BERKELEY, Calif., Sept. 22, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Deep Isolation Nuclear, Inc. (OTCQB: DBHL) (“Deep Isolation” or the “Company”), a leading innovator in nuclear waste disposal technology, today announced results from a three-year U.S. Department of Energy-funded project showing that deep borehole disposal could provide a safe and cost-effective pathway for permanent disposal of waste generated by recycling used nuclear fuel.
Deep Isolation’s analysis performed as part of the project found that all disposal scenarios studied were projected to cost less than the program’s target of 0.1 cent per kilowatt-hour of electricity generated. Long-term safety analyses also found that all scenarios under expected conditions met the study’s safety performance criteria, with projected public radiation doses in most scenarios analyzed orders of magnitude below the 10 millirem-per-year regulatory benchmark used in the analysis. The results of the study could help address an important challenge facing the nuclear industry: how to safely and economically manage waste from future nuclear fuel recycling.
The research was conducted as part of the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E CURIE program in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory, Oklo Inc. (NYSE: OKLO) and Case Western Reserve University. Deep Isolation developed the waste disposal component of the project, evaluating how waste from recycled nuclear fuel could be packaged and permanently isolated in deep boreholes.
“This project shows the value of designing recycling and disposal systems together rather than treating waste management as a downstream consideration,” said Jesse Sloane, Executive Vice President of Engineering at Deep Isolation. “Working alongside Argonne National Lab and Oklo, we developed a technically grounded disposal pathway that could support the economics of future fuel recycling while safely isolating the resulting waste. These findings give us another important building block toward an integrated and sustainable nuclear fuel cycle.”
Deep Isolation’s work focused on the full disposal pathway for waste produced through fuel recycling, from understanding the waste and how it would be packaged to designing a repository and evaluating its long-term safety and economics. The analysis considered Deep Isolation’s Universal Canister System (UCS) in both horizontal and vertical deep borehole configurations.
Oklo is developing an integrated fuel strategy for used fuel recycling, fuel fabrication, and power generation. It plans to recover usable fuel materials through pyroprocessing, fabricate that material into fuel, and use that fuel in its advanced fast reactors.
“Closing the fuel cycle is about unlocking the full value of used nuclear fuel — recovering its energy potential and extracting isotopes, while safely and permanently managing what remains,” said Ed Petit de Mange, Vice President of Fuel Recycling at Oklo. “This three-year study shows what’s possible when we design recycling and disposal together: an integrated approach that can meet rigorous safety standards while keeping disposal costs low. That’s the model we should work toward as we build the infrastructure for a more complete nuclear fuel cycle.”
Hosts of Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses, a new Department of Energy effort to strengthen and modernize the nation’s full nuclear fuel cycle, are exploring fuel recycling as a previously untapped energy resource. Within each Innovation Campus, permanent disposal will remain an essential part of managing the resulting waste. The CURIE findings could help Deep Isolation, fuel-cycle companies and advanced reactor developers plan recycling and disposal together from the outset to meet a campus’ needs, supporting a more integrated approach to the future nuclear fuel cycle.
“CURIE was structured to address several of the technical and economic challenges that need to be considered together as fuel recycling technologies advance,” said Krista Hawthorne, Section Manager, Pyroprocess Engineering, at Argonne National Laboratory. “By bringing together expertise in oxide reduction, process monitoring, fuel-cycle planning and waste disposal, this team has developed a more integrated understanding of how these systems could work together. Deep Isolation’s disposal work provides an important component of that broader fuel-cycle strategy.”
The CURIE project builds on Deep Isolation’s broader ARPA-E-funded work advancing integrated nuclear waste solutions, including the development of the UCS through Project UPWARDS under ARPA-E’s ONWARDS program. The triple-purpose UCS is designed to support storage, transportation and disposal of a range of advanced reactor and fuel-cycle waste streams.
