Members of Congress object to plutonium giveaway
October 26, 2025, https://beyondnuclear.org/senators-object-to-plutonium-giveaway/
On December 31, the Trump White House will start revealing which lucky startup companies will receive free plutonium needed for their new reactor fuel. Trump will give away between 20-25 tons, according to reports, going against US energy policy that has long avoided the transfer of nuclear weapons-usable materials into the commercial sector. One likely recipient is Oklo, on whose board Trump’s present energy secretary, Chris Wright, once sat, raising serious conflict of interest issues.
Several Members of Congress have already written to Trump expressing their concerns. In the letter sent by Senator Ed Markey and Reps. Don Beyer and John Garamendi, all Democrats, they pointed out that dishing out plutonium “to private industry for commercial energy use,” crossed a line that “goes against long-standing, bipartisan US nuclear security policy. It raises serious weapons proliferation concerns, makes little economic sense, and may adversely affect the nation’s defense posture.” They also pointed out that the amount of plutonium Trump is preparing to move into the commercial sector “is enough for at least 2,000 nuclear bombs.”
And they also took care to remind Trump that “commercial nuclear energy does not require separated plutonium, and today there is no global demand for plutonium to make civilian nuclear reactor fuel. Nuclear power reactors instead rely on uranium fuel, which is safer and cheaper to process.”
Roll up, roll up for your free plutonium.
The 19-25 metric tons of plutonium Trump would be redirecting into the civil nuclear sector had previously been slated for permanent disposal as nuclear waste left over from the Cold War era. Disposing of it is far cheaper than reprocessing it — $20 billion versus $49 billion according to the senators’ letter — and also isolates it from potentially falling into the wrong hands.
Trump is preparing a dangerous giveaway to struggling commercial nuclear startups, writes Linda Pentz Gunter
Imagine you are a commercial nuclear reactor startup company but you just can’t quite start up because there’s one little problem. Your “new” reactor design needs a special kind of fuel. And that fuel requires a particular ingredient: plutonium.
Plutonium is the trigger component of a nuclear bomb. The countries that developed nuclear weapons — as well as those that have reprocessed irradiated reactor fuel in order to separate the plutonium from uranium — have massive surplus piles of plutonium left over, an ever-present security threat.
Now imagine that a former board member of one of those struggling startup companies, Oklo, is Chris Wright, the current US Secretary of Energy in the Trump government. Lo and behold, all of a sudden, that same carnival barker who passes for a US president is offering your former company plutonium for free from a stockpile of close to 20 metric tons or more.
The White House has announced that it will begin revealing its lucky free plutonium recipients on December 31 based on applications received by the US Department of Energy by November 21, according to Reuters. The news agency put the plutonium surplus amount at 19.7 metric tons, although the Trump administration has suggested it has 25 tons to spare.
That amount, according to a letter sent to the Trump administration by one senator — Ed Markey — and two representatives— Don Beyer, John Garamendi — all Democrats — is enough for at least 2,000 nuclear bombs.
Dishing out plutonium “to private industry for commercial energy use,” the trio wrote in their September 10 letter, “goes against long-standing, bipartisan US nuclear security policy. It raises serious weapons proliferation concerns, makes little economic sense, and may adversely affect the nation’s defense posture.”
Markey wrote to Trump again on September 23, specifically enquiring whether it was more than just a peculiar coincidence that Wright’s former company, Oklo, would be the beneficiary of the plutonium handout.
Earlier, with his colleagues, Markey had expressed concern that “the transfer of weapons-usable plutonium to private industry would increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation, including to rogue states or terrorists.”
Markey now wanted to know whether “a serious conflict of interest may exist within your Administration on this issue because the plutonium transfer will benefit Secretary of Energy Chris Wright’s former company.”
Saying that he had “questions about the propriety of the transaction,” Markey noted that in addition to the free plutonium, Trump’s Department of Energy was also supporting Oklo to build a $1.7 billion reprocessing plant in Tennessee that would enable Oklo to further extract the plutonium needed for its as yet unlicensed micro-reactors.
Markey went on to question whether the administration even cared whether or not a new Oklo-owned reprocessing plant made any sense but was instead backing the project with taxpayer money “because Oklo stands to benefit financially and Secretary Wright is acting in his former company’s interest.”
Among the eager corporations already lined up for their plutonium handouts are not only Oklo but also a foreign corporation, the now French-based but originally British nuclear company, newcleo, as well as US-based Valar Atomics, which has been criticized for developing a reactor that would not only consume but also produce plutonium.
Perhaps to celebrate the impending largesse, newcleo announced on October 20 that it has entered into a partnership with Oklo and will invest $2 billion to develop advanced nuclear fuel fabrication and manufacturing facilities.
On the very day — May 23rd —that Trump released his executive orders fast-tracking nuclear power expansion, Valar Atomics put out its own statement celebrating the news. (Do you think they’d seen the EOs in advance, or maybe even written parts of them themselves?)
Echoing the identical language repeatedly used by Trump officials, the Valar Atomics statement said: “There’s a new arm to national nuclear security: Dominance. Dominance in civilian nuclear technology development, dominance in nuclear energy infrastructure deployment, dominance in shaping global development.”
We should note here that the word “dominance” appears 35 times in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 guide to autocracy, which contains an entire section called American Energy and Science Dominance and another called Restoring American Energy Dominance.
Accordingly, we now have something called the National Energy Dominance Council, headed by Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum. Burgum heralded the newcleo-Oklo deal, saying: “This agreement to implement newcleo’s advanced fuel expertise into Oklo’s powerhouses and invest $2 billion into American infrastructure and advanced fuel solutions is yet another win for President Donald J. Trump’s American Energy Dominance Agenda.”
Standing in the way of such dominance, according to Valar Atomics and others, remains the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). In April, Valar Atomics had joined the states of Texas, Utah, Louisiana, Florida, and Arizona, as well as fellow reactor companies Last Energy and Deep Fission, to sue the NRC. Their beef is that, going back to the days of NRC predecessor, the Atomic Energy Commission, there has been an annoying insistence “to require licenses even for reactors that use small amounts of special nuclear material that have no effect on US defense and security or public health and that the NRC itself has stated do not pose public health and safety risks.”
Innovation, complains Valar Atomics, is made “virtually impossible,” by the NRC. “Their rules — created in the overreaction to the Three Mile Island incident — shuttered the nuclear industry. Simply testing a reactor prototype takes five to seven years, at best. This is not the way to foster innovation! To regain our dominance in nuclear energy, the status quo must change, quickly.”
The suit is currently under discussion for a possible resolution, given that the Trump DOE is moving fast to rein in any excessive safety oversight by the newly downsized NRC, where the mission statement now extolls the “benefits” of nuclear energy for the US public.
The 19-25 metric tons of plutonium Trump would be redirecting into the civil nuclear sector had previously been slated for permanent disposal as nuclear waste left over from the Cold War era. Disposing of it is far cheaper than reprocessing it — $20 billion versus $49 billion according to the senators’ letter — and also isolates it from potentially falling into the wrong hands. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Plutonium has no place in the civil nuclear sector. But it should have no place in our lives, period, if we really want to avoid nuclear proliferation or worse.
