The Department of Energy is in late talks about plans to provide weapons grade plutonium from dismantled Cold War-era nuclear warheads to possibly five nuclear energy startups, the department said in an announcement reported by multiple outlets.
The Trump administration is reportedly in talks with five companies to provide old plutonium to convert into fuel for future nuclear reactors.
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The DoE is in “advanced negotiations” with five nuclear energy startups, according to a statement from the federal agency, which would provide the companies with 20 metric tons of surplus plutonium from old nuclear warheads to convert into fuel for reactors.
The companies chosen include Oklo, Exodys Energy, SHINE Technologies, Standard Nuclear and Flibe Energy, according to the reports citing the DoE.
Oklo, a California-based nuclear energy startup, confirmed it was selected for the program, and said it would convert the material into fuel in a partnership with European reactor firm newcleo.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright previously sat on Oklo’s board of directors, but the company says he stepped down and divested his shares of the company after his confirmation last year.
None of the deals have been finalized, according to the DoE.
President Donald Trump previously signed a series of executive orders last year aimed at reinvesting resources into nuclear energy, including one order that paused a “dilute and dispose” program for surplus plutonium. The order also directed Wright to start a program to make the material available to U.S. industries for future fuel use. The DoE was previously pursuing a plan to dilute about 34 metric tons of plutonium and store it in an underground facility in New Mexico.
In a statement released earlier on Tuesday, Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte said the surplus plutonium could be used to address “fuel supply constraints,” and addressing this could help the company bring nuclear reactors online. “Material that has been set aside for disposal can instead be converted into fuel to produce electricity through fission,” DeWitte said. Stefano Buono, the CEO of newcleo, praised his company’s new partnership with Oklo and said they would work on “reducing nuclear liabilities through our fuel and reactor technologies.” Tommy Hendrix, the founder and chairman of Standard Nuclear, confirmed in a statement to Forbes his company was also selected. Hendrix said the company would work to convert the material into TRISO fuel, which he said was “a tiny and highly safe ceramic coated particle fuel form” previously used at the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant in the 1970s. Greg Piefer, the founder and CEO of SHINE Technologies, was also optimistic about the prospect of converting surplus plutonium to nuclear fuel. “We’ve spent more than a decade building the capabilities needed to handle complex nuclear materials — recycling used fuel, recovering isotopes, doing the kind of separations work this program calls for,” Piefer said in a statement sent to Forbes. “Turning surplus material that’s been sitting in storage into fuel for the next generation of reactors is exactly the kind of problem we built SHINE to solve.” The other companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Forbes.
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