The U.S. and 21 other countries at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai on Saturday agreed to work together on “tripling nuclear energy capacity globally by 2050,” according to a Department of Energy press release.
Among other things, including the continued development of new nuclear reactors and encouraging financial organizations to invest in nuclear energy, the pledge calls for signees to make sure “that fuel waste is responsibly managed for the long term.”
The Department of Energy posted the text of the nuclear energy pledge on its website.
In the U.S. alone, there is about 90,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from civilian nuclear power plants awaiting final disposal, according to an accounting published in 2022 by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.