Canada's New Reactor Is Turning 3 Million Nuclear Waste Bundles Into Fuel

Canada has spent decades storing millions of spent nuclear fuel bundles, with some radioactive materials remaining dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. Now, engineers in New Brunswick are developing a radical idea: recycle the long-lived elements in CANDU waste and use them as fuel instead of burying them forever. Moltex Energy's WATSS process has reportedly extracted around 90% of the transuranic material from real spent CANDU fuel in a Canadian Nuclear Laboratories demonstration. The proposed SSR-W reactor could turn this so-called nuclear waste into electricity while dramatically reducing the long-term radioactive burden that Canada must store. But with major licensing, engineering, cost, and proliferation challenges still ahead, can Canada's nuclear waste actually become the fuel for its next generation of power?