The Energy Department on Tuesday said it is advancing negotiations with five nuclear power companies that plan to convert surplus, Cold War-era plutonium stockpiles into fuel for startups building small modular reactors.
The five companies are Oklo, Exodys Energy, SHINE Technologies, Standard Nuclear, and Flibe Energy, according to a spokesperson for DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy. If finalized, the initiative, formally known as the Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program, could supply up to 20 metric tons of plutonium from dismantled nuclear warheads to SMR developers.
The program “is anticipated to 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 spokesperson said.
It underscores the Trump administration’s push to speed up the construction of nuclear power plants in the U.S. and shore up a domestic supply of nuclear fuels, including both uranium and plutonium. Last May, President Donald Trump ordered DOE and other agencies to develop plans to expand U.S. uranium production — including the high-assay, low-enriched uranium that many SMR companies need — as well as make surplus plutonium available to industry “in a form that can be utilized for the fabrication of fuel for advanced nuclear technologies.”
Then in October 2025, the DOE opened applications for the plutonium program. It replaced a previous federal plan to dilute and dispose of the weapons-grade material by encasing and burying it underground at a waste site in New Mexico. That original plan was estimated to cost about $19 billion over three decades, a government watchdog found in 2019.
By contrast, the surplus plutonium program asks private industry to cover the costs of processing the fuel. Oklo, in a statement, said it plans to invest up to $2 billion to develop advanced fuel-fabrication infrastructure in the U.S., including for surplus plutonium, under a partnership with the European nuclear developer newcleo.
“Fuel supply constraints are a key throttle to advanced reactor development,” Jacob DeWitte, co-founder and CEO of Oklo, said. “This program creates a pathway to use existing surplus material as bridge fuel for advanced reactors to bring more reactors online sooner.”
Companies that want to build both traditional and advanced nuclear reactors, such as SMRs, are hamstrung by a limited supply of domestically enriched uranium — the most widely used fuel for nuclear fission. U.S. generators have historically imported nearly all of their supply from countries including Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan, and Russia. Starting in 2028, U.S. law will completely ban all uranium imports from Russia.
But in certain use cases, plutonium is a substitute and could serve as a bridge fuel until the U.S. scales up its uranium capabilities.
The approach has plenty of critics, however. They include Ernest Moniz, co-chair and CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and former energy secretary during the Obama administration.
In a May 2025 blog post, he said plutonium-based fuels and reprocessing “have a poor track record when introduced into civilian nuclear energy programs” and outlined a list of risks, including that it could encourage nuclear weapons proliferation and increase the cost of deploying nuclear energy — already an expensive endeavor.
