New satellite imagery has confirmed that Israel's recent airstrike on Iran caused significant damage to the Arak heavy water reactor—also known as the Khondab facility—located about 250 kilometres ...

Satellite pictures from Maxar Technologies, dated June 19, confirm that Israel's recent airstrike caused substantial structural damage to Iran's heavy water reactor facility at Arak, also known as ...

A plan to dilute and dispose of excess plutonium dating back to the Cold War was frozen by an executive order President Donald Trump issued late last month. Instead, the order directs Energy ...

Dilute and dispose was intended to be a cost-effective alternative to the now-cancelled Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility. But costs have continued to climb. DOE’s own cost estimates ...

The proposed plutonium pit facility at Savannah River Site will reconstruct a massive 500-room partially completely abandoned building designed for the Mixed Oxide Plant. The spectacularly failed ...

Plutonium has accumulated at Sellafield for decades as a byproduct of spent nuclear fuel. The government had been exploring the possibility of reusing the stockpile as mixed oxide fuel (MOX), in which ...

Lightbridge's metallic fuel (Image: Lightbridge) A study using a variant of Lightbridge Fuel in which uranium-zirconium alloy was substituted with an equivalent plutonium-zirconium composition found ...

A shipment of samples of plutonium oxide is en route from