Findings from deep borehole disposal study hold promise for NLIC initiative

On September 22, Deep Isolation shared the results of a three-year project examining deep borehole disposal of waste produced by recycling spent fuel. The results could have bearing on plans proposed for managing the nation's nuclear waste, including the DOE's Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses (NLIC) program.

The study, "Highly Efficient Electrochemical Oxide Reduction for U/TRU Recovery from LWR Fuel," was pursued as part of the Converting UNF Radioisotopes Into Energy (CURIE) project from the DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program. It represented a collaborative effort by Deep Isolation, Argonne National Laboratory, Case Western Reserve University, and reactor developer Oklo Inc.

After assessing the waste that would be generated by the recycling processes studied, Deep Isolation found that deep borehole disposal could be achieved for a cost less than 0.1 cent per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated with projected public radiation doses meeting targets for safety, landing below a 10 millirem-per-year benchmark in most scenarios. The company noted that these results could support the viability of fuel recycling strategies that Argonne and Oklo are developing.

Complementary research: This latest announcement follows a similar one that the company made in March 2026, in which it celebrated the completion of its part in a study that Oklo performed through ARPA-E's Optimizing Nuclear Waste and Advanced Reactor Disposal Systems (ONWARDS) program.

In that study, Oklo analyzed the possibility of using an electrorefining process established at Argonne to recover uranium and transuranic materials from spent fuel for use in its commercial fast reactors. Deep Isolation determined that deep borehole disposal could be employed to store the waste products from the process, providing one feasible solution to the issue of high-level waste streams from fuel recycling.

The recently concluded CURIE study was led by Argonne; it supported the work done at Oklo by refining the electrochemical oxide reduction (OR) process used to convert spent oxide fuel into the metal form suitable for electrorefining. Deep Isolation researched deep borehole disposal of the wastes from facilities where the OR process would be performed as its contribution to the study.

Connecting to the NLIC initiative: The selection of six states as finalists to host NLICs has placed new emphasis on the topics of spent fuel recycling and disposal, particularly for states interested in pursuing a nuclear energy pathway that embraces the full fuel cycle.

In their initial proposals to be considered for the NLIC program, Idaho, Utah, and Oklahoma each identified deep borehole disposal as a permanent storage option that the state was willing to consider. (At the time of this writing, West Virginia's proposal was not publicly available.) Oklahoma drew on its history of drilling wells for oil and gas production and offered the most detailed analysis of how its approach to deep borehole disposal might look. Using Deep Isolation's site evaluation framework, the state assessed temperature data from its existing wells, proximity to active fault zones, susceptibility to volcanic activity, the "drillability" of its sedimentary rock, and other traits to promote itself as a generally ideal location for this kind of storage.

Much of Oklahoma's proposal discussed deep borehole disposal in the context of Deep Isolation's work, along with Oklo's recycling processes; both companies were listed as potential private-entity partners for Oklahoma's endeavor. The DOE has noted that along with waste from recycling, any state chosen for NLIC must also be willing to accept some of the nation's legacy nuclear waste-currently in temporary storage facilities across 35 states.

The economics of deep boreholes: Deep Isolation's mention of the cost per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated of its processes touched on questions of the economic viability of deep borehole disposal.

In past decades, cost uncertainty led countries like Sweden to explore mined repositories for deep geological storage of nuclear waste. Analyses released since that time by institutions such as Sandia National Laboratories, however, have suggested that deep borehole disposal, which can be deployed in a modular way that allows costs to be distributed over time, might prove more economically feasible in some cases than mined repositories, which carry large upfront expenses.