Nuclear Waste Management Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Shielding dominates the claim space. G21F radiation protection & shielding covers 60.0% of the 150 records in scope — more than five times the next largest class.
- No single filer controls the field. The leader holds 8 records and the top 5 combined account for just 24.7% of all 150 records — concentration is modest, with a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants among the 84 ranked assignees.
- Filing activity peaked in 2024, not now. Annual counts rose from 5 in 2017 to a peak of 16 in 2024; the 2026 figure of 2 reflects publication lag, not a slowdown.
Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 150 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This review covers 150 published records combining nuclear waste management and treatment art with radiation-adjacent control disciplines — neutron detection, coolant flow, radiation dose, plasma control, shielding and safety control. The search deliberately pairs waste-handling terminology with instrumentation and control terms, so the corpus captures where waste management intersects with monitoring and containment hardware rather than pure reactor engineering. Patent families, not raw document counts, are the fairer unit for comparing filers, since families neutralise continuation practice and multi-jurisdiction filing.
Filings run from 2015 through the 2026-08-31 data cut-off. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent one to two years understate real filing activity and should be read as a floor, not a ceiling.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 150-record corpus: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Annual counts climbed from 5 in 2017 to a peak of 16 in 2024, then fell to 2 in the still-incomplete 2026 window. With fewer than four complete post-lag years available, a reliable growth rate cannot be computed from this trend — read the recent dip as reporting lag, not retreat.
IPC subclass composition
G21F (radiation protection & shielding) appears in 60.0% of the 150 records, far ahead of G21C nuclear reactors (10.7%) and G01T nuclear & X-radiation measurement (10.0%). Flow measurement, material analysis and medicinal/therapeutic classes (G01F, G01N, A61K, A61P, B01J) each sit in the 5-7% band, marking smaller but active adjacent branches. Because records can carry multiple classes, these shares sum to more than 100% of the record total and should not be added together.
Shares are the percentage of the 150 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Nuclear Waste Management Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about nuclear waste management patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative and most-cited filings
US7250119B2 — Composite materials and techniques for neutron and gamma radiation shielding
Multi-component composite materials for shielding neutron and gamma radiation emitted by transuranic, high-level and low-level radioactive wastes, built from naturally occurring mineral materials enriched with absorptive atoms and combined with modified cement grout, polymer-modified asphaltene and maltene grout matrices to hold variable flux and energy radiation.Filed by SAYALA, DASHARATHAM; published 2007-07-31.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5859885A | Information display system | 152 |
| 2 | US6674087B2 | Radiation attenuation system | 106 |
| 3 | US20100105975A1 | Nuclear Assisted Hydrocarbon Production Method | 76 |
| 4 | US20160320219A1 | Sensor apparatus | 64 |
| 5 | US20050258405A1 | Composite materials and techniques for neutron and gamma radiation shielding | 64 |
| 6 | US20060074141A1 | Techniques and compositions for shielding radioactive energy | 63 |
| 7 | US20020148980A1 | Radiation attenuation system | 58 |
| 8 | US20040041107A1 | Radiation attenuation system | 52 |
| 9 | US7250119B2 | Composite materials and techniques for neutron and gamma radiation shielding | 37 |
| 10 | US5391887A | Method and apparatus for the management of hazardous waste material | 35 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had more time to accumulate citers inside this searched corpus — treat the ranking as a signal of influence, not of current technical importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three read-throughs from the concentration, trend and citation data above.
The field is open, not locked up
With the leader at only 8 records and the top 5 combined covering 24.7% of the 150 records in scope, no single organisation has cornered the waste-management-plus-controls intersection. The remaining 83 ranked assignees hold the rest, mostly in small clusters — a structure that favours new entrants who can find an unclaimed combination rather than out-file an incumbent.
Shielding is the crowded core; everything else is periphery
Radiation protection and shielding claims sit on six times the density of the next class. Filing directly into shielding composition or geometry claims means competing against the densest prior art in the corpus; the smaller classes — flow measurement, material analysis, therapeutic and medicinal applications — carry far less claim pressure per record.
