The Energy Department says it has selected five private companies to begin advanced negotiations for access to weapons-grade plutonium from Cold War-era warheads under its Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program. The companies would use it as fuel for next-gener
By Tuesday, five companies had been pulled into a negotiation process that touches the most sensitive part of the US nuclear stockpile.
The Department of Energy said it selected Oklo Inc and four other private firms to begin “advanced negotiations” over whether they can access plutonium under the Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program. The talks, the department’s Office of Nuclear Energy spokesperson said, are not yet finalized.
For supporters of advanced nuclear. the appeal is immediate: small modular reactors—built to require less upkeep and less physical space than the existing US nuclear plants—need reliable fuel. and advanced designs rely on materials that are hard to source quickly. For critics. the concern is equally immediate: letting weapons-usable material flow to private industry could set a precedent that weakens US leverage on nonproliferation.
Mike Goff. principal deputy assistant secretary of nuclear energy. framed the program as a way to unlock funding and accelerate domestic fuel supplies. In a statement. he said DOE’s program could “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.”.
The five companies chosen for negotiations are Oklo Inc, Exodys Energy, SHINE, Standard Nuclear, and Flibe Energy.
DOE’s proposal comes after years of federal efforts aimed at transforming Cold War leftovers into energy. The department’s program is tied to surplus plutonium from warheads left over from that era. and it builds on a long-running push—across both the Biden and Trump administrations—to find ways to repurpose parts of the US nuclear arsenal stockpile for power generation.
Yet the new thrust has added urgency because of a fuel bottleneck. Advanced nuclear reactors require more energy-dense, highly-enriched uranium compared with conventional reactors. Until Russia launched its war with Ukraine in 2022, Russia had been the primary supplier of enriched uranium to the US.
Companies racing to build next-generation reactors say the shortage of fuel—more than other bottlenecks—can throttle progress.
Oklo, for its part, points to US plutonium stockpiles as a potential pathway to get reactors fueled faster. The company said it has been working with the Energy Department’s Los Alamos National Laboratory, the original site of the Manhattan Project, to run experiments testing its reactor technology.
In a statement, Oklo co-founder and CEO Jacob DeWitte said, “Fuel supply constraints are a key throttle to advanced reactor development.” He added that the DOE program could “create a pathway” to use extra plutonium “as bridge fuel for advanced reactors to bring more reactors online sooner.”
The companies chosen are also connected to different parts of the fuel challenge. SHINE, one of the firms selected, focuses on recycling used nuclear fuel. Greg Piefer. founder and CEO of SHINE. said in a separate statement that 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.”.
Fuel access, Piefer said, is not just a policy question; it is also chemistry and infrastructure. His comment lands in the same space as earlier language used inside DOE to describe the search for workable nuclear inputs. In a 2024 interview with CNN. Goff described the search within DOE for suitable nuclear fuel for advanced reactors as a “couch cushion exercise. ” meaning officials were looking widely for anything that could speed up fuel access.
Across the industry, small modular reactors are viewed as a plausible route to wider nuclear deployment. In the US, that demand has gained momentum as artificial intelligence increases electricity needs.
But the plutonium negotiations also reopen an old, hard line in nuclear policy: the difference between civilian use and weapons-usable material.
A September letter from Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, and Reps. Don Beyer of Virginia and John Garamendi of California warned that shifting weapons-usable plutonium to private industry could increase proliferation risk. The letter says: “The transfer of weapons-usable plutonium to private industry would increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. including to rogue states or terrorists.” It adds: “The United States cannot effectively discourage other countries from using plutonium for civil purposes if we use it ourselves.”.
The debate is sharper because the US has not only considered repurposing plutonium; it has also pursued a very different approach. Before the Biden administration’s strategy shifted toward repurposing old plutonium for nuclear power fuel. the Energy Department and the National Nuclear Security Administration had been pursuing a plan to dilute and bury the plutonium deep underground in New Mexico.
Still. even that earlier work points to the same direction of travel: federal scientists have been trying to convert parts of the nuclear stockpile into usable reactor fuel. At NNSA facilities. nuclear scientists have been making advanced reactor fuel by combining weapons-grade uranium with low-enriched uranium. mixed in a massive metal cauldron heated to around 2. 500 degrees Fahrenheit. producing what the article describes as a molten soup.
That is the thread connecting the new negotiations to the larger race for domestic fuel: the government’s search for how to turn stored nuclear materials into something that powers reactors—while trying to avoid the security risks that come with handling the most weapons-usable inputs.
Even as supporters see a way to reduce fuel bottlenecks for next-generation reactors. the selected negotiations are not complete. and the outcome will determine whether the US moves further into private-sector access to weapons-grade plutonium—or draws the line before the door can be widened beyond these five companies.
The talks, DOE says, are only “advanced negotiations” for now. But once they reach a deal, the consequences—economic and geopolitical—will follow.
Trump administration Department of Energy Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program Oklo SHINE small modular reactors weapons-grade plutonium nuclear proliferation risk