Apparently, the U.S. government’s solution for its stockpile of plutonium left over from Cold War-era nuclear weapons is to give private companies a shot at turning some of it into energy.
The U.S. Department of Energy has selected five companies for advanced negotiations under a program that could make surplus plutonium from dismantled nuclear warheads available as fuel for advanced nuclear reactors.
“The Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program is anticipated to 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,” a spokesperson from the Office of Nuclear Energy told Gizmodo in an emailed statement.
One of the selected companies, Oklo, announced Tuesday that it plans to work with newcleo, a Paris-based developer of advanced nuclear reactors, to turn the plutonium into fuel for advanced reactors.
“Fuel supply constraints are a key throttle to advanced reactor development,” said Oklo Co-founder and CEO Jacob DeWitte in a press release. “This program creates a pathway to use existing surplus material as bridge fuel for advanced reactors to bring more reactors online sooner.”
The other four companies selected for advanced negotiations are Exodys Energy, SHINE Technologies, Standard Nuclear, and Flibe Energy.
The news comes as the Trump administration has gone all-in on nuclear energy. Last year, the administration announced a deal to construct $80 billion in new reactors in the United States. Even Trump Media, the parent company of Truth Social, has gotten in on the action, announcing last year that it would merge with private nuclear fusion company TAE Technologies in an effort to help “America win the A.I. revolution.”
President Donald Trump has also signed several executive orders aimed at speeding up the construction of nuclear reactors. One of the orders halted the government’s previous plan to dilute and dispose of surplus plutonium and instead directed the Energy Department to establish a program to process the material and make it available to private companies.
Still, critics have been vocal about the risks of such a program. The nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative has warned that Trump’s executive order could lead to the creation of more weapons-usable material and encourage countries without nuclear weapons to develop similar technologies that could also be used in nuclear weapons programs.
“Countries have tried this before, and they concluded that, as nice as it would be to use that plutonium as fuel, it’s really just a liability and we need to dispose of it permanently,” Scott Roecker, a vice president at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, told the New York Times.
A previous attempt to use surplus plutonium for nuclear power plant fuel already failed in the U.S. That project was ultimately canceled during Trump’s first administration in 2018 after years of rising costs and delays.
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