New Analysis Reveals Decades of Ineffective Spending on Nuclear Transmutation — While the Plutonium Problem Remains Unsolved

Paris, February 2026 — A new technical preprint published on Zenodo exposes a striking paradox at the heart of global nuclear waste policy: since 1991, governments have invested approximately €12 billion in “partitioning and transmutation” research — a technology repeatedly promised to solve the nuclear waste problem

The €12 billion estimate should be read as a conservative floor rather than a full-cost measure. It includes only directly traceable program expenditures and excludes key system costs—research labor, institutional infrastructure and overhead, and long-run coordination/governance activities—which, given the scale and duration of the policy-research ecosystem, could plausibly amount to several additional billion euros.

— despite a peer-reviewed scientific analysis published in 1990 demonstrating that this approach cannot work under current conditions.

Thirty-five years later, the result is zero.

Not a single country operates industrial-scale transmutation. Meanwhile, 565 tonnes of separated plutonium and over 400,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel continue to accumulate worldwide.

The Ignored Warning

In 1988, Professor Alain Elayi presented a dual constraint at an international symposium, later published in a peer-reviewed journal (1990) Available at: https://alain-elayi.fr/transmutation:

1. Transmutation claims are meaningless if plutonium — which dominates long-term radiotoxicity — is excluded from the assessment.
2. Even if plutonium is included, transmutation cannot function as a practical strategy unless it is feasible at inventory scale with available technologies.

The conclusion was explicit: “Reactor transmutation is not feasible with present technological options.”

This boundary condition has never been met — yet funding continued unabated.

A Pattern of Failure

The pattern: Each time a programme fails, transmutation is invoked to justify the next one. The boundary condition is never addressed.

Even If It Worked, It Would Cost Trillions

The preprint calculates that even under optimistic assumptions: – Neutralizing annual plutonium production would require 80–90 dedicated fast reactors – Addressing existing stocks (565 tonnes) would require several hundred GWe over decades – Estimated cost: trillions of euros — a scale that renders the entire approach economically absurd

Who Is Responsible?

The analysis identifies a governance failure, not a scientific one: – Two-thirds of the €12 billion went to projects where transmutation served as post-hoc justification for fast-reactor infrastructures in difficulty – Decision-makers repeatedly treated transmutation as a “solution” rather than exploratory research – No systematic mechanism existed to enforce the boundary condition as a decision filter

Call for Action

Professor Elayi’s preprint concludes with three governance recommendations applicable to any long-horizon R&D programme:

1. Mandatory boundary-condition checks before classifying programmes as “solutions”
2. Standardized portfolio reporting distinguishing exploratory research from solution claims
3. Explicit stop/reclassification triggers when boundary conditions are not met

Resources

• Technical preprint (Zenodo): https://zenodo.org/records/18248509
• DOI:5281/zenodo.18248509
• Original 1990 article: Elayi, Radioactive Waste Management and the Nuclear Fuel Cycle 14(4), 275–284 Available at https://alain-elayi.fr/transmutation

Scientechnix is an independent consultancy since 1990 with no commercial interest in transmutation technologies.