Kurion Unveils New Technologies to Reduce Nuclear Waste Management Life-Cycle Costs and Accelerate Project Performance

Company emerges from stealth, facilitating nuclear power’s clean energy claim by cost-effectively isolating waste from the environment

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Kurion, Inc., an innovator in nuclear waste management, emerged today from a two year development period to announce several major achievements regarding its proprietary technologies to reduce nuclear waste management life-cycle costs, accelerate project performance, and facilitate clean, safe, secure nuclear power:

“Kurion hopes to enables the first widespread application of this top-rated waste stabilization technology. When the MVS® is used together with the Company’s complimentary ISM, the technologies offer customers powerful tools to cost effectively solve a wider range of waste management challenges than possible by a single technology strategy.”

• Completion of efficacy testing demonstrating the core technologies of its Modular Vitrification System (MVS®), a proprietary in-container, hot-walled induction process that the company is maturing into the first scalable and low cost application of vitrification. Vitrification is a volume reduction and stabilization process that immobilizes waste in a leach-resistant glass matrix so that the resulting waste form provides the ultimate assurance of long-term environmental isolation.
• Successful acceptance testing and start-up of its pilot MVS®. While extensive testing has been done in the past on various implementations of its vitrification technology, this new pilot system is the first in a series of more sophisticated and ever-larger systems to commercialize the technology. The first in a long series of tests on simulated waste streams is scheduled to commence in December 2010.
• Successful demonstration of its family of Ion Specific Media (ISM) on simulated and actual waste streams. Designed to separate tank waste constituents between higher and lower activity streams, the ISM significantly reduces follow-on stabilization, packaging, handling, and disposal costs. The inorganic Kurion media are robust, easy to pump and handle, and exhibit extremely high (precise) ion selectivity over a wide range of pH. The ISM combined with the MVS yields a total and maximally efficient solution.
• Completion of a contract to CH2MHill Plateau Remediation Company (CHPRC) evaluating use of its MVS to safely encapsulate uranium metal bearing sludges presently stored at the Hanford K-Basins spent fuel pool (see follow-on press release).

“After studying every part of the fuel cycle from uranium mining to new modular reactors, we identified the biggest unsolved problem in nuclear power: what to do with the waste?” said Lux Capital Co-Founder and Managing Partner Josh Wolfe. “Lux Capital led an investment in Kurion because we believe the opportunity to deliver technologies that facilitate nuclear power as a clean energy source represented a huge opportunity, both directly, and indirectly in the clean-up of the nation’s cold war legacy. Kurion is a high-tech business solving the single biggest known but underreported problem in energy and environment, today a more than $10 billion annual market. We sought to back the best and CEO John Raymont has assembled a veteran team of nuclear industry all-stars.”

“Our objective is to enable the broad application of vitrification, the ‘gold standard’ of waste stabilization, by dramatically changing its scalability, time to delivery and cost, so it becomes the go-to approach rather than the one to avoid,” said Kurion President and CEO John Raymont. “Kurion hopes to enables the first widespread application of this top-rated waste stabilization technology. When the MVS® is used together with the Company’s complimentary ISM, the technologies offer customers powerful tools to cost effectively solve a wider range of waste management challenges than possible by a single technology strategy.”

Chief Technology Officer Dr. Mark Denton said that “The Company is creating novel technologies that are flexible and scalable allowing solutions tailored to customer preference and scale while changing the cost paradigm. For example, Kurion technologies can be applied to uniquely mitigate or eliminate stranded Class B/C wastes presently in storage at the nation’s nuclear power plants or in support of the approximately $200B clean-up mission of the U.S. DOE Office of Environmental Management, lowering customer life-cycle costs in both cases.

ABOUT KURION

KURION PROVIDES INNOVATIVE, EASILY DEPLOYABLE TECHNOLOGIES TO ACCELERATE PROJECT PERFORMANCE AND COMPLIANCE AND SUBSTANTIALLY REDUCE CUSTOMER RADIOACTIVE WASTE MANAGEMENT LIFE-CYCLE COSTS. FOUNDED IN 2008, KURION IS BACKED BY LEADING ENERGY INVESTORS LUX CAPITAL MANAGEMENT AND FIRELAKE CAPITAL MANAGEMENT. HEADQUARTERED IN NEW YORK, KURION OPERATES R&D FACILITIES IN OAK RIDGE, TN AND ROLLA, MO. FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE VISIT WWW.KURION.COM.