White House could tap plutonium reserves for nuclear fuel

The Reuters news service reported last week that President Donald Trump’s administration plans to tap plutonium left over from dismantled nuclear weapons to help power commercial nuclear reactors in the United States.

The news service reported Trump could have the Department of Energy make 20 metric tons available for U.S. nuclear power plants. The article said the plan could be publicly announced within days.

“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,” a DOE spokesperson said via email Wednesday afternoon. “We have no announcements to share at this time.”

Tom Clements, director of Savannah River Site Watch, a citizen group in South Carolina, critical of nuclear power and nuclear weapons work, said Wednesday he considers the news mostly “aspirational. It lacks the necessary details and planning. “There are no reactors licensed to use plutonium fuel,” Clements said by phone.

A major environmental study would also be needed, Clements said. 

The president issued several nuclear-related executive orders in May, including one that would create a program to dispose of surplus plutonium by processing and making it available for advanced reactor fuel fabrication.

“Within 90 days of the date of this order, the secretary of energy shall identify all useful uranium and plutonium material within the Department of Energy’s inventories that may be recycled or processed into nuclear fuel for reactors in the United States,” according to Trump’s order on advanced nuclear reactor technologies.

The same order calls upon DOE to come up with a “readily available fuel bank with at least 20 metric tons of high assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) for any project from the private sector.” It must be approved at a DOE-owned or controlled site “for the purpose of powering AI [artificial intelligence] and other infrastructure.”

The Reuters article said the plutonium would be drawn from 34 metric tons previously scheduled to be downblended into a transuranic waste form and sent to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico for disposal.

An October 2019 Government Accountability report said altogether DOE had an inventory of about 44 metric tons of surplus plutonium, of which about three-quarters of it could be converted to plutonium oxide for dilution and disposal. Of this amount, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) manages nearly 34 metric tons in the form of pits

In the 1990s, Russia and the United States agreed to convert 500 metric tons of Russian highly enriched uranium from nuclear warheads to low-enriched uranium to fuel U.S. nuclear reactors. But the Megatons to Megawatts program as it was known was discontinued a dozen years ago.