So desperate for electricity that they're now rummaging through nuclear warhead waste—America is planning to pull out 19.7 tons of weapons-grade plutonium to "power" AI.
Reuters has just broken the news: The Trump administration is in deep discussions with five private companies to process the 19.7 tons of Cold War-era weapons-grade plutonium (including material recovered from dismantled warheads) into advanced reactor fuel, in an effort to alleviate the data center power shortage.
What’s the scale of 19.7 tons?
The non-proliferation community widely agrees: it’s enough to build around 2,000 nuclear bombs. With a half-life of 24,000 years, even minute dust particles can be fatal.
A former NNSA security official bluntly stated this material could directly be used to make nuclear weapons, and “the massive risks will ultimately be paid for by taxpayers.”
Meanwhile, the DOE’s attitude is strikingly hands-off: costs related to security, non-proliferation, and radiation protection are not covered by the Department of Energy—they’re left entirely for private companies to bear.
Just take one example: the Savannah River MOX project, which burned through approximately $7.6 billion but produced zero qualified fuel, was ultimately abandoned in 2018 after being left unfinished.
Thus, skepticism is warranted. America is currently facing collapsing power grids, transformers queued for five years, and HALEU stuck in Russia’s hands. Now, they’re selling off their nuclear weapons legacy as batteries for GPU farms. This isn’t revitalizing existing assets—it’s a nuclear gamble driven by compute anxiety.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1868120273816651/
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