The U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E NEWTON program has awarded $3.2 million to Argonne National Laboratory and Fermilab to help transform how America handles used nuclear fuel. This stockpile now exceeds 90,000 metric tons.
Turning Waste Into Safer Matter
At the heart of the project is transmutation, a process that converts long-lived radioactive isotopes into shorter-lived ones. Using high-powered particle accelerators, researchers can generate intense neutron beams to “burn” nuclear waste, speeding up decay and reducing long-term storage needs.
Smaller, Smarter Superconducting Cavities
Superconducting accelerator components (cavities) are traditionally large and expensive and require massive liquid helium refrigeration. The Argonne-Fermilab team is developing compact, high-performance cavities using niobium-three-tin (Nb₃Sn), a thin-film technology that significantly reduces cooling needs and size.
- Cavity size could shrink by 3–5×—from water-heater scale to coffee-can size.
- New cryocoolers may eliminate the risk of system-wide shutdowns caused by cryogenic plant failures.
- The goal: 95% uptime to keep transmutation efficient and uninterrupted.R&D Meets Industry
To help bring this breakthrough to market:
- RadiaBeam will work to industrialize the new cavities.
- RadiaSoft will assess reliability and performance.
- Argonne and Fermilab will design and test a complete accelerator-driven system.
The project’s next milestone: demonstrating two full-performance Nb₃Sn-coated cavities for proton acceleration.
What’s next: A Step Toward Solving Nuclear Waste
Argonne Labs aims to create a full-cycle solution for reducing the mass, toxicity, and lifespan of nuclear waste. This could turn a multigenerational storage problem into a solvable challenge within our lifetime.