Linda Pentz Gunter is the founder of Beyond Nuclear and serves as its international specialist. Her book, No To Nuclear. Why Nuclear Power Destroys Lives, Derails Climate Progress and Provokes War, can be pre-ordered now from Pluto Press. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/10/26/roll-up-roll-up-for-your-free-plutonium/
US offers nuclear energy companies access to weapons-grade plutonium
US offers nuclear energy companies access to weapons-grade plutonium.
Expert warns commercial use of the radioactive material from cold war-era
warheads carries safety risks.
The US has offered energy companies access
to nuclear waste that they can convert into fuel for advanced reactors in
an attempt to break Russia’s stranglehold over uranium supply chains. The
Department of Energy on Tuesday published an application that nuclear
energy groups can use to seek up to 19 metric tonnes of the government’s
weapons-grade plutonium from cold war-era warheads.
In the document seen by
the Financial Times, the energy department said being selected to receive
the plutonium could help companies secure faster approval for a Nuclear
Regulatory Commission license, which is required to operate a nuclear
facility. At least two companies, Oklo, which is backed by OpenAI’s Sam
Altman, and France’s Newcleo, are expected to apply to access the
government’s plutonium stockpile.
FT 21st Oct 2025, https://www.ft.com/content/2fbbc621-405e-4a29-850c-f0079b116216
1000s of nuclear bombs? Russia exits US nuke pact to reclaim 34 tons of plutonium
The pact required both nations to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium.
Kapil Kajal Oct 09, 2025 , https://interestingengineering.com/military/russia-dumps-us-nuclear-deal
ussia has officially pulled out of an important agreement with the United States regarding how to dispose of weapons-grade plutonium.
According to Russia’s state news agency TASS, the lower house of the Parliament passed a legislation on October 8 to officially denounce the 2000 Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA).
The pact required both nations to dispose of 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium, enough for thousands of nuclear warheads, by converting it into fuel for civilian power reactors.
Terminating nuclear pact
The deal, signed in 2000 and ratified in 2011, was designed to ensure that plutonium declared surplus for defense needs could never again be used for weapons.
However, Russia is no longer willing to follow its agreements with the United States regarding plutonium.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told lawmakers that the current situation makes it unacceptable to keep these obligations.
Ryabkov pointed out that Russia’s demands for restoring the deal have not been met. These demands include lifting US sanctions, reversing the Magnitsky Act, and reducing NATO’s military presence near Russia’s borders.
The Russian government explained to parliament that it is withdrawing from the deal due to “fundamental changes in circumstances,” including NATO expansion, US sanctions, and military support from Washington for Ukraine.
Although the agreement was technically in place, Russia stopped participating in 2016. It accused the US of not meeting its obligations and using the agreement for political gain.
The Kremlin at the time demanded concessions unrelated to the agreement, such as restrictions on NATO activities in Eastern Europe and the lifting of sanctions imposed after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.
34 tons of plutonium
The termination of the PMDA means that the 34 tons of plutonium Russia had pledged to render unusable for weapons could now be reclassified as part of its strategic reserves.
The State Duma’s official statement described further commitments on the material as “inexpedient.”
The decision adds to the growing list of suspended or terminated arms control agreements between Moscow and Washington.
Russia has already withdrawn from the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty, suspended its participation in New START, and halted cooperation under the Open Skies treaty.
The plutonium agreement was among the few remaining technical measures of nuclear risk reduction from the early 2000s.
While smaller in scale than New START, the PMDA was seen as a pragmatic step toward reducing stockpiles of weapons-usable material in both nations.
Tomahawk cruise missiles
The move comes as geopolitical tensions between the US and Russia continue to escalate over the war in Ukraine.
On the same day the withdrawal was announced, the Kremlin condemned Washington’s reported deliberations over providing Tomahawk cruise missiles to Kyiv.
“If the U.S. administration ultimately makes that decision, it will not only risk escalating the spiral of confrontation, but also inflict irreparable damage on Russian-US relations,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, according to TASS.
She added that Moscow was “closely monitoring” the situation and urged the US to exercise restraint
The United States has not yet commented on Russia’s decision to terminate the plutonium deal.
However, the move underscores the growing collapse of bilateral nuclear cooperation amid the deepest rift between Washington and Moscow in decades.
The developments also come as Bloomberg reported on September 30 that Russia remained the largest supplier of enriched uranium to the United States in 2024, providing about 20 percent of the fuel used in American nuclear reactors despite formal import restrictions.
US waivers still permit deliveries through 2028 for national energy security reasons.
As both countries move further away from long-standing nuclear agreements, experts warn that ending the PMDA shows a growing risk to global nuclear safety and a widening rift in US-Russia relations.
U.S. Dept. of Energy steps up plutonium pit manufacturing at Savannah River Site
The site is part of the nation’s effort of “re-establishing capabilities retired after the Cold War,” the national nuclear stockpile plan stated. And also, provide a home for another data center.
Jillian Magtoto, Savannah Morning News, 9 Oct 25,
Key Points
ENVIRONMENT
U.S. Dept. of Energy steps up plutonium pit manufacturing at Savannah River Site
The site is part of the nation’s effort of “re-establishing capabilities retired after the Cold War,” the national nuclear stockpile plan stated. And also, provide a home for another data center.
Jillian Magtoto, Savannah Morning News
- The Department of Energy is accelerating construction of the new facility, aiming to produce 50 plutonium pits annually by 2030.
- While production ramps up, concerns remain about existing radioactive waste and the diversion of funds from cleanup efforts.
More than two hours up the river from Savannah is a nuclear Superfund site, about the size of Augusta just across the border. Despite decades of cleanup, radionuclides still trickle from nearby streams to cow udders, and lurk in the tissues and bones of alligators, hogs, and deer, and the flesh of tadpoles and fish. In July, workers discovered a radioactive wasp hive at one of its hazardous waste tank farms. The site spanning three South Carolina counties is still active as the country’s only plant extracting and purifying tritium, a radioactive isotope that boosts the efficiency and explosivity of nuclear weapons.
But the Savannah River Site (SRS) is about to be re-awakened to produce plutonium pits, hollow bowling-ball sized spheres of plutonium at the core of warheads that causes the nuclear blast. Plutonium is a heavier metal that, according the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), can enter the bloodstream upon inhalation, resulting in lung scarring, disease, and cancer. It carries a half-life of about 24,000 years.
Last October, the Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) assumed primary responsibility of the SRS to produce 50 of the country’s 80 annual plutonium pits by 2030. The remaining 30 will be made in the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where plutonium pits were first created in the 1940s.
Over 80 years later, “NNSA is being asked to do more than at any time since the Manhattan Project,” stated NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby at the 2024 Nuclear Deterrence Summit. For SRS, the goal “is aggressive, complete construction by 2032 so that rate production can support the W93 schedule.” W93 is the newest and 93rd nuclear weapon design the U.S. has considered after a 30-year hiatus, planned for deployment by U.S. Navy submarines…………………………………………………………………………………………………
While plans are accelerating, “most of the public doesn’t even know what’s going on out there,” said Tom Clements, founder of his one-man watchdog website, Savannah River Site Watch, who has monitored the plant since the 1970s. “They don’t know they’re building the pit plant.” And likely, also a data center…………………………………………………………………………………………..
