Curio has received an additional $2.5 million in cost-shared funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy to advance the development of its NuCycle nuclear recycling technology.
Curio will combine the federal funding with approximately $1 million of company investment to validate portions of the NuCycle process at laboratory scale using actual used nuclear fuel and transuranic materials.
The work will focus on selective fluoride volatility and electrowinning, two processes Curio intends to use to separate and recover materials from used nuclear fuel.
At Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, researchers will conduct fluorination experiments designed to validate NuCycle’s ability to separate uranium from other radioactive materials.
Work at Savannah River National Laboratory will focus on developing electrowinning equipment that uses high temperatures and electricity to remove transuranic materials from liquid salt and collect them as a solid metal mixture.
Curio is also developing regulatory pathways and preliminary engineering designs for the technology.
The company’s broader goal is to build a scaled prototype laboratory and demonstration facility capable of processing as much as 4,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel by the end of 2027.
ARPA-E and Curio began their Closing the Cycle with NuCycle project in 2023 with an initial $5 million cost-share award supporting demonstrations at Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Curio said the project reached key technical milestones in September 2025.
KEY QUOTES:
“We remain encouraged by the Trump Administration’s forward-looking actions in support of innovation surrounding the recycling of used nuclear fuel. This additional funding is further evidence that the DOE intends to embrace new technologies that will not only reduce the amount of nuclear waste in storage, but also capitalize on the untapped resources even beyond fuel that are currently sitting in domestic reserves. We stand ready to help lead the U.S. into The Second Nuclear Era.”
Ed McGinnis, CEO of Curio
