The United States is preparing to mine a rare nuclear resource from some of its most dangerous Cold War legacies, turning ...

The US Department of Energy has launched a new radiochemical separation process at the Savannah River National Laboratory to ...

The U.S. government launched a new operation extracting rare materials from Cold War era nuclear waste that is likely to ...

Oklo Inc. (NYSE: OKLO) (Oklo), an advanced nuclear technology company, today announced it has been conducting a multi-day plutonium fast reactor critical test suite with Los Alamos National Laboratory ...

It appears that the U.S.'s plutonium-238 shortage is coming an end. The radioisotope is crucial for fueling long-term deep space missions, but as of 2017, a shortage was on the horizon. But ...

A team of scientists has discovered a new, stable form of plutonium – and done so by accident. The famously unstable element is tricky to transport, store and dispose of, but the find could lead to ...

Plutonium can be used to make nuclear bombs. But it can also be recycled and used as a fuel in nuclear reactors. According to the authors of a Nature editorial, the UK—which has the largest civilian ...

Reporting from Richland, Wash. — As crews demolished a shuttered nuclear weapons plant during 2017 in central Washington, specks of plutonium were swept up in high gusts and blown miles across a ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Plutonium-238 is the fuel that is driving the Mars rover Curiosity ...

Scientists have discovered a new solid and stable plutonium compound that could have uses in nuclear waste storage. Using the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, the team —led by a cohort from ...

When NASA's next Mars rover blasts off later this month, the car-sized robot will carry with it nearly eight pounds of a special kind of plutonium fuel that's in short supply. NASA has relied on that ...

No names. No pictures. No direct conversation. And don't touch the plutonium. Those were the ground rules before NPR was allowed a rare opportunity to see nuclear inspectors learning their craft. The ...