Plutonium’s pitfall
It’s one thing to stop plutonium production, but it’s an entire other affair to dispose it.
Because weapons-grade plutonium cannot be blended with other materials to render it unusable for weapons, Russia and the U.S. agreed it would instead be made into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel and irradiated in civil nuclear power reactors for electricity. For the U.S., that MOX facility would be housed at the SRS, which began construction in 2007.
But the promise was a far cry from what the DOE was able to do.
Technical issues, delays, and mismanagement reported by outlets like the Post & Courier ended its operations in 2018. In 2022, the MOX building contractor paid $10 million to the DOE for fraudulent invoices for nonexistent materials. If completed, SRS’ MOX facility would have been 32 years behind schedule and $13 billion over budget, according to the DOE.
Meanwhile, the state of South Carolina was growing wary of the tanks sitting on its soils. In 2014, the state sued the U.S. government and six years later, won the state’s largest single settlement of $600 million and the DOE’s commitment to remove all 9.5 metric tons of plutonium from the state by 2037. Until then, South Carolina has waived its right to bring any lawsuit against DOE for plutonium disposal.
So the DOE went with a cheaper and quicker alternative: diluting the plutonium with a plutonium powder into a “more secure” and less weapon-usable form—though the potential of reversibility led Russia to back out of the deal. SRS has undergone a flurry of expansion, automation, tank transport, and construction of mega-sized disposal units all to dilute the plutonium into a Superfund smoothie that gets vitrified into obsidian-like glass and shipped to a waste isolation pilot plant 2,000 feet underground in a New Mexico salt mine, according to SRS. It completed the first shipment in December 2023.
Still, radioactive byproduct remains in 35 million gallons of waste stored in roughly 43 of the original 51 underground carbon steel containers according to most recently published updates this January.
“These tanks have outlived their design lives, posing a threat to the environment,” stated a Savannah River National Laboratory webpage. “Some of the tanks have known leaks.”
A new mission swipes cleanup funds
From aging plutonium pits housed at the Pantex facility in Texas, the SRS will generate new plutonium pits at the SRS unit originally intended to retire weapons-grade plutonium…………………………………..
But as the site shoulders the new plan, remediation funds get pulled. When the DOE EM handed over primary responsibility of the site to the NNSA last year, $173 million were reallocated from cleanup to weapons activities and transition costs. And it seems some environmental processes fell though the cracks.
“They basically named SRS as the second [plutonium pit] plant site without doing an environmental analysis,” said Clements. “And that’s we got them for, violating the National Environmental Policy Act.”
In 2021, Clements, the Savannah River Site Watch and a few other plaintiffs sued the DOE and NNSA, resulting in a settlement that will play out over the next couple of years. Until the DOE conducts a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) examining the environmental impact of other approaches to pit production and reach a Record of Decision filed by July 17, 2027, the DOE will not introduce nuclear material into the SRPPF’s main processing building…………………………………. https://www.savannahnow.com/story/news/environment/2025/10/09/savannah-river-site-takes-on-an-enduring-mission-to-make-plutonium-pits-and-also-take-a-data-center/86442685007/
U.S. to gift Plutonium-239 to private nuclear industry
The Trump Administration’s trafficking of nuclear weapons-grade usable plutonium would significantly increase the global proliferation of nation state-sponsored nuclear weapon programs as well as the nuclear weapons material acquisition by thief and purchase for acts of nuclear terrorism.
The Trump Administration’s trafficking of nuclear weapons-grade usable plutonium would significantly increase the global proliferation of nation state-sponsored nuclear weapon programs as well as the nuclear weapons material acquisition by thief and purchase for acts of nuclear terrorism.
October 2, 2025, https://beyondnuclear.org/u-s-to-gift-pu-239-to-private-nuclear-utilities/
Trump Administration’s give away of 20 MT of US plutonium weapons stockpile to private companies threatens nuclear proliferation
According to previously unreleased government documents obtained and reviewed by Politico and addressed in a letter from three Democrat members of Congress to President Donald Trump, The White House is preparing to give away 20 metric tons of weapons-usable plutonium to new nuclear start companies. The Trump deal calls for the equivalent of 2000 nuclear bombs previously slated for permanent disposal as nuclear waste) from the nation’s Cold War era nuclear weapons stockpile to be freed up to help jump start privately-owned U.S. commercial nuclear startup companies. The fledgling nuclear companies would instead use the plutonium fuel in a still unproven and unlicensed new generation of nuclear power plants for domestic power production. The plan includes U.S. startups to reprocess plutonium used in nuclear fuel for international export. The Trump Administration’s trafficking of nuclear weapons-grade usable plutonium would significantly increase the global proliferation of nation state-sponsored nuclear weapon programs as well as the nuclear weapons material acquisition by thief and purchase for acts of nuclear terrorism.
The White House proposal calls for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), currently charged with the nation’s nuclear weapons development and nuclear power promotion, to “alter” the military-grade plutonium so it can be used as fuel by civilian startup power companies in new reactor designs. Theses unfinished and yet to be approved designs (such as the sodium cooled metal fuel fast reactors “Aurora” by the Santa Clara, CA start-up Oklo, Inc.’s and Bill Gates’ TerraPower’s “Natrium”) are already being privately marketed for the domestic and international export of fast reactors by companies such as Oklo.
The White House Executive Orders originally issued in May 2025 as part of the President Trump’s national call to “Unleash Nuclear Energy” had directed that the US Department of Energy draw down the from the nation’s plutonium surplus. The current White House plan now additionally includes the military to civilian utility transfer of reserve warhead parts known as “plutonium pits.
The Politico article quotes Oklo’s CEO Jacob DeWitte, “Oklo, wants to take advantage of the plutonium fuel program. Unlike its competitors, Oklo’s fast-neutron reactors can use plutonium as a ‘bridge’ fuel to get around the bottlenecks that exist in obtaining the more desirable grades of uranium.” Those “desirable grades of uranium” fuel are currently only commercially available from the Russia global monopoly on High Assay Low Enriched Uranium (HALEU) which is just less than 20% enriched U-235.
Oklo’s prestigious former board member, Chris Wright, stepped down from the company when he was confirmed to be President Trump’s new Secretary of Energy. Oklo’s Aurora reactor design now under review by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a controversial liquid sodium-cooled metal fueled fast reactor. The fast reactor design is controversial chiefly because it can be retrofitted as a “dual purpose” (military and commercial) reactor to breed more plutonium for nuclear weapons and commercial power generation.
The concept for Oklo’s plan was opposed in a July 25, 2025 letter to Congress signed by 17 scientific experts on global non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. First and foremost, nothing has fundamentally changed to break with the five decades that the United States has opposed from using plutonium fuel in commercial power plants due to security and economic concerns. Their letter further pronounces that authorizing funds for the proposed civilian use of nuclear weapons-usable plutonium as fuel in nuclear power plants will only accelerate the global spread of nuclear weapons in two obvious ways; 1) US companies plan to internationally export plutonium fuel and the plutonium extraction technology, and; 2) the US cannot discourage other countries from further trafficking of weapons-usable plutonium as civilian nuclear fuel if the US is doing it ourselves.
