By Lyle Seeligson
The federal government will soon be handing over nuclear bomb material to private companies. In May, the Trump administration announced its intent to allow nuclear energy start-ups to use the Department of Energy’s excess plutonium pits — dangerous nuclear explosives collected from decommissioned Cold War-era warheads — to make nuclear fuel for their yet-to-be-built reactors. This decision will create alarming, unnecessary security and proliferation risks at home and abroad.
Plutonium and Proliferation Risks
These plutonium pits are surplus from nuclear weapons that have been disassembled over the last few decades. What the Trump administration is proposing is that private companies use this plutonium to make mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel and other advanced reactor fuels for commercial power production.
On the surface, this plan makes sense. The government already has the plutonium — about 20 tons worth — available, with no immediate use for it. The United States’ domestic nuclear fuel supply cannot provide enough fuel for the anticipated demand of the advanced nuclear reactors coming to market over the next decade. For national security and strategic reasons, it is important that the United States reduce its reliance on Russian enriched uranium fuel, which currently accounts for more than 40% of the global uranium fuel market. And, according to the Department of Energy, these private companies will be footing the bill for these facilities and the safety and security measures needed to perform this work. All the government needs to do is hand over the plutonium.
So, what’s the catch?
There are many, including the fact that the United States has tried (and failed) before to use plutonium for commercial reactor fuel, at the very same site along the Savannah River. This project was abandoned during the first Trump administration due to it being more than 10 times overbudget and 30 years behind schedule. Plutonium is also a highly dangerous material, presenting serious risks to the health of workers at these facilities if inhaled or if they are exposed to high radiation levels through accidental criticality events — that is, an unintended release of radiation simply from having too much plutonium in one place. Unfortunately, private companies handling plutonium for the federal government have demonstrated a history of lax attitudes toward risk management and cutting corners to maximize profits, at the expense of worker safety. This track record does not bode well for private endeavors to handle large amounts of this material to make commercial reactor fuel.
However, one of the most pressing issues is also too often glossed over: plutonium’s proliferation risks. Plutonium is a powerful basis for nuclear weapons, with only a bowling ball amount needed for a simple bomb — and a chihuahua-sized amount for a more complex weapon. This means that this material needs to be carefully safeguarded and protected from theft, because even a small amount is dangerous in the wrong hands.
As they are, these plutonium pits are already in a weapons-useable form, having come from decommissioned missiles. In the process of handing it over to private industry, therefore, this weapons-grade material becomes an immediate target. At every point of the proposed process to turn these pits into reactor fuel — moving them to a fuel fabrication facility, fabricating the plutonium into fuel, and transporting this fuel to future reactor sites— this plutonium can either be used directly in bombs or separated out of the fabricated fuel with relative ease, if stolen by a nefarious actor. Given the dangerous nature of the plutonium in this fuel, it will require protected transport, likely provided by the Department of Energy and paid for by taxpayers.
This transfer of weapons-grade plutonium presents a golden opportunity to would-be proliferators. It would not be the first time that fissile material has gone missing or allegedly been stolen in the United States, with much of this bomb-usable material unrecovered still. While initiatives to prevent nuclear smuggling within the United States and at its borders and ports have come a long way since over the years, this system is not without its weak points. With plutonium in particular, since so little is necessary to create a weapon, the theft of even a small amount of this material could have severe consequences if taken off U.S. soil or used in a domestic terrorist attack.
Beyond logistical security concerns, the technical process of fabricating plutonium fuel presents challenges to safeguarding this material from proliferation. In the UK, Japan and France, plants working on commercial MOX fabrication and spent fuel reprocessing (which isolates plutonium from used nuclear fuel) have had multiple MUF incidents: “material unaccounted for.” In other words, plutonium going missing. It is possible that this unaccounted-for material was simply lost in the pipes of these complex facilities. But for an individual or group set on stealing plutonium for a nuclear weapon, a smart thief could take advantage of the known, existing accounting gaps in these facilities to quietly divert material away — stealing just a little plutonium at a time to avoid detection. Until now, the United States has avoided this possibility by not using plutonium for commercial nuclear power. But that could soon change.
Despite the risks of theft in transport and during the fuel fabrication process, the Department of Energy is prepared to provide nearly 20 tons of weapons-grade plutonium to these companies. Additionally, it has stated that it will not assist these companies with any of the safety and security costs for this fuel fabrication process. Instead, it will leave this vital task (and high costs) to these private companies. Can private industry be trusted to put non-proliferation over profit? Do we really believe that no corners will be cut on security to prioritize the bottom line? Perhaps — but it only takes one mistake to bring about a potential proliferation disaster or terrorist attack. This is a dangerous amount of trust to give when such great consequences are on the line.
Increasing investment in plutonium-based fuels will also inevitably lead to a stronger reliance on plutonium, and could pave the way to reprocessing spent nuclear fuel (the only way to access plutonium) for commercial use as domestic need for the material grows. This is something the United States has deliberately avoided at home and discouraged abroad for decades, as reprocessing presents a proliferation risk: it isolates plutonium from the dangerous nuclear waste products in spent fuel that otherwise make the material impossible to use for weapons production. Given that these companies have explicitly stated their intent to sell their reactor technologies abroad, and the Trump administration’s executive orders touting its desire to explore exporting advanced reactor fuels, this government is setting the stage for an increase in global demand for plutonium. Eventually, other countries to whom the United States shipped these reactors might want their own domestic reprocessing capabilities to access plutonium, potentially enabling nuclear weapons proliferation in states around the world.
What should the United States do instead?
The United States’ commercial nuclear power reactor fleet, the largest in the world, has thus far relied on enriched uranium fuel. There is no need to shift toward plutonium-based fuels, especially since many of the advanced reactors coming onto the market also use low enriched uranium (LEU) or high-assay low enriched uranium (HALEU). If nuclear energy is to experience a large resurgence in the United States, what the industry does need is an investment in its domestic production of enriched uranium fuel, not plutonium.
The Trump administration has made some effort on that front, providing funding to expand domestic uranium enrichment and fuel fabrication capabilities. But in an environment of limited resources, the United States should be putting all its efforts toward the technology and fuel supply with an existing demand, proven and effective safeguard standards, and lower proliferation risks — not falling down a dangerous plutonium rabbit hole.
