nuclear-news

A Canadian lab ran real spent nuclear fuel through one chemical process and stripped 89% of its long-lived danger in 24 hours

By Kevin Montien, August 7, 2026,https://www.vozpopuli.com/indux/en/a-canadian-lab-ran-real-spent-nuclear-fuel-through-one-chemical-process-and-stripped-89-of-its-long-lived-danger-in-24-hours/8154/

A Canadian laboratory has carried out a chemical test with real spent fuel from a commercial CANDU reactor and extracted 89.4% of its plutonium into molten salt in 24 hours. After 60 hours, the figure rose to 94.3%, while almost all the uranium remained outside the salt. That is a serious technical result, not a computer model.

But no electricity has been generated from the recovered material. The test validated the first stage of Moltex Energy’s Waste to Stable Salt process, known as WATSS, while the company’s planned 300-megawatt electric reactor remains in development and must still pass a much deeper regulatory process. The chemistry worked, but the power plant does not yet exist.

How WATSS separates the material

Spent nuclear fuel contains uranium, fission products and transuranic elements such as plutonium and americium. WATSS uses a high-temperature chloride salt and a carefully chosen reducing metal to convert transuranic oxides into forms that dissolve in the salt, while most of the uranium oxide stays solid.

This is a group-separation process, not a method for producing pure plutonium. In the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories tests, niobium was used as the reducing metal, and uranium carry-over into the salt was only 0.05% after 24 hours and 0.02% after 60 hours. The process moved the target material without dragging the bulk uranium along with it.

The location of the work matters too. Canadian Nuclear Laboratories carried out the experiments in shielded hot cells at Chalk River, using irradiated fuel rather than a laboratory substitute. That moves WATSS beyond the familiar stage where a promising idea works only with simulated waste.

Why this matters for nuclear waste

That percentage matters because Transuranic elements are heavier than uranium and include isotopes that remain radioactive for thousands of years, helping drive the need for deep isolation over geological timescales. Removing and later fissioning much of that inventory could reduce the long-lived burden, although it cannot make every waste stream disappear.

Canada has now selected the Revell Batholith in northwestern Ontario for its proposed deep geological repository, after Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation and the Township of Ignace agreed to advance the project. The regulatory process began in January 2026, so the country has a chosen location but not an operating repository.

Meanwhile, the inventory keeps growing. Canada had about 3.4 million used fuel bundles as of 2025 and generates roughly 90,000 more each year, according to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization. A new recycling route could change what eventually goes underground, but it would not remove the need for a final disposal system.

A reactor designed to consume the recovered salt

Moltex plans to turn the concentrated transuranic salt into fuel for its Stable Salt Reactor Wasteburner, or SSR-W. The design is a fast-spectrum molten salt reactor rated at about 300 megawatts electric, with molten chloride fuel held inside fuel tubes and grouped into assemblies rather than circulated through a conventional solid-fuel core.

Fast neutrons are central to the idea. They can fission heavy isotopes that today’s thermal reactors use poorly, producing electricity while converting part of the long-lived inventory into fission products that are, for the most part, shorter-lived. Those products still require management, but the most persistent part of the waste can, to a large extent, become fuel instead of remaining untouched in storage.

Moltex estimates that about 260,000 used CANDU bundles expected at Point Lepreau by the end of the plant’s life could fuel one SSR-W for 60 years. The company also says the combined system could cut the repository footprint needed for that material by as much as 80%. Those are engineering projections tied to a facility that has not been built, not operating results.

The waste is already at Point Lepreau

Point Lepreau has operated on the Bay of Fundy since 1983, and its used fuel remains on site. NB Power says each bundle spends seven to ten years under water in a pool about the size of an Olympic swimming pool before moving into above-ground concrete dry-storage containers.

The amount looks surprisingly compact. NB Power says all the fuel used at the station since 1983 could fit within roughly one-third of an NHL hockey rink if stacked like firewood from the ice to the top of the boards. But a small footprint does not mean a small obligation, because the bundles must still be secured, monitored and eventually placed into a long-term management system.

The hardest part comes after the lab

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission completed a Phase 1 vendor design review of the SSR-W in 2021. Regulators found that Moltex generally understood the high-level intent of Canadian requirements, but they also identified additional work, and the review did not approve construction or issue a reactor license.

WATSS entered a separate pre-licensing consultation with the regulator in 2025. In its latest update, Moltex said the hot-cell work had “significantly advanced our understanding of the WATSS process,” while also stating that it intends to continue the remaining development stages and re-engage with regulators, utilities and governments as work resumes.

That leaves major questions around full-scale processing, fuel production, reactor performance, secondary waste, safeguards, cost and financing. The 24-hour extraction is a milestone, but it is not yet a power plant.

The latest statement was published on Moltex Energy.

Kevin Montien

Social communicator and journalist with extensive experience in creating and editing digital content for high-impact media outlets. He stands out for his ability to write news articles, cover international events and his multicultural vision, reinforced by his English language training (B2 level) obtained in Australia.

August 22, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, wastes | Leave a comment