Moreover, pyro-processing or “recycling” to extract plutonium and uranium for reuse as reactor fuel has already proven to be unsustainable economically and will only deepen the already bad economics of nuclear power. The processing is acknowledged as “very costly, due to safety and security concerns, both to extract from nuclear waste and to fabricate into fuel.”
Democrats alarmed as Trump eyes weapons material to fuel nuclear reactors
The scramble to build new reactors to supply power to AI data centers may include plutonium from the nation’s nuclear deterrent.
Politico, By Zack Colman, 09/29/2025
The Trump administration is considering a proposal to divert plutonium that plays a central role in the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile to fuel a new generation of power plants, according to an Energy Department official and previously undisclosed department documents.
The proposal calls for the department to alter the plutonium so it can be used by civilian power companies, including startups pitching advanced reactor designs. It’s part of a broader push by President Donald Trump to convert tons of the Energy Department’s plutonium to civilian use, a notion that some lawmakers argue would undermine the U.S. weapons program for the benefit of untested private companies.
The initiative would involve harvesting plutonium on a large scale: According to a department official and a July 31 DOE memo seen by POLITICO, more than a fifth of the plutonium needed to meet Trump’s mandates would come from the highly radioactive spheres manufactured for the cores of nuclear weapons. DOE already faces a crunch to make more of those spheres, known as plutonium pits — it’s lagging behind Congress’ demands that it boost pit production to modernize the country’s nuclear deterrence.
The department is “not meeting the current pit manufacturing schedule,” said a former DOE official who is familiar with the department’s plutonium reserves. “So to make pit plutonium available would be a huge shift, and I’d be shocked.”
Both the current and former officials were granted anonymity to share sensitive details about national security matters.
Trump didn’t mention the pits in a May executive order in which he directed DOE to draw from another source — its stores of surplus plutonium — to help revive the nuclear power industry and meet the soaring electricity demands of data centers used in artificial intelligence. The U.S. officially halted its program that made weapons-grade plutonium in 1992.
The department declined to confirm or deny any details of its plutonium plans in response to questions from POLITICO.
“The Department of Energy is evaluating a variety of strategies to build and strengthen domestic supply chains for nuclear fuel, including plutonium, as directed by President Trump’s Executive Orders,” the department said in a statement. “We have no announcements to share at this time.”
The White House referred POLITICO’s questions about the plutonium plans to DOE. The Defense Department referred questions to the White House.
Government watchdogs and congressional Democrats have spent weeks objecting to the entire notion of transferring government-owned plutonium to the power sector. Such a move “goes against long-standing, bipartisan U.S. nuclear security policy,” Democratic Sen. Ed Markey and Reps. Don Beyer and John Garamendi wrote in a Sept. 10 letter to Trump. “It raises serious weapons proliferation concerns, makes little economic sense, and may adversely affect the nation’s defense posture.”
In a separate Sept. 23 letter to Trump, Markey said he was concerned that Energy Secretary Chris Wright was pushing the plutonium proposals to help a Californian nuclear power startup named Oklo, on whose board Wright once sat………….
Oklo spokesperson Paul Day declined to comment on Markey’s concerns of a possible conflict of interest. He also declined to comment on how much plutonium the company intends or has agreed to acquire from DOE. He said DOE “has not, as far as we know, established a plutonium fuel program.”
One nuclear safety watchdog echoed many of the Democrats’ concerns in an interview, saying DOE’s proposal could hollow out the nation’s nuclear defenses and compromise the Pentagon’s long-term deterrence strategy. And it appears to be happening without coordination with the Defense Department, said Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project at the Federation of American Scientists, a nonprofit group that focuses on global security.
…………………………………………..U.S. civilian reactors now use only uranium for their nuclear fuel, but some reactors under development are planning to use plutonium. Spent plutonium from reactors is far more radioactive than uranium — and could pose a greater security risk than uranium if it were to fall into the hands of hostile nations or terrorist groups.
………………………………………… The DOE memo called for delivering 18.5 metric tons of the government’s surplus plutonium and an additional 6.5 metric tons pulled from “material in classified form once it has been declassified.” That latter term, the current DOE official who spoke to POLITICO said, refers to the plutonium pits, whose shape and characteristics can reveal information about nuclear weapons.
The company where Wright was once a board member, Oklo, wants to take advantage of the plutonium fuel program. Unlike its competitors, Oklo’s fast-neutron reactors can use plutonium as a “bridge” fuel to get around the bottlenecks that exist in obtaining the more desirable grades of uranium, CEO Jacob DeWitte told POLITICO in an interview.
DeWitte said Oklo has not publicly revealed how much plutonium the company is seeking to run its new reactors, or from where precisely it plans to obtain that plutonium. He also said the Trump administration has not detailed exactly how much plutonium it will make available, noting that “there is disagreement” over how much surplus plutonium the federal government can hand off before harming nuclear deterrence……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/29/trumps-nuclear-power-push-stirs-worries-about-us-weapons-stockpile-00583424
£154m plan hatched to move UK’s 140-tonne cache of powdered plutonium from nuclear reactor waste at Sellafield.
Britain could finally solve the problem of
what to do with its radioactive waste by converting it into ceramic
pellets, The Telegraph can reveal. Government scientists want to store the
radioactive plutonium, which is a national security risk because it can be
used to make nuclear weapons, in an underground nuclear graveyard. The
UK’s cache of 140 tonnes of powdered plutonium from nuclear reactor waste
is currently under armed guard at Sellafield in Cumbria.
Telegraph 28th Aug 2025 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/28/britain-solution-radioactive-waste-problem-cumbria/
Trump plans to make Cold War-era plutonium available for nuclear power
By Timothy Gardner, August 23, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/trump-plans-make-cold-war-era-plutonium-available-nuclear-power-2025-08-22/
- Summary
- Radioactive, fissile plutonium from Cold War a headache for US
- US wants to halt disposal of it, use 20 metric tons for fuel
- Trump administration sees it as potential fuel for new reactors
- Critic points out similar program failed due to costs
The Trump administration plans to make available about 20 metric tons of Cold War-era plutonium from dismantled nuclear warheads to U.S. power companies as a potential fuel for reactors, according to a source familiar with the matter and a draft memo outlining the plan.
Plutonium has previously only been converted to fuel for commercial U.S. reactors in short-lived tests. The plan would follow through on an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in May ordering the government to halt much of its existing program to dilute and dispose of surplus plutonium, and instead provide it as a fuel for advanced nuclear technologies.
The Department of Energy, or DOE, plans to announce in coming days it will seek proposals from industry, said the source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The source cautioned that because the plan is still a draft, its final details could change pending further discussions.
The plutonium would be offered to industry at little to no cost — with a catch. Industry will be responsible for costs of transportation, designing, building, and decommissioning DOE-authorized facilities to recycle, process and manufacture the fuel, the memo said.
The details on the volume of the plutonium, industry’s responsibilities in the plan and the potential timing of a U.S. announcement, have not been previously reported. The 20 metric tons would be drawn from a larger, 34-metric-ton stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium that the United States had previously committed to dispose of under a non-proliferation agreement with Russia in 2000.
The Department of Energy did not confirm or deny the Reuters reporting, saying only that the department is “evaluating a variety of strategies to build and strengthen domestic supply chains for nuclear fuel, including plutonium,” as directed by Trump’s orders.