About Deep Isolation
Deep Isolation (OTCQB: DBHL) is the first company to undertake development of technologies for nuclear waste disposal in deep boreholes. When commercialized, Deep Isolation’s solution will offer a unique approach to help countries identify, plan for and complete the necessary steps to dispose of their nuclear waste inventories. With over 100 patents issued to date, Deep Isolation’s technology is being designed to leverage proven drilling practices to allow safe isolation of waste deep underground in horizontal, vertical, or slanted borehole repositories. Deep Isolation’s Universal Canister System was developed through a three-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy and is engineered to support integrated management of spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste from legacy and advanced reactors across storage, transportation, and eventual disposal. In January 2026, Deep Isolation launched a full-scale, at-depth deep borehole Commercialization Pilot for its solution at Cameron, Texas, in collaboration with the Deep Borehole Demonstration Center, Halliburton (NYSE: HAL), Amentum (NYSE: AMTM), NAC International (TYO: 7004), and Occlusion Nuclear Solutions.
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Forward-Looking Statements
Statements contained in this news release that are not historical facts are “forward-looking information” or “forward-looking statements” (collectively, “forward-looking statements”) within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding our plans, objectives and expectations for our business, the future growth of our business and the nuclear energy and nuclear waste disposal industries as a whole, and future benefits expected to arise from our strategic partnerships. In certain cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words and phrases or variations of words and phrases or statements such as “may,” “should,” “expect,” “intend,” “plan,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “predict,” “will,” “could,” “project,” “target,” “potential,” “continue” and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are based on management’s belief and assumptions, including current expectations and projections about future events and trends, and on information currently available to management.
Forward-looking statements in this or any other news release are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks, uncertainties, and assumptions are subject to a number of factors, including, among others: the failure of a market to develop for our deep borehole disposal solutions as quickly as we expect or at all; a failure of demand for our solution to develop sufficiently; regulatory and legal developments, including issues relating to obtaining regulatory approvals or permissions on the timelines we expect or at all; our lack of profitability; delays or failure in our initiative to complete a full-scale, at-depth demonstration of our Universal Canister System and our deep borehole solution; our failure to enter into contracts with customers or, once we do enter into contracts, to continue such contractual relationships or to receive new contract awards; our dependency on governmental contracts and awards and our ability to finalize negotiations on same; our failure to manage our growth effectively or to execute our business plan; our failure to sustain and expand relationships with governmental entities and strategic partners; a failure in the assumptions or analyses we have used in supporting forecasts or plans; our inability to commercialize our products at scale; the development or deployment of other technologies or solutions supplanting or competing with our technologies; challenges to our intellectual property; failures to protect, maintain, enforce, and enhance our intellectual property, and claims by others of intellectual property infringement; political and public perceptions of nuclear energy, including perceptions as to accidents or other high-profile events involving nuclear power facilities or radioactive materials; our liquidity and ability to raise capital; any inability to control operating and project costs and project delays or other project-related problems; security (including cybersecurity) breaches or disruptions; geopolitical, macroeconomic, domestic events or crises, including supply chain disruptions and other risks and uncertainties outside of our control; weather and effects of climate change; and litigation or legal proceedings that may be brought against us.
The foregoing is not an exhaustive list of all the factors that may cause any forward-looking statements to prove inaccurate or our actual results to differ materially from our expectations and forecasts. Moreover, we operate in a highly regulated environment. New risks emerge from time to time. It is not possible for our management to predict all risks, nor can we assess the impact of all factors on our business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements we may make. In light of these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, the future events and trends discussed in this release may not occur and actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements, and we cannot guarantee future results, performance, or achievements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements for any reason after the date of this release or to conform these statements to actual results or revised expectations, except as required by law.
Additional information concerning the factors above and other factors will be found in the Company’s public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), including the sections titled “Forward-Looking Statements” and “Risk Factors” in the Company’s Reports on Form 10-K and 10-Q for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025 and the quarter ending March 31, 2026, respectively, as filed with the SEC on March 30, 2026, our Form S-1, originally filed August 18, 2025 and subsequently amended, our Proxy Statement for our 2026 Annual Meeting as filed on April 29, 2026, and in filings with the SEC that will be made in the future. The Company’s SEC filings are available free of charge at www.sec.gov or upon written request to Deep Isolation at InvestorRelations@deepisolation.com or CorpSec@deepisolation.com.
