The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has proven its worth as a hedge against the energy shocks of conflicts like the wars in Ukraine and Iran. But what if the United States were sitting on another energy reserve that has been quietly accumulating for decades and that Washington has persistently mismanaged?
The roughly 95,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel stored at reactor sites across more than 30 states represents an extraordinary stockpile of recoverable energy comparable in scale to major global energy reserves. We have been treating it as garbage. It is a strategic asset, and our adversaries know it.
The case for recycling this fuel has never been stronger, and the window to act has rarely been this open.
The shift from rhetoric to execution has already begun. In May 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring it U.S. policy to “maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of nuclear fuel through recycling, reprocessing, and reinvigorating the commercial sector.” The bipartisan Nuclear REFUEL Act would streamline licensing for modern recycling facilities, removing a primary regulatory barrier that has chilled private investment for decades.
In February 2026, the Department of Energy awarded over $19 million to five companies to develop recycling technologies. Private-sector startups are moving decisively, with Oklo’s $1.68 billion recycling facility in Tennessee exemplifying the scale of investment now underway.
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States aren’t waiting for Washington either. Utah, Idaho, and Tennessee have each put forward serious proposals in response to the Trump DOE’s request for information on nuclear lifecycle programs, with Utah going so far as to publish a detailed policy roadmap for becoming a national hub of spent fuel recovery.
This convergence of executive action, bipartisan legislation, state leadership, market demand, and private innovation is rare. Missing it would be a serious error.
This isn’t merely about domestic energy needs. We are living through a new era of great power competition — one in which energy is a primary lever of geopolitical influence. Russia is aggressively pursuing commercial fuel recycling and offers countries a full-service nuclear package as a tool of geopolitical influence. China is following the same playbook.
By contrast, the U.S. has been absent from this market for decades due to concerns about proliferation. As the Energy Innovation Reform Project noted in a recent analysis, America’s self-imposed restraint has not discouraged rivals from pursuing reprocessing — it has simply ceded the field to them. In that context, a robust American recycling industry is a prerequisite for genuine energy dominance. The U.S. cannot credibly lead a global nuclear renaissance or compete with Moscow and Beijing for influence over the world’s emerging nuclear markets while remaining unable to offer a complete fuel cycle.
Collaborating with allies is a critical piece of the puzzle. Japan, South Korea, and France offer invaluable recycling expertise. Sweden’s Blykalla and France’s Newcleo have both made strategic capital investments in Oklo’s recycling facility. Allied nations see our recycling potential as a shared strategic asset worth backing with real money, especially since most of them prioritize the climate and environmental benefits that come with it.
The more urgent driver is fuel supply. Most next-generation advanced reactors require high-assay low-enriched uranium, a higher-enrichment fuel that barely exists in the domestic market (again due to misguided decisions in Washington). Russia currently holds a near‑monopoly on HALEU production. The U.S. is working to rebuild this capability, but the timeline spans years and leaves a major bottleneck for advanced reactor deployment in the meantime. Recycling used nuclear fuel can produce a uranium-transuranic blend that substitutes for HALEU in many reactor designs, providing a critical domestic stopgap while American enrichment capacity catches up.
The Cold War-era proliferation argument no longer holds up. Iran demonstrated that bad actors can pursue weapons through standard enrichment, which is why the IAEA maintains stringent oversight authority and why diplomacy — and, as a last resort, military force — remains on the table. Modern recycling techniques are inherently more proliferation‑resistant, as they co‑recover transuranic elements rather than isolating pure plutonium. Stolen nuclear material has never led to an attack anywhere in the world. Letting the last gasp of the anti-nuclear movement dictate 21st-century energy strategy is negligence, not caution.
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The foundation must also be fixed. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act’s government-run waste management model has cost ratepayers over $65 billion and delivered nothing. Privatizing that function, as a bipartisan expert group has proposed, would finally send the price signals needed to unlock the recycling market.
The U.S. invented this technology, abandoned it, and is now scrambling to reclaim it. The momentum is real and encouraging. But momentum is not a strategy. While 95,000 tons of recoverable fuel sits idle and Moscow and Beijing build out the fuel cycle we walked away from, half-measures are a luxury we can’t afford. Washington should treat recycling not as an experiment to fund, but as the strategic priority it already is.
Patrick Hynes is a fellow with ConservAmerica.