Boosting the U.S. power industry is a policy priority for the Trump administration as U.S. electricity demand rises for the first time in two decades on the boom in data centers needed for artificial intelligence.
The idea of using surplus plutonium for fuel has raised concerns among nuclear safety experts who argue a previous similar effort failed.
Under the 2000 agreement, the plutonium was initially planned to be converted to mixed oxide fuel, or MOX, to run in nuclear power plants. But in 2018, the first Trump administration killed the contract for a MOX project that it said would have cost more than $50 billion.
The U.S. Energy Department holds surplus plutonium at heavily guarded weapons facilities including Savannah River in South Carolina, Pantex in Texas, and Los Alamos in New Mexico. Plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years and must be handled with protective gear.
Until Trump’s May order, the U.S. program to dispose of the plutonium has involved blending it with an inert material and storing it in an experimental underground storage site called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.
The Energy Department has estimated that burying the plutonium would cost $20 billion.
“Trying to convert this material into reactor fuel is insanity. It would entail trying to repeat the disastrous MOX fuel program and hoping for a different result,” said Edwin Lyman, a nuclear physicist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“The excess plutonium is a dangerous waste product and DOE should stick to the safer, more secure and far cheaper plan to dilute and directly dispose of it in WIPP.”
Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Lisa Shumaker
Plutonium Levels in Sediments Remain Elevated 70 Years After Nuclear Tests
June 24, 2025,
https://www.marinetechnologynews.com/news/plutonium-levels-sediments-remain-650328
Researchers from Edith Cowan University (ECU) in Australia have confirmed plutonium levels in sediment up to 4,500 times greater than the Western Australian coastline.
Three plutonium-based nuclear weapons tests were conducted at the Montebello Islands in the 1950’s, which introduced radioactive contamination to the surrounding environment. The first nuclear test, coded Operation Hurricane, had a weapon’s yield of some 25kT, and formed a crater in the seabed, while the second and third tests, dubbed Operation Mosaic G1 and G2, had weapons yields of around 15kT and 60kT, respectively.
The three tests released radioactive isotopes including plutonium, strontium (90Sr) and caesium (137Cs) into the surrounding marine environment.
“Plutonium is anthropogenic, which means that it doesn’t exist on its own in nature. The only way it is introduced into an environment is through the detonation of nuclear weapons and from releases from nuclear reprocessing plants and, to a lesser extent, accidents in nuclear power plants,” said ECU PhD student and lead author Madison Williams-Hoffman.
“When plutonium is released into a coastal setting in the marine environment, a significant fraction will attach to particles and accumulate in the seabed, while some may be transported long distances by oceanic currents.”
The region is not inhabited by humans and has not been developed, however it is visited by fishing boats, so collecting data on the levels of contamination in the marine environment is important.
Currently, the protected island archipelago and surrounding marine areas also reside within the Montebello Islands Marine Park (MIMP). The MIMP is ecologically significant due to the presence of numerous permanent or migratory species, and its high-value habitat is used for breeding and rearing by fish, mammals, birds and other marine wildlife.
The water and sediment quality within the MIMP are currently described as ‘generally pristine’, and it is fundamental to maintain healthy marine ecosystems in the region.
The concentrations of plutonium at Montebello Islands were between 4 to 4,500 times higher than those found in sediment from Kalumburu and Rockingham from the Western Australian coastline, with the northern area of the archipelago, close to the three detonation sites, having four-fold higher levels than the southern area.
The concentrations of plutonium found in the sediment at Montebello Islands were similar to those found in the sediment at the Republic of Marshall Islands (RMI) test sites, despite 700-fold higher detonation yields from nuclear testing undertaken at RMI.
Plutonium is an alpha emitter so, unlike other types of radiation, it cannot travel through the skin and is most dangerous when ingested or inhaled.
The research was undertaken by Williams-Hoffman, under the co-supervision of Prof. Pere Masqueand at ECU and Dr Mathew Johansen at ANTSO.
Sellafield Plutonium treatment plant moves a step closer to completion
COMMENT. So now they think they can make more of the toxic stuff?
And provide more dirty dangerous jobs for the boys?
Sellafield Ltd and Nuclear Decommissioning Authority 15 May 2025
The Sellafield Product and Residue Store Retreatment Plant (SRP) is one of our largest and most complex construction projects.
When finished it will play an essential role in managing the UK’s plutonium stockpile.
The project celebrated an important milestone this week as its roof was sealed with a final concrete pour, making the main building watertight and ready for internal fit-out.
Once operational, the plant will retreat and repackage existing material into more durable, long-term storage packages, ensuring they can be safely stored into the next century and beyond.
The project is being delivered under Sellafield’s Programme and Project Partners (PPP) infrastructure delivery model which brings together KBR, Amentum, Morgan Sindall Infrastructure, Altrad Babcock, and a wider supply chain, to deliver a 20-year pipeline of major infrastructure projects.
Completing the vast roof slab required 12 weeks of work and over 2,700 cubic metres of concrete to be poured and pumped to heights up to 30 metres.
The achievement moves the project closer to active commissioning and operations in support of the government’s plutonium disposition strategy announced earlier this year……… https://www.gov.uk/government/news/flagship-sellafield-project-seals-major-milestone
Lawsuit Compels Nationwide Public Review of Plutonium Bomb Core Production
9 May 25, https://nukewatch.org/lawsuit-compels-nationwide-public-review-of-plutonium-bomb-core-production
AIKEN, S.C. — Today the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semi-autonomous nuclear weapons agency within the Department of Energy, published a formal Notice of Intent in the Federal Register to complete a nationwide “programmatic environmental impact statement” on the expanded production of plutonium “pit” bomb cores. Pits are the essential radioactive triggers of modern nuclear weapons. The NNSA is aggressively seeking their expanded production for new-design nuclear weapons for the new nuclear arms race.
The South Carolina Environmental Law Project (SCELP) successfully represented the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition and Nuclear Watch New Mexico, Savannah River Site Watch and Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment in a legal challenge to NNSA’s attempt to improperly jump start dual site pit production. On September 30, 2024, United States District Court Judge Mary Geiger Lewis ruled that the NNSA had violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by failing to properly consider alternatives before proceeding with its plan to produce at least 30 pits per year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and at least 50 pits per year at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina.
The Court found that NNSA’s plans for pit production had fundamentally changed from its earlier analyses which had not considered simultaneous pit production at two sites. Co-plaintiffs argued that these changes required a reevaluation of alternatives under NEPA, which Defendants failed to undertake prior to moving forward and spending tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars.
As a result of this ruling and a subsequent settlement, the Defendants are now required to newly analyze pit production at a nationwide programmatic level. This means undertaking a thorough analysis of the impacts of pit production at NNSA sites throughout the United States, including the generation of new radioactive wastes and their uncertain future disposal. Under NEPA, this will provide the opportunity for public scrutiny on NNSA’s aggressive production plans. In addition, NNSA is enjoined from building certain facilities and introducing nuclear materials to the plutonium pit plant at SRS until it completes the PEIS.
Virtual public hearings to determine the needed scope of the programmatic environmental impact statement are scheduled for May 27 and 28. The public comment period for scoping ends July 14 and can be emailed to PitPEIS@nnsa.doe.gov. NNSA expects to complete its draft PEIS within a year, after which in-person public hearings will be held in Livermore, CA; Santa Fe, NM; Kansas City, MO; Aiken, SC; and Washington, DC.
