U.S. Turns Cold War Plutonium Into Nuclear Fuel
By Charles Kennedy - May 28, 2026, 6:00 PM CDT
- The U.S. is exploring the use of Cold War-era plutonium from dismantled nuclear warheads as alternative fuel for advanced nuclear reactors due to uranium supply shortages and reliance on foreign enriched uranium.
- The Department of Energy has shortlisted five nuclear companies, including SMR developers.
- Critics warn the plan raises nuclear proliferation risks and could prove technically and economically difficult, as converting weapons-grade plutonium into reactor fuel remains highly expensive.
The federal U.S. government has turned to plutonium from the Cold War era as an alternative to uranium in nuclear power generation, as supply of the default nuclear fuel runs short of demand. Washington has already selected five companies to supply the fuel to, as nuclear returns to the energy spotlight.
The Energy Department said this month it would discuss the use of plutonium as nuclear fuel with five nuclear energy companies seeking to build new generation capacity in the country. The reason that the DoE is considering plutonium is the tight domestic supply of uranium. Another potential reason could be the considerable dependence on imports of enriched uranium from Russia when the administration wants to source more of its commodities locally.
The plutonium considered for distribution to nuclear companies is from dismantled warheads from the Cold War. The radioactive material—50 tons of surplus supply, according to the New York Times—was originally to be diluted and buried, but President Trump last year suspended that plan, per Reuters, which also recalled reports about Washington planning to make 20 tons of plutonium available to private companies. Related: Uniper Sees Gas Shortage in Winter If Storage Rates Don't Speed Up
“This program creates a pathway to use existing surplus material as bridge fuel for advanced reactors to bring more reactors online sooner,” Jacob DeWitte, co-founder and chief executive of Oklo, one of the companies shortlisted for plutonium talks, said as quoted by Reuters. “Material that has been set aside for disposal can instead be converted into fuel to produce electricity.”
Per the Department of Energy, the plan will “help companies unlock the next level of private funding to broaden domestic nuclear fuel supplies, spur innovation on American recycling technologies, and unlock private sector funding to fuel the nation’s nuclear renaissance,” CNN reported, citing a statement from the department’s principal deputy assistant secretary of nuclear energy Mike Goff.
There are, of course, opponents to the idea of using weapons-grade nuclear material for nuclear power generation by private companies. Indeed, some Democratic members of Congress have publicly protested the plan.
“The transfer of weapons-usable plutonium to private industry would increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, including to rogue states or terrorists,” Massachusetts senator Ed Markey and representatives Don Beyer and John Garamendi said in a letter from last September. “The United States cannot effectively discourage other countries from using plutonium for civil purposes if we use it ourselves.”
The idea behind the move is to encourage the development of small modular nuclear reactors that could be built much more quickly than conventional ones—at least theoretically. The practical application of SMR technology, however, has stumbled after pioneer NuScale had to scrap its plans to build the first small modular reactor in the U.S. amid much higher than hoped-for costs, leading to insufficient numbers of future buyers willing to sign up for the facility’s output.
Despite these challenges in the MR segment, nuclear is back in a big way, not least thanks to Big Tech’s AI rush, which requires these companies to secure massive amounts of electricity for their facilities—and make it reliable. This is boosting the popularity of nuclear electricity outside the Big Tech community as well—higher electricity bills are making the construction costs of new nuclear power plants more palatable than they would have been a couple of years ago.
Whether plutonium would make an equivalent substitute for uranium in this nuclear renaissance remains questionable, it seems. The fact that the element could be used for the production of nuclear weapons is one problem with the idea. Another problem appears to be of a more technical nature, per the New York Times, which also cited critics as saying the cost of turning plutonium into nuclear fuel was prohibitively high.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
