Transmutex receives $4 million grant to enable nuclear waste transmutation
Summary
Geneva-based startup Transmutex has received more than $4.2 million from the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy as part of the NEWTON Program. Under the Nuclear Energy Waste Transmutation Optimized Now (NEWTON) program, ARPA-E will support efforts to create transmutation technologies that could greatly reduce the mass, volume, activity, and effective half-life of the current stockpile of commercial UNF, potentially transforming the disposal of UNF from a long-term, intergenerational challenge into a more immediate, intragenerational issue.Swiss startup Transmutex was awarded a grant of $4,293,007 for the project Highly Reliable Ion Source and Injection Beamline to Maximize Proton Beam Availability in Los Alamos. Aiming to address the long-standing challenge of managing long-lived radioactive waste, Transmutex employs cutting-edge scientific approaches, likely including accelerator-driven systems (ADS) and fast neutron reactors.As part of the NEWTON program, Transmutex will modify a commercial ion source to reach the reliability required for efficient operation of the accelerator and the overall system. The project includes broad engineering improvements, followed by an extensive testing campaign to identify potential sources of failures. The projects overarching goal is to enable nuclear waste transmutation to transform long-lived radioactive elements into shorter-lived ones, reducing their hazardous lifetime from 1 million years to a few hundred years.The company is collaborating with Los Alamos National Laboratory, University of Maryland, Viam and TechSource, Inc on this project.