SHINE joins US consortium to plan commercial nuclear fuel recycling

Used-fuel recycling has long run into the same bottleneck: the industry can sketch the chemistry, but still lacks the tools to prove economics, security and licensing readiness for a real plant. SHINE Technologies has now stepped into that gap by joining MARIE, an EPRI-led consortium backed by ARPA-E’s CURIE program to build analytical tools for the first commercial nuclear fuel recycling facilities.

SHINE said the consortium work is meant to help the U.S. nuclear sector evaluate and underwrite those plants before large capital is committed. The company is targeting a pilot recycling facility able to process 100 tonnes of used fuel a year in the early 2030s, with the broader aim of turning the roughly 90,000 metric tonnes of used fuel already in U.S. storage into a strategic energy resource instead of a stranded liability.

The policy and technical backdrop is stark. ARPA-E’s CURIE program says the United States has accumulated about 86,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel from light-water reactors, with about 2,000 tons added each year, and that more than 90% of the fuel’s potential energy still remains. CURIE is focused on reprocessing technologies, integrated monitoring and materials accountancy, and facility design and systems analysis, exactly the areas that determine whether a recycling concept can survive the jump from paper studies to a licensed plant.

MARIE is being framed as a facility-optimization effort, not just a research project. In ARPA-E and EPRI material, the work targets a 20% reduction in back-end costs versus storage and a 20% reduction in disposal costs versus a mined repository. SHINE said the tool will also help sort out safeguards, licensing and isotope market questions, the commercial variables that usually decide whether a first-of-a-kind nuclear project can secure financing.

On the same day, SHINE and France-based newcleo announced a separate collaboration linking SHINE’s recycling capabilities with newcleo’s advanced fuel manufacturing and reactor plans. The companies said they will explore recycled fuel streams for advanced reactors and whether material recovered from used light-water-reactor fuel could feed newcleo’s MOX manufacturing plans. Newcleo says it has completed the preparatory review phase of the French ASNR authorisation process and is submitting safety options for its LFR reactor designs and MOX plant, while U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission records show pre-application engagement began in March 2026 for a lead-cooled fast reactor and associated MOX fuel-fabrication facility in the United States.

SHINE had already signed a U.S. used-fuel recycling memorandum with Orano in February 2024 to develop a pilot plant for light-water-reactor fuel. With MARIE and the newcleo collaboration, the pitch is shifting from concept and consortium language toward the harder test: whether a first commercial recycling plant can be licensed, financed and built.