Curio®, a leader in advanced nuclear recycling technologies, today announced it has been awarded additional funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) to support the further development of Curio’s NuCycle® recycling technology.

The $2.5 million cost-shared funding will be combined with a company investment of approximately $1 million and will be used to validate the selective fluoride volatility and electrowinning unit operations of the NuCycle process at the lab scale using actual used nuclear fuel (UNF) and transuranics (TRU). Curio’s overall goal is to develop a scaled prototype laboratory and demonstration plant capable of processing up to 4,000 metric tons of UNF by the end of 2027.

“We remain encouraged by the Trump Administration’s forward-looking actions in support of innovation surrounding the recycling of used nuclear fuel,” said Ed McGinnis, CEO of Curio. “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.”

In 2023, ARPA-E and Curio began working on the “Closing the Cycle with NuCycle” project with a cost-share award of $5M that enabled side-by-side lab demonstrations of the complete NuCycle® flowsheet at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). In September 2025, Curio announced the project met key go/no-go milestones, delivering unprecedented insights into the NuCycle process’ chemistry and kinetics. The funding announced today will enable further research at PNNL and Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL).

At PNNL, research will focus on fluorination experiments to validate NuCycle’s ability to separate uranium from other harmful radioactive materials, producing recycled nuclear fuel that meets the industry’s strict safety and quality standards. Meanwhile, the team at SRNL will focus on building and testing electrowinning equipment that will use ultra-high temperatures and electricity to pull transuranics out of a liquid salt and collect them safely as a solid metal mixture.

Concurrently, Curio will establish regulatory compliance pathways and translate experimental results into preliminary engineering designs. This includes developing and submitting a regulatory engagement plan, completing white papers addressing key regulatory questions, performing regulatory exemptions analysis, and delivering conceptual design reports for both the fluorination and electrowinning process equipment with preliminary process flow diagrams, equipment specifications, and cost estimates.

Today’s announcement of additional funding follows February’s news that Curio was among five U.S. companies to receive a DOE grant related to UNF research & development efforts. Several additional updates – Curio’s MOUs with NuScale, Framatome, Sargent & Lundy and Utilities Service Alliance, among others, and the start of its Part 70 operating license application process – indicate that the company is rapidly approaching its goal of deployment by EOY 2027.

About Curio

Curio (https://www.curio.energy/) stands at the forefront of nuclear technology innovation, driving breakthroughs in sustainable nuclear power generation, fuel recycling, and waste management to usher in the 2nd Nuclear Era®. Committed to pioneering new solutions that reshape the future of nuclear energy, Curio is fostering partnerships and innovations that will redefine the industry for generations to come. Curio has achieved lab-scale validation across four DOE national labs, secured millions in competitive federal grants, and partnered with Utilities Service Alliance (USA) for collaboration and supplier-partner agreement options for its 18 operating U.S. member reactors. Curio was recently recognized by Fast Company Magazine, which named NuCycle as a winner of the 2026 World Changing Ideas Awards.

About ARPA-E

ARPA-E is the disruption wing of the DOE that funds and directs the discovery of outlier energy technologies that are strategic to America’s energy security. Learn more about these efforts and ARPA-E’s commitment to ensuring American-made energy for all through U.S. leadership in developing and deploying advanced energy technologies Homepage | ARPA-E.

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