Highly dangerous plutonium offers no quick fix to US nuclear fuel crunch

The Trump administration is moving forward with talks with companies to turn Cold War-era plutonium into a fuel for new nuclear reactors, part of a multi-pronged strategy to ensure there is enough ​power to feed the US data centre boom.

But the scheme risks extensive delays and exorbitant security costs – to the point it may be unfeasible – due to a simple ‌fact: plutonium is incredibly dangerous.

A grapefruit-sized hunk of the material, in the wrong hands, could yield an atomic weapon as strong as the one the United States dropped on Nagasaki during World War Two. Even the dust of the radioactive element, which has a half-life of 24,000 years, is potentially deadly if inhaled.

"This is weapons-usable plutonium," said Ross Matzkin-Bridger, who worked on securing plutonium materials around the world at the US Department of Energy and its arm the National Nuclear Security Administration. "I'm very concerned that there are ​big pieces of the risk that the taxpayers are going to be tackling."

The Trump administration revealed last month that it had chosen five companies to enter advanced talks over developing 19.7 metric tons ​of various forms of plutonium, including from dismantled nuclear warheads, into reactor fuel.

Storing plutonium has long been a headache for the US government, and the dash to ⁠use it shows how the industry is trying novel ways to achieve President Donald Trump's goal to quadruple US nuclear power capacity by 2050 as power demand from data centres surges.

US Representative Bill Foster, an Illinois ​Democrat and the only physicist in the US Congress, said "my brain goes on high alert" when he hears about the proposal.

Foster said the program would likely face sky-high security costs to keep it "robust against terrorism" ​and that stakeholders should look closely at the economies of such plants before moving forward.

The US DOE said it expects that the majority of the workforce at a facility handling plutonium will require the highest-level security clearances.

The companies would be required to submit material safety and security plans for the stabilisation, packaging, transportation, and storage of plutonium, a spokesperson for the Office of Nuclear Energy said.

"DOE does not expect to pay for the specialised proliferation, security, and health protections required to process surplus ​plutonium," the spokesperson said.

Companies selected

Oklo, one company seeking to generate power with the plutonium, believes the material can be a fuel source at least until the US expands domestic uranium supplies, including a type ​called HALEU, mostly made in Russia, that is more enriched than fuel used in today's US reactors.

Bonita Chester, an Oklo spokesperson, when asked whether taxpayers would end up paying large costs for the program, said the plan to use plutonium for fuel would eliminate the ‌need for another ⁠expensive and risky government plan to dilute and dispose of the material.

The Trump administration halted disposal efforts last year when it first announced the fuel plan.

Oklo "would invest in transport, the associated fuel fabrication infrastructure, as well as all licensing requirements, including safety, security, and safeguards," said Chester. She did not detail the company's estimate for those costs.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright sat on Oklo's board until he joined the administration.

Wright was not involved in the selection of Oklo, forfeited unvested shares in the company, and "recused himself from matters specifically involving Oklo," another DOE spokesperson said.

Carl Perez, ceo of Exodys Energy, which plans to build a facility on federal land to process surplus ​plutonium into nuclear fuel, said no facility can obtain ​required US authorizations and licenses "without fully addressing ⁠worker protection, overall safety, and material safeguards against recognised standards."

Greg Piefer, ceo and founder of SHINE Technologies, said it has extensive experience processing and handling nuclear materials, and that once plutonium generates power in a reactor, it is no longer dangerous.

"One of the most responsible things we can do with weapons-grade plutonium is ​to burn it," he said.

Standard Nuclear and Flibe Energy, the other two companies involved in the advanced talks, did not respond to requests for comment.

Rocky ​history

The US history of converting ⁠plutonium to fuel is rocky. The US had agreed in 2000 to turn it into mixed oxide fuel (MOX) to run in reactors. Trump's first administration nixed the MOX program in 2018, saying it would cost about $48 billion more than the $7.6 billion already spent on it.

Oklo plans to run plutonium in so-called fast reactors it is developing and that it says are more efficient than reactors that had been expected to run on MOX. According to ⁠Oklo's internal calculations, ​1 metric ton of plutonium used in a fast reactor could power almost 1 million American homes for a year.

Fast reactors ​in the US have so far only been used for research, not power generation.

Ernest Moniz, a US energy secretary under former President Barack Obama, said it is easier and less costly to dilute and dispose of the material. "My expectation is that you will ​find the government paying for a hell of a lot of what's going on here, including all the security you would need around weapons-grade plutonium."