARPA-E’s CURIE program frames the fuel stockpile as an energy asset, estimating that the US has about 86,000 metric tons of used fuel, which grows by roughly 2,000 tons each year, and that more than 90 percent of the energy remains in that material.

CURIE also sets an aggressive economic benchmark of about 1 cent per kilowatt-hour for fuel costs and funds not just chemistry but also monitoring and material-accountancy tools to make future plants easier to safeguard.

What DOE actually funded, and why it matters

DOE’s nuclear energy office says the new projects must meet strict nonproliferation standards while addressing practical barriers such as throughput, waste forms, and costs. Alpha Nur plans to recover high-enriched uranium from research-reactor spent fuel and convert it into a form suitable for use as high-assay low-enriched uranium for small modular reactor designs.

Curio plans to develop a process to produce uranium hexafluoride from used fuel, while Oklo plans to design a pyro-processing plant.

Used nuclear fuel recycling can scale only if HALEU supply expands, ARPA-E CURIE keeps pushing safeguards-by-design, DOE Office of Nuclear Energy keeps writing checks, advanced reactors are actually built, and nuclear startups survive multi-year licensing cycles. That reality explains why the same DOE announcement reads like a grant story to the public but like a time-to-market signal to venture funds.

The department’s assistant secretary for nuclear energy, Ted Garrish, called used fuel “an incredible untapped resource,” and he tied the awards to “American energy independence and fuel[ing] our economic growth.” That language matters because it shifts recycling from a climate argument to an industrial policy argument, one that can outlast election cycles.

The startup pitch, stripped of hype

Oklo plans to build a recycling facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, as part of a $1.68 billion advanced fuel center, and it says it can reprocess spent fuel into new metal fuel for fast reactors using electrorefining-based pyroprocessing.

In a separate interview, Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte said, “Oklo’s approach is more cost-effective and extraordinarily proliferation-resistant,” and he tied the bet to a coming wave of nuclear construction that “requires fuel.”

Curio says it completed lab-scale demonstrations of its NuCycle voloxidation technology with support from DOE programs, and it targets a pilot-scale module demonstration by late 2027. In that same interview, Curio CEO Ed McGinnis described the company’s approach as “inherently secure and economically viable,” while acknowledging that the sector still faces skepticism about scale and cost.

SHINE has engaged with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission regarding licensing of a recycling facility at its Janesville, Wisconsin, campus, and has described a modified PUREX-style process designed to retain some uranium mixed with plutonium to enhance proliferation resistance.

SHINE CEO Greg Piefer said that he feels confident because SHINE’s existing medical-isotope facility already operates under the same NRC office that would oversee a recycling facility.

Used nuclear fuel recycling will test HALEU economics, ARPA-E’s CURIE safeguards technology, DOE Office of Nuclear Energy follow-on funding, the pace of advanced reactor deployment, and nuclear startups’ ability to finance first-of-a-kind plants without incurring high costs.

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