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| Science & Technology |
| Highly dangerous plutonium offers no quick fix to US nuclear fuel crunch |
| 2026-06-15 |
| WASHINGTON, June 15 (Reuters) - 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 U.S. data center 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 U.S. 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 U.S. government, and the dash to use it shows how the industry is trying novel ways to achieve President Donald Trump's goal to quadruple U.S. nuclear power capacity by 2050 as power demand from data centers surges. Bombs into Bits |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
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| Posted by: 3dc 2026-06-15 23:33 |
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| Posted by: Seeking Cure For Ignorance 2026-06-15 23:00 |
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| Posted by: NN2N1 2026-06-15 17:42 |
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| Posted by: Skidmark 2026-06-15 13:49 |