When David T. Stevenson, the Director of the Caesar Rodney Institute, saw Senator Tom Carper on a train headed to Washington, the opportunity was too good to pass up.
Stevenson was heading home after attending a policy conference about using recycled nuclear waste to produce reliable, clean energy. Sen. Carper was returning to the Capitol and his duties as the head of the US Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works.
Stevenson started up a conversation with Carper and it quickly turned to the possibilities of using recycled nuclear waste to power the country with reliable, clean nuclear energy.
What resulted from that conversation has the potential to change America’s energy future for the next century.
To create energy, nuclear power plants use uranium to heat water which then powers a generator.
However, while nuclear power doesn’t create the greenhouse gases that fossil fuels like coal or crude oil do, it does have a waste problem: nuclear waste. Stevenson explains, “Nuclear fuel rods, which power reactors, have life spans of only 18 to 24 months. Yet once they’re removed from their reactors and placed into on-site cooling ponds, they still retain more than 90 percent of their potential energy. The US every year generates some 2,000 metric tons of this spent nuclear fuel and has accumulated more than 80,000 metric tons in the past 50 years.”
While nuclear energy is one of the most abundant clean energy sources available today, the realities of nuclear waste—and the remaining energy potential of that waste—is real.
Enter “fast reactors.”
Fast nuclear reactors can use recovered uranium (that’s already been used in traditional “light-water” nuclear reactors) to produce enough clean, reliable energy to power the US for over a century. Additionally, after uranium is used in a fast reactor, it only needs to be stored for 300 years, instead of the 500,000 years that light-water reactor uranium must be stored.
This technology was actually developed decades ago and is proven to work: About 17 percent of France’s energy comes from recycled nuclear fuel.
In other words, not only are fast reactors a well-known and tested technology, but they would solve many of America’s current energy concerns.
So why haven’t they been utilized here? CNBC explains:
“In the middle of the last century, nuclear energy was seen as a solution to the eventual exhaustion of limited fossil fuel supplies.
“At the same time, there were concerns that there would not be enough uranium to fuel the conventional nuclear reactors that the United States would need. Fast reactors were developed as a solution to both problems: They create large amounts of energy and use only minimal amounts of uranium fuel, Jess Gehin, associate laboratory director at Idaho National Laboratory, told CNBC.
“But things changed. ‘We started discovering there’s actually quite a bit of uranium. And so there wasn’t such a need to use it as effectively,’ Gehin said.
“Then, [in the 1970s] nuclear energy as a whole started falling out of favor.
“Fast forward to 2022. With energy prices spiking thanks to Russia’s war in Ukraine, and with the growing public cry for energy sources that don’t emit planet-warming greenhouse gases, nuclear power is getting another look. At the same time, innovators are redesigning fast reactor technology to make it more cost-effective.”
Fast reactors aren’t an experimental technology or unproven energy pipe dream. They represent real solutions for America’s energy needs.
Senator Carper has long been an advocate for nuclear energy. So, during his conversation with Stevenson on the train, his interest in fast reactors was piqued.
That conversation turned into many more meetings and a working relationship between Carper, Stevenson, and the Caesar Rodney team. In addition to working with Sen. Caper, the Caesar Rodney team wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on the real potential of using recycled nuclear fuel. The Caesar Rodney team also developed working relationships with Rep. Byron Donald and Rep. Jeff Duncan, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy, Climate, and Grid Security.
Eventually all this work led to Caesar Rodney’s team helping policymakers draft a recycled nuclear fuel amendment to the Atomic Energy Advancement Act. In February 2024, the bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. The final vote was 365 to 36.
There is still much work to be done to usher in the full potential of nuclear energy. That’s why Caesar Rodney’s team is working with lawmakers on specific plans and funding for recycled nuclear energy production.
There are countless people and influences shaping America’s energy path. But seeing how the conversation around nuclear energy has shifted in recent years, it’s safe to say that without the Caesar Rodney Institute—and a serendipitous meeting on a train—America’s energy future would look much different than it does today.
