Kurion – a small U.S. company known for its technology’s ongoing role in helping to decontaminate water at Japan’s damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant – has announced a deal with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory that will enable testing of its systems at Hanford.
Under a contract announced Monday, Kurion will pay PNNL to test its Modular Vitrification System at the Washington site.
“Potential suppliers to the Department of Energy traditionally relied on government funding to test their technologies,” Kurion founder John Raymont said in a release. “With increasing pressure on government budgets, particularly in funding innovative nuclear waste-management technologies, we are breaking from the traditional approach and taking on this development risk ourselves, a trademark of venture capital-backed companies and a value that Kurion brings to its customers.”
The lab will further existing Kurion research on its proprietary, zeolite-based Ion Specific Media (ISM) and will “demonstrate the immobilization of radionuclides captured on Kurion Ion Specific Media,” according to the release. The lab will use radioactive simulants to research how ISM is volume reduced and vitrified using the company’s technology. The research will include demonstrations on the low activity waste feed to the Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant.
The company has been studying whether its modular system can lower the cost of stabilizing waste from Fukushima and from tanks of liquid waste at Hanford.
Kurion, based in Irvine, Calif., was founded in 2008 and is backed by Lux Capital Management and Firelake Capital Management.