As an indicator of the potential importance of this PEIS process, SCELP and co-plaintiffs have been asked by the Nobel Peace Prize Center in Oslo, Norway, to present (by video) on “how it is possible to do activism inside the court room” on August 6, the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bombing. Also, in recognition of its astute legal strategy, SCELP will be receiving an award from the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability comprised of some three dozen public interest organizations (including three of the lawsuit’s co-plaintiff) at a ceremony in Washington, DC, on June 10th.
As background, plutonium pits are the fissile cores of nuclear weapons. The Los Alamos Lab was assigned a mission of limited pit production after a 1989 FBI raid investigating environmental crimes abruptly stopped production at the notorious Rocky Flats Plant near Denver, CO. In 2018 the NNSA decided to pursue pit production at both LANL and SRS. The agency erroneously claimed that an outdated 2008 programmatic environmental impact statement that did not consider simultaneous production was sufficient legal justification under the National Environmental Policy Act.
No future pit production is to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing, extensively tested nuclear weapons stockpile. Instead, future production is only for speculative new-design nuclear weapons that can’t be tested because of an international testing moratorium, thereby perhaps eroding confidence in stockpile reliability. Or, instead, the first new design nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War could prompt the U.S. to return to full-scale testing, which would have severe national and international consequences.
Independent experts have found that plutonium pits have reliable lifetimes of at least 100 years (their average age is now around 42). Moreover, at least 15,000 pits are already stored at the NNSA’s Pantex Plant near Amarillo, TX. Expanded plutonium pit production will cost taxpayers more than $60 billion over the next thirty years.
The independent Government Accountability Office (GAO) has repeatedly pointed that the NNSA has no credible cost estimates for its largest and most complex program ever, nor an “Integrated Master Schedule” between the two production sites. Further, the Department of Energy and the NNSA have been on the GAO’s “High Risk List” for project mismanagement and waste of taxpayers’ money since 1991. All of these issues and the basic need or not for expanded plutonium pit production are ripe for analysis and public comment in the now required programmatic environmental impact statement.
Ben Cunningham, SCELP’s lead attorney in this case, declared the following: “We implore the public to participate fully in the PEIS process—from attending the scoping hearings to commenting on the draft PEIS. The vast expansion of the nuclear arsenal that is facilitated by the increase in pit production will be exorbitantly expensive, will create radioactive wastes that can last for thousands of years, and the new weapons produced by this expansion could ultimately endanger hundreds of millions of lives. Please weigh in and express your concerns to the decisionmakers.”
Queen Quet, elected Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation, said: “I am thankful to SCELP and the rest of our national team that stood together to ensure that we protect our communities not only today but also for future generations. The type of compliance that we have fought for is even more crucial given the current environmental and political climate. I am looking forward to us being able to engage in the next phase of this process so that we can ensure that the waters that reach the Sea Islands will be safe.”
Tom Clements, director of Savannah River Site Watch, noted, “Given that we are armed with a decisive federal court ruling that requires the preparation of the PEIS by NNSA, we expect a thorough examination of all environmental and health impacts of pit production at all impacted sites. The draft PEIS must include an analysis of plutonium aging and pit reuse, the proliferation risks of new U.S. warheads, plans for plutonium transportation and the uncertain future disposal of plutonium wastes in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southern New Mexico.”
“Prior to our lawsuit, the agency failed to include other sites involved in future plutonium pit production in its required analyses, chief among them the Lawrence Livermore Lab in California, the Kansas City Plant in Missouri, and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The judge clearly saw these violations and ordered the NNSA to complete the programmatic nationwide analysis which should have been done from the outset. This is a victory for public involvement. It will hopefully result in credible alternatives that are more protective of the environment and the impacted communities,” said Scott Yundt, Executive Director at Tri-Valley CAREs, in Livermore, CA.
Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico commented, “This programmatic environmental impact statement that we fought long and hard for empowers citizens to tell policy makers what they think about decisions being made in their name. Let them know what you think about the $2 trillion ‘modernization’ program to keep nuclear weapons forever while domestic programs are gutted to pay for tax cuts for the rich. We should demand that this required process under the National Environmental Policy Act becomes a public referendum on the new nuclear arms race and the hollowing out of our society.”
Plutonium’s Hidden Legacy at Piketon
Plutonium was here. It was processed, mishandled, released, and denied. It contaminated water, soil, fish, and workers. It spread to schools. And it killed.
Investigative Team April 24, 2025, https://appareport.com/2025/04/24/plutoniums-hidden-legacy-at-piketon/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=jetpack_social&fbclid=IwY2xjawJ5XrBleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETE3b0JDR3JZZ0xqRkNqVU1oAR5YM8gN60lbVkb21XEno8JBYLC_Rnqv7LD993TwfBersmNr-c-SsZuL1J_1mA_aem_sCNRay627WxIPPEuu7DVsA [ample illustrations]
For decades, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) claimed that plutonium had no place at the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PORTS). But government documents, congressional testimony, and radiological data spanning more than 40 years tell a different story — one of systemic exposure, buried secrets, and radioactive contamination that continues to haunt the soil, water, and people of southern Ohio.
The truth has been revealed in pieces. Some of it was made public as early as the 1990s. Some surfaced only recently. Together, it paints an undeniable picture: plutonium was present at PORTS, it was mishandled, and it left a toxic legacy that federal agencies have failed to clean up — or fully acknowledge.
The Paper Trail: Plutonium Officially Confirmed
The denial cracked in 1999, when The Portsmouth Daily Times published a front-page bombshell: “Plutonium Confirmed in Piketon.” The article cited admissions by federal officials that plutonium-contaminated uranium had been shipped to the site from Paducah, Kentucky, as part of a Cold War-era uranium recycling program.
In a formal letter to DOE Secretary Bill Richardson, U.S. Senators Mike DeWine and George Voinovich confirmed that at least 570 tons of contaminated feed material had been sent to Piketon, beginning as early as 1983. DOE had known. The public had not.
The Incinerator and the Burned Truth
Records show the X-705A incinerator, which operated from the 1970s until 1986, was used to burn approximately 50,000 pounds of uranium-contaminated solid waste annually. But it didn’t stop there.
ccording to on-site Ohio EPA coordinator Maria Galanti, uranium-contaminated solvents — materials never meant for incineration — were also burned in the unit. The result? Soil surrounding the incinerator is now radioactive to a depth of at least 12 feet.
Until the late 1980s, operators even tilled radioactive oils into unlined soil, assuming it would degrade over time. It didn’t. And it won’t — the plutonium isotopes involved have half-lives exceeding 24,000 years.
Radiation in the Waterways — and the Food Chain
A 2006 Ohio EPA report confirmed what residents feared: plutonium had migrated offsite and into the public environment.
Testing in Little Beaver Creek, Big Beaver Creek, Big Run, and the Scioto River revealed the presence of:
- Plutonium-238
- Plutonium-239
- Americium-241
- Neptunium-237
- Alongside technetium-99 and uranium isotopes
All these elements were detected well above background levels, confirming they originated from the plant, not nature.
