The United States should modernize the Atomic Energy Act to better align with new recycling technologies that are safer and more proliferation-resistant than older methods. Updating this decades-old law would create a more efficient licensing process for commercial facilities, which is necessary to reduce nuclear waste and reestablish American leadership in the energy market, according to the authors of the newly released report.
The report notes that under the original framework, “all recycling facilities were designed to recover weapons-grade pure plutonium,” leading the government to treat every site as a potential production facility for weapons material. However, the authors state that “new advanced recycling facilities may not recover pure plutonium and would not pose the same safety and environmental risks as older recycling facilities; consequently, they do not need to be licensed in the same manner.”
In plain terms, the current laws were written at a time when nuclear recycling was almost exclusively associated with making materials for nuclear weapons. Because of this history, any company wanting to recycle fuel today must go through an incredibly difficult and strict permitting process designed for the Cold War era. Modern technologies are focused on producing energy and are much harder to misuse for weapons, so updating the law would allow the government to create a faster, more appropriate oversight system that reflects how these new systems actually work.
The report “The Case for Commercial Recycling of Used Nuclear Fuel: Assessment and Recommendations” was published by the Energy Innovation Reform Project in Fairfax, Virginia, in April 2026. It was prepared by a team of experts including Dr. Christina Leggett, Paul J. Saunders, and Samuel Thernstrom.
