REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/File Photo4

The U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear security office is developing a project to help other countries handle nuclear waste. The push comes as the United States struggles to find a solution for its own mounting nuclear waste inventories. 

The National Nuclear Security Administration is considering helping other countries by using technologies that could involve techniques such as crushing, heating and sending a current through the waste to reduce its volume. The machinery would be encased in a “black box” the size of a shipping container.

Former President Jimmy Carter banned nuclear waste reprocessing in 1977 because it chemically unlocks purer streams of uranium and plutonium, both of which could be used to make nuclear bombs.