Company Overview: Metatomic, Inc., a SC company, was formed in 2016 to develop technologies for recycling the large and increasing accumulation of commercial light water reactor (LWR) spent nuclear fuel (SNF) in the U.S.

The Problem: SNF is hazardous for thousands of years (NRC.gov). Over 90,000 metric tons of SNF from 93 LWRs operating at 56 plants has accumulated at such plants over the past decades, and approximately 2,000 metric tons are added each year. Storage costs to U.S. taxpayers are in the billions of dollars per the GAO, and SNF presents both long-term security and environmental risks. Although deemed “spent,” SNF still has approximately 95% of its potential to produce electricity, i.e., enough energy to produce electricity (and related jobs) for hundreds of years (Argonne National Lab).

The Solution: Molten salt reactors (MSRs) offer many advantages over LWRs. In the 1960s, a Thermal Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) was built and run for several years at Oak Ridge National Labs (ORNL). In September 2024, Natura Resources, a consortium of Georgia Tech, Texas A&M, Univ. of Texas, and Abilene Christian University received approval to construct a “Thermal” MSR for teaching purposes. Alarmingly, China has already built a working Thorium-based Thermal MSR in the Gobi Desert. One drawback of Thermal MSRs is that they still produce considerable amounts of waste.

Fast Molten Salt Reactors: A second generation of MSRs known as “Fast” MSRs, will burn up most of their fuel and leave comparatively minimal waste. Notably, Bill Gates’ TerraPower, Southern Company, Inc. and Core Power (US) Inc. are working together on a Fast MSR. Per the DOE, fast reactors use “100 times less uranium required to produce the same amount of energy as water-cooled systems if the fuel is continuously recycled in a fast reactor” leading to a “90% reduction in nuclear waste.”

In anticipation of deployment of MSRs, Metatomic has developed, and in 2020 patented, technologies for conversion of SNF to salt fuel for MSRs. See U.S. Patent No. 10,685,753, European Patent No.  EP3970163B1, and others. Metatomic’s technology offers both Thermal and Fast MSR reactor owners/operators the opportunity to safely access existing SNF for MSR fuel, using Metatomic’s non-aqueous “dry” conversion process. Additionally, if such new fuel is used in Fast MSRs, the SNF can essentially be “burned up,” thereby closing the nuclear fuel cycle. By reclaiming uranium from SNF for use in MSR fuel, Metatomic’s process would reduce the need to buy uranium from Russia and China and the need to mine U.S. uranium, a strategic asset.

In contrast to the conventional PUREX process for recycling SNF, which separates uranium and plutonium from SNF to produce LWR fuel, Metatomic’s technologies are much simpler, and importantly, use no heavy metal separations. Consequently, Metatomic’s processes generate no plutonium or other heavy metal constituent waste streams and instead maintain plutonium and all other heavy metal SNF constituents together throughout conversion to MSR fuel, thus making the Metatomic® processes intrinsically proliferation resistant.

Facilities based on Metatomic’s processing can be of a scalable and flexible architecture. Scalability will allow production of molten salt fuel at either large regional SNF storage sites or compactly on existing LWR sites with collocated MSRs (which would thereby eliminate the need to ship SNF off-site for processing).

In 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy recognized the potential of Metatomic’s technology and awarded Metatomic $500,000 in research support at Savannah River National Laboratory.

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