The Hazard Index (HI) — a risk threshold used by federal agencies — was exceeded across all tested water bodies, with Big Run scoring more than 20 times the EPA’s risk cutoff.
Separate DOE assessments show Pu-238 in fish as a significant dietary exposure source, second only to Tc-99 in produce. Plutonium has entered the food chain.
Offsite Spread: Plutonium Detected Near Schools and Homes
Monitoring data confirmed the presence of plutonium-239/240, neptunium-237, and americium-241 at offsite stations including:
- Station A41A near Zahn’s Corner Middle School
- Station A6 in northwest Piketon
- Station A23 near local residential zones
DOE contends that any plutonium found in air monitors comes from 1950s nuclear weapons testing fallout and not PORTS.
Workers Testify to Deception and Disease
At a 2000 Senate hearing, former worker Sam Ray described his fight with chondrosarcoma, a rare bone cancer he linked directly to his work at PORTS. He spoke of no health monitoring, no protective equipment, and no transparency.
Jeffrey Walburn, a plant whistleblower, testified to a 1994 chemical exposure that permanently damaged his lungs. He alleged a criminal cover-up by Lockheed Martin, including the alteration and destruction of radiation dose records.
He warned that widows of deceased workers may never receive compensation because exposure data had been falsified.
DOE’s Own Admissions: Plutonium in the Cascade System
According to a 2024 DOE report, plutonium-238 and plutonium-239 were present in enrichment equipment, having entered the cascade system through contaminated uranium hexafluoride cylinders. The isotopes were found in the X-326 Process Building and throughout the cascade.
DOE also confirmed that residual technetium-99 remained embedded in internal pipe surfaces, requiring special disposal decades after operations ended.
From Russian Warheads to Pike County: The Megatons to Megawatts Program
Between 1993 and 2013, the U.S. and Russia dismantled over 20,000 nuclear warheads under the Megatons to Megawatts Program — converting highly enriched uranium (HEU) into low-enriched uranium (LEU) for use in American power plants.
But that uranium didn’t just vanish. It came through U.S. enrichment sites — including the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon.
Contractor and DOE records confirm that Russian-origin uranium — some of it likely carrying residual contaminants from dismantled warheads — was introduced into the U.S. enrichment stream at PORTS.
Whether plutonium from these shipments contributed to PORTS contamination is still under question. What’s undeniable is this: the U.S. government sent Russian bomb-grade material through an Appalachian processing plant with a history of unsafe handling, minimal oversight, and deliberate secrecy.
They took Soviet nukes and ran them through Appalachian lungs. Without warning. Without consent.
While the legacy of plutonium contamination at PORTS stretches back to the Cold War, the threat isn’t just historical — it’s current, legal, and active.
Centrus Energy: HALEU, the NRC license, and legal plutonium storage at PORTS
In 2021, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) granted Centrus Energy Corp. a license to operate a first-of-its-kind High-Assay Low-Enriched Uranium (HALEU) facility inside the old enrichment footprint at PORTS. HALEU is a higher-enriched form of uranium (5–20% U-235), specifically produced for next-generation small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs).
But buried in the licensing documents is something the public was never told:
The HALEU license explicitly authorizes Centrus to store an undisclosed amount of plutonium-bearing material at the site.
That’s not speculation — that’s federal licensing language. In plain English: Centrus is legally allowed to store plutonium compounds at a facility that already has a catastrophic contamination legacy.
A Legacy Buried in Contamination and Lies
Plutonium was here. It was processed, mishandled, released, and denied. It contaminated water, soil, fish, and workers. It spread to schools. And it killed.
Some of the evidence has been buried. Some altered. But most of it has been in plain sight — ignored by federal agencies and omitted from cleanup plans.
This is not an old story. This is an ongoing disaster.
The time for quiet compliance is over. The reckoning for Piketon — and for the people poisoned by its secrets — has come.
Red light for the greenway
A wildlife corridor plans to connect two Superfund sites at the former Rocky Flats plutonium plant and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal that once produced chemical weapons. Locals fear residual contamination could spread.
John Abbotts, March 14, 2025, https://thebulletin.org/2025/03/red-light-for-the-greenway-locals-oppose-wildlife-corridor-at-plutonium-contaminated-rocky-flats-site/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Plutonium-contaminated%20wildlife%20corridor%3F%20Colorado%20locals%20say%20no&utm_campaign=20250317%20Monday%20Newsletter
n September, the city council of Westminster, Colorado voted not to fund a pedestrian bridge and underpass at the Rocky Flats site due to concerns about residual soil contamination from plutonium and other hazardous materials. In the process, the city council withdrew about $200,000 in financial support for the development of the project, known as the Rocky Mountain Greenway.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service proposed the greenway to connect wildlife refuges at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal through hiking trails via the Two Ponds refuge to Rocky Flats, with plans to eventually connect to the Rocky Mountain National Park. But the plan is controversial: Both Rocky Flats and the Arsenal are still on the US Environmental Protection Agency’s National Priorities List, identified since 1987 as “Superfund” cleanup sites that contain residual contamination.
The US Army established the Arsenal to produce chemical weapons to support World War II efforts, and in the 1990s, the federal government leased part of the Arsenal to Shell Chemical Co. to manufacture fertilizer and pesticides. In 1952, the Atomic Energy Commission began operations at Rocky Flats as a federal atomic weapons facility, producing plutonium triggers for hydrogen bombs. (A hydrogen bomb or H-bomb uses fission in the primary—uranium or plutonium—to trigger the secondary into a fusion reaction that combines two atomic nuclei to form a single heavier nucleus, releasing a much larger amount of energy.) Operations started largely in secret at Rocky Flats, located in a sparsely populated area 16 miles upwind and upslope of the city of Denver. But in the late 1970s, the public became more informed about plant operations, and the movement opposing atomic weapons began to focus on the facility, organizing protests and civil disobedience actions.
By the late 1980s, when the federal cleanup program at both sites had been initiated, work had already begun on the new Denver International Airport on Rocky Mountain Arsenal lands, and the Denver suburbs had steadily spread west toward Rocky Flats. Accordingly, there was consensus at each site that expedited cleanup would most effectively protect the metropolitan area, and cleanup standards were looser than “unrestricted use” to develop national wildlife refuges at each site. The consequences were residual contamination, especially at Rocky Flats, where there was no limit on how much plutonium remained below six feet of soil in an industrial area fenced off from the public and with the surrounding land converted to a wildlife refuge. This “cleanup on the cheap” at Rocky Flats, plus a record of cover-ups of accidents at the site, created continuing distrust and controversy over post-remediation uses near Rocky Flats. Cities and citizens opposed different proposals for re-use, even over the issue of public access to the refuge. Now there are concerns that the proposed greenway—a trail between the two tracts—may facilitate cross-contamination, taking radioactive material from the Rocky Flats site to the chemically hazardous Arsenal property, and vice versa.
Contamination—then a raid
Each of the two Rocky Mountain sites has a controversial history. At Rocky Mountain Arsenal, chemical contaminants have been identified as organochlorine pesticides, akin to DDT and its chemical cousins, of which Rachel Carson warned in her classic 1962 book Silent Spring. Other contaminants at the site include heavy metals, organophosphate, and carbamate pesticides—with each of these pesticide classes known to be neurotoxic—along with a potpourri of other chemical contaminants in groundwater.