Read the 2026 dip as lag, not decline
Filing counts rose steadily to a 2024 peak before the visible drop to 2 in 2026. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 figures are provisional floors that will revise upward as later publications land.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to nuclear waste management patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The assignee ranking spans 84 companies counted by record, from a modest leader down through a long tail of single-filing entrants. Co-filing activity is sparse — 10 co-assignee pairs in total, most linked to academic-industry collaborations rather than corporate joint ventures.
A modest lead, not a moat
The top assignee holds 8 of the 150 records — enough to lead the ranking but far short of the kind of dominance that would deter new filers. Fifth place holds 7 and tenth place holds 6, showing the drop-off from first to tenth is shallow.
The middle of the field is where activity concentrates
Top 10 assignees combined account for 46.0% of all 150 records, nearly double the top 5 share of 24.7%. That gap between fifth and tenth place is where most of the field's organised, repeat filing activity actually sits.
Co-filing is rare and mostly academic
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear in the corpus, and the strongest links pair individual inventors or research institutes with university partners rather than pairing large industrial filers with each other. This points to a field still built on individual filings more than joint ventures.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| SAVEETHA ENG COLLEGE | 1 | -67% |
| Kurion Inc. | 0 | — |
| Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Inc. | 0 | — |
| Dana Corporation | 0 | — |
| Terry Industries | 0 | — |
| TERRY INDS | 0 | — |
| Westinghouse Electric Corporation | 0 | — |
| BRADTEC DECON TECH | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a field with room for new entrants in the smaller IPC branches and a shielding core that is dense but not monopolised.
Map a specific claim against the shielding core
Run a targeted novelty check against the G21F cluster before drafting shielding-composition or geometry claims, since that class carries 60.0% of the records in scope.
Explore this in EurekaTrack the mid-field assignees
Watch the assignees sitting between fifth and tenth place, where the top-10 share jumps to 46.0% of all records — this is where sustained filing activity concentrates.
Set up assignee tracking in EurekaTest white space in adjacent branches
Flow measurement, material analysis and therapeutic-use classes each sit well below shielding's density, leaving room to test first claims in those combinations.
Search white space in EurekaCommon questions on nuclear waste management patents
Within this 150-record corpus, the leading assignee holds 8 records, with fifth place at 7 and tenth place at 6 — a shallow drop-off rather than one company pulling far ahead. The top 5 assignees combined account for 24.7% of all 150 records, and the top 10 for 46.0%, so leadership is real but not dominant. The ranking spans 84 companies in total, meaning most participants hold only a handful of records each.
Radiation protection and shielding (IPC class G21F) is by far the largest category, appearing in 60.0% of the 150 records in scope. Nuclear reactor technology (G21C) and nuclear/X-radiation measurement (G01T) follow at 10.7% and 10.0% respectively, with flow measurement, material analysis and medicinal or therapeutic applications each in the 5-7% range. Because a single record can carry several IPC classes, these percentages sum to more than 100% of the record total.
Filing counts rose from 5 in 2017 to a peak of 16 in 2024, then appear to drop to 2 in 2026. That apparent decline is largely a publication-lag artefact: patent publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the most recent one to two years are undercounted and should not be read as a real slowdown. There are not yet four complete post-lag years of data to support a reliable growth-rate calculation.
US7250119B2 covers composite shielding materials built from naturally occurring minerals combined with modified cement, asphaltene and maltene grout matrices, designed to absorb neutron and gamma radiation from transuranic and high/low-level radioactive waste. It is a materials-and-formulation patent rather than a device or system patent, so it constrains specific mineral-plus-grout composite formulations more than it blocks alternative shielding architectures such as layered composite panels or non-grout matrices. Anyone filing in composite radiation shielding should map their formulation against this claim scope specifically rather than treat it as blocking the whole shielding category.
The clearest gaps sit outside the dense G21F shielding core, in classes like flow measurement (G01F, 7.3% of records), material analysis (G01N, 6.7%) and therapeutic or medicinal applications (A61P, A61K, around 5-6% each). These lower-density classes suggest under-claimed combinations such as coolant flow instrumentation for waste handling or radiation dose telemetry for decommissioning, where fewer prior filings compete for claim space. A freedom-to-operate search focused on these smaller classes is likely to surface more open ground than a search centred on shielding composition alone.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.