The Trump administration wants to give private energy companies plutonium. The kind stripped from Cold War bombs. Experts call it a bad idea. They see no money in it, only danger.
There is a hardware problem. None of the operational reactors in this country can burn plutonium. U.S. plants run on a uranium cocktail. Most is U-238, mostly useless on its own. About 5 percent is U-235. The fissile part. The stuff you can weaponize.
That mixture is safe-ish. If it falls into bad hands, building a bomb is hard. Really hard.
“The most difficult step is getting enough of the material.”
Scott Roecker works in nuclear safety for the Nuclear Threat Initiative. He knows the history. The U.S. government spent billions scrubbing out weapon-grade stuff from global stocks. Why pour it back into private pockets?
Plutonium is tricky. It’s human-made. You get it when U-238 gets bombarded inside a reactor, turns into U-239, decays, and becomes highly radioactive Plutonium. It can be mixed with uranium again. Called mixed-oxide fuel. Or MOX.
We ditched MOX reactors in the 70s. They were expensive. Complex. A nightmare to run. Other places still try. Japan. France. Russia.
France subsidizes it heavily. Only 1 percent of reprocessed uranium actually gets reused. Japan spent billions. Their system hasn’t even started. Probably never will.
The Energy Department disagrees. Ted Garrish, from the Office of Nuclear Energy, sees untapped resources. He sees a renaissance. The “Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program” promises private funding and innovation. Five start-ups were picked. They are told this is the next level.
It’s not convincing. Storing plutonium is harder than storing uranium. Much harder. Daniel Speyer at NYU doesn’t buy the start-up angle. He doubts they have the chops for security. Even if you mix the plutonium back in, separating it out isn’t magic. It’s just work.
“A simple atomic bomb is not a difficult to make.”
He warns that if you give small teams pure plutonium, it becomes trivial. Too trivial.
The DOE claims the recipients must prove deep tech knowledge. They need robust security. Regulatory compliance.
Capitol Hill isn’t buying it. Senators and Reps sent a letter in September. Edward Markey was on it. The message was sharp.
Giving weapon-usable plutonium to private companies raises the proliferation risk. Rogue states might get interested. Terrorists definitely will.
Who wants the heat?