As for Rocky Flats, a 1972 paper from radiochemist Edward Martell and one of his colleagues at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado reported that just east of the site boundary levels of radioactive plutonium 239 and americium 241 ranged “up to hundreds of times that from nuclear tests.” In 1969, a highly visible fire at the site’s plutonium processing facility sparked off-site monitoring; at the time, the fire was assumed to be the source of the detected contamination. Later, the Atomic Energy Commission was forced to admit that a 1957 fire in a separate plutonium recovery building or leaks from drums containing plutonium-contaminated waste were more likely the source of off-site soil contamination.
When the Rocky Flats facility was still operating, it accepted contaminated metal from another Atomic Energy Commission facility. In the process of treating and burying the waste, Rocky Flats released tritium into a nearby stream, contaminating the drinking water source for the city and county of Broomfield, five miles west of the facility. The contamination occurred for more than a decade leading up to 1970; the tritium remained undetected until 1973.
In 1986, amendments to Superfund legislation expanded the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to oversee the cleanup of contaminated federal facilities. The following year, the agency designated Rocky Mountain Arsenal as a Superfund site.
Then, in June 1989, the FBI and EPA raided the Rocky Flats plant in response to allegations of multiple environmental crimes at the site. After an investigation, plutonium production ended, the EPA designated Rocky Flats a Superfund site in the same year. In 1992, Rockwell International, the contractor in charge of managing the site, pleaded guilty to environmental crimes and paid a fine of $18.5 million.
Contested cleanup plans
The regulatory agencies responsible for environmental cleanup—the EPA’s Region 8 office, based in Denver, and the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment—have certified cleanup as partially complete at each site. The “responsible parties” are now the US Army for the Arsenal and the US Department of Energy for Rocky Flats.
At the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, cleanup extended to 10 feet below the surface, considered a sufficient depth to prevent burrowing animals from spreading the widespread chemical contamination there. In 2010, the regulatory agencies determined parts of the Arsenal sufficiently remediated to serve as a National Wildlife Refuge and transferred the management of the designated property to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. That service transferred a small herd of bison from a national range in Montana, and bison continue to inhabit the refuge.
The Army retains responsibility for a central area, along with smaller contaminated locations covered for monitoring and groundwater remediation. In 2019, the Colorado Department of Public Health sued Shell and the Army in the US District Court for hazardous chemicals from the Arsenal leaking into groundwater. The suit alleged that unsafe levels of organochlorine pesticides, heavy metals, chlorinated and aromatic solvents, and chemical agent degradation products and manufacturing byproducts had been found in groundwater. Litigation on that case is still ongoing.
At Rocky Flats, the controversy over the site’s past activities extended into its cleanup, with some opponents characterizing the proposed plans as “bait-and-switch.” Early in the cleanup process, the Energy Department funded an advisory committee that, in turn, established a “future site uses” working group. One of the working group’s recommendations was for residual plutonium contamination to be cleaned down to background level, to protect future area residents, no matter how long it would take. However, state officials assessed that a speedy cleanup that converted some areas into a National Wildlife Refuge was the desirable approach to protect outer metropolitan areas expanding toward the site boundaries.
The Energy Department and the site’s federal and state regulators agreed to limit the total costs of remediation and established a residual plutonium contamination limit in the top three feet of soil and a higher limit between three and six feet. (There was no contamination limit below six feet.) These limits were sufficient to qualify outer areas of Rocky Flats as a National Wildlife Refuge, and those areas were released to the Fish and Wildlife Service in 2006. Since then, the controversy has remained because the residual contamination is too high for unlimited uses of Rocky Flats.
Opposing the greenway
The city of Westminster is now the third municipal government to express concern over residual contamination at Rocky Flats. In 2016, the town of Superior, north of the site, voted to withdraw from the Rocky Mountain Greenway, a Federal Lands Access Program grant and project. The city and county of Broomfield followed suit in October 2020, unanimously approving a resolution for the withdrawal from the greenway. The Broomfield city council hired an environmental consultant to conduct soil sampling along the proposed Greenway, and the resolution expressed concern over the high levels of plutonium detected in the soil. After the resolution, the city stated that it would not contribute the $105,000 that was supposed to go to the Greenway project and would not allow Greenway-related construction work on Broomfield property.
The city of Broomfield also opposed another post-cleanup proposal—the Jefferson Parkway Highway Authority—described on its web page as a “privately-funded, publicly-owned regional toll road.” The proposed road would pass just outside the wildlife refuge, which was the eastern boundary of the former plutonium facility. The parkway authority had no plans to sample soil nearby until both Broomfield and a citizens advisory board recommended doing so before construction began. The authority then started sampling and, in September 2019, reported a sample containing 264 picocuries of plutonium per gram. (A picocurie is one trillionth of a curie, a measure of radioactivity.) This was much higher than the maximum limit of 50 picocuries per gram for surface contamination within the former industrial zone. Although this was the only sample above the limit, given the authority’s earlier resistance to sampling, the community lost faith in the project’s safety.
The Broomfield city council voted unanimously in February 2020 to withdraw from the Jefferson Parkway Association, removing a $70,000 annual payment in the process. In 2022, the county of Jefferson and city of Arvada sued Broomfield in response, claiming the parkway could not continue without that county’s continued participation. But a Colorado District Court judge dismissed that suit in December 2023, urging the parties to negotiate over Broomfield’s participation. The city and county of Broomfield expressed satisfaction with that decision, and the parkway’s future was described as “uncertain.”
In an escalatory move, in January 2024, the Colorado state chapter of the Physicians for Social Responsibility and five other groups filed a federal lawsuit in Washington D.C., seeking to prevent the greenway from coming through Rocky Flats. The plaintiffs sought to enjoin the US Federal Highway Administration, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and their respective cabinet departments (Transportation and Interior), from constructing an eight-mile trail through the most heavily plutonium-contaminated area of the wildlife refuge. (The filing assumed that the greenway would proceed from Westminster, but that city’s most recent decision to withdraw funds seems to require a different route.) According to the complaint, the city of Boulder has suggested since at least 2016 that the greenway path avoid Rocky Flats entirely.
The presiding judge, Timothy J. Kelley, denied the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction in September 2024. The case now awaits trial.
So far, concerns over Rocky Flats and its wildlife refuge have already limited public access to the refuge. Since April 2018, the Denver School District, the largest in the area, has forbidden its nearly 100,000 students from visiting Rocky Flats on field trips. Other school districts, including Boulder’s, had previously issued similar orders to protect their students.
It is still uncertain how the Trump administration will regard public participation, public protest, and the rule of law at Rocky Flats and other Superfund sites. The new Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, is the former chief executive of a fracking company based in Denver, a known climate change denier, and was on the boards of EMX Royalty, a Canadian company that seeks royalties from extractive mineral mining, and Oklo, Inc., which designs small modular nuclear reactors. Wright is now responsible for overseeing atomic weapons production, cleanup of former weapons facilities, and US energy policy in general. How Wright will interact with Colorado peace activists and environmental protection groups concerned about the defunct plutonium-contaminated weapons facility at Rocky Flats is unclear. But the fight over the future of this legacy site appears far from over.
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