Curio, led by Energy Dept. veteran, aims to recycle nuclear waste

Ed McGinnis knows a lot about the nuclear waste problem in the United States. He worked in U.S. Department of Energy from 1991 to 2021 and dealt directly with the U.S. government’s failed effort to build a nuclear waste repository in Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

“I certainly have the tire tracks on my back” from trying to lead the United States to develop and execute a long-term storage plan for nuclear waste, McGinnis told CNBC in a phone conversation in June.

“Essentially, both parties have said it’s politically unworkable” to find a permanent solution, McGinnis told CNBC. “But during the meantime, we have a huge, huge unresolved problem representing pretty much the largest ball and chain on the ankle of the U.S. nuclear energy sector that’s trying to transition itself for the next generation of reactors.”

McGinnis no longer works for the government, but he is still working to solve the nuclear waste problem at the helm of a startup called Curio, founded in 2020 by brothers Yechezkel and Yehudah Moskowitz as part of their investment holding company, Synergos Holdings.

The brothers founded Curio to develop next-generation advanced nuclear reactors. After some research, they decided there were already many companies innovating in that space, but far less competition to deal with the nuclear waste problem.

The United States generates about 2,000 metric tons of new nuclear waste per year, adding to the approximately 86,000 tons that are already generated. Reprocessing nuclear waste is one way to make it less radioactive, but there’s only enough capacity in the world to reprocess 2,400 tons per year, and most of that is in France (1,700 metric tons) and Russia (400 metric tons).

The pre-revenue, ten-person startup is still in the very early stages of a capital-intensive, long-term build out. But it aims to have a pilot facility up and running in six years and a commercial nuclear waste reprocessing facility up and running by 2035, McGinnis told CNBC.

Curio’s commercial plant will have a capacity of 4,000 metric tons when fully built out. It will cost $5 billion to build and it will be about the size of an NFL football stadium.

“We would take title of all 86,000 metric tons and the federal government and the public would never see that high level radioactive material on their books again, we would take the burden of it,” McGinnis said. “And we would take trash and turn it into products and treasures. That’s our business line.”