Democrats have frightened by Trump’s plan to put the Plutonium of arms quality to private companies

The members of the Democratic Party express an alleged doubt of the Energy Department (DOE) to give at least 20 metric tonnes of usable plutonium to arms in the private sector for commercial energy consumption.

Such a decision would risk putting weapons in bad hands and harming the defense of the nation, said Democratic Senator Ed Markey in a letter to President Trump last week, reiterating the arguments that he and the Democratic Congress Donald Beyer and John Garamenddi made in a previous letter earlier this month.

Plutonium in the reactor fuel

Plutonium is a radioactive element, most of which are made by humans and used for various purposes. American commercial nuclear reactors are all light water reactors, which create plutonium when uranium is divided into the fission process. Some plutonium are also cracks, but not all, which means that 1% of the weight of the fuel of the US worn nuclear reactor is plutonium.

“Reprocessing” is when plutonium is separated from worn fuel. Plutonium can feed nuclear power plants, but as it can also be used in nuclear weapons, reprocessing is considered a controversial process. The United States does not currently have a commercial reprocessing program in the country, according to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Legislators argue that the United States has avoided the commercial use of plutonium and have challenged the proliferation of reprocessing technology for decades “to prevent nations with nuclear power plants from being able to extract the plutonium from this fuel, which they – or terrorists in which it could fall – could use to manufacture nuclear weapons”, the letter of September 10

“Your plan – which would provide US plutonium companies with American military actions and would both subsidize them to retrieve plutonium at national level and export reprocessing technology – overthrow our successful non -proliferation policy,” continued the legislators. “The United States cannot effectively discourage other countries from using plutonium for civil purposes if we use it ourselves.”

The letters come following an article by Reuters noting that the Trump administration plans to give plutonium, nuclear warheads dismantled to electricity companies as a potential reactor fuel.

End the excess plutonium provision program

In May, President Trump signed an executive decree leading the energy secretary, Chris Wright, to form a program to treat the surplus of plutonium and make him available for the reactor fuel and stop the program of excess arrangement of plutonium, according to the law, according to the information sheet. The order contextualizes the passage to “Jumstart America’s Nuclear Energy Industrial Base” in a world race on artificial intelligence, among others.

The Senator Markey’s September 23 letter also calls for an apparent conflict of interest in all dynamics; Secretary Wright was previously on the board of directors of Oklo, a start-up of nuclear technology and “the main business” interested “to obtain plutonium from the doe.

“I fear that your administration is advancing with the transfer plans of plutonium in Oklo and allowing it to build a reprocessing plant not because these proposals have meaning for the United States”, writes the senator, “but because Oklo should benefit financially and secretary Wright acts in the interests of his former company.”

Plutonium of nuclear weapons

In addition, according to a recent politico report, more than a fifth of the plutonium necessary to respond to the energy guidelines of Trump would come from plutonium nuclei – the radioactive nuclei of nuclear weapons. But the DOE is already struggling to respond to Congress’s mandate to accelerate the production of pits to modernize the American nuclear arsenal.

It remains to be seen how nuclear energy and nuclear weapons strategies of the United States will continue to evolve over the next three years – two sides of the same medal which will provide cleaner energy or the demolition of our civilization.