The United States government has chosen five companies, including nuclear energy company Oklo, to enter advanced talks over potentially using its Cold War-era plutonium as a nuclear reactor fuel. The US Department of Energy made the announcement on Tuesday. The Energy Department holds surplus US plutonium, which has a half-life of 24,000 years and must be handled with protective gear, at heavily guarded weapons facilities in states including South Carolina, Texas and New Mexico.
The Natrium reactor, developed jointly by Bill Gates-backed TerraPower and GE Hitachi, is being built as part of the Department of Energy's Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. It represents something genuinely new: a reactor designed from the ground up to complement renewable energy rather than compete with it.