U.S. Turns Cold War Plutonium Into Nuclear Fuel

Oil Price, By Charles Kennedy – May 28, 2026,

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 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.

……………………………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. https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/US-Turns-Cold-War-Plutonium-Into-Nuclear-Fuel.html