SHINE Technologies will lead a federally backed project aimed at improving fuel recycling with AI, in partnership with Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois.
The Janesville-based nuclear technology company this week announced it has been chosen for two programs under the U.S. Department of Energy’s $5 billion Genesis Mission, created in November through an executive order.
It outlines a coordinated national effort to “unleash a new age of AI‑accelerated innovation and discovery” leveraging federal scientific data. The agency’s leadership is tasked with using these resources to develop AI agents to augment the scientific process and ultimately achieve more breakthroughs.
Within this broader mission, SHINE has been named the prime recipient on a Phase 1 project tasked with creating an “AI-enabled workflow” to help engineers create better processes for recycling fuels. This goal aligns with the company’s work in the field of recycling spent nuclear fuel, part of its strategy for ultimately achieving commercial fusion energy.
SHINE says U.S. stockpiles contain about 95,000 metric tons of used nuclear fuel that can be recycled to recover valuable materials. In addition to much of its energy potential remaining, the spent fuel also contains valuable metals and isotopes.
“Better process design means recovering more usable material from that stockpile,” the company says of the project’s potential upside.
Along with the Janesville company’s expertise, the project will leverage the Argonne lab’s existing tools, including the AMUSE platform for modeling chemical processes for separating used fuel, and the ARTEMIS modeling system for recycling facility components. They will be augmented with a “new AI layer” being developed through the project to identify design options.
While SHINE is leading the first project, it’s playing a supporting role in another effort under the DOE mission to apply AI to the nuclear energy field.
The Prometheus Phase II project, led by Idaho National Laboratory, will be supported with SHINE’s fuel recycling program data while the company will get early access to the resulting tools being developed.
The DOE last month announced it had secured $800 million in partner funding for the Genesis Mission, which also last month completed its Request for Applications process. DOE Secretary Chris Wright said in a statement the 278 selected projects “represent the very best of our nation’s scientific enterprise.”
See more in the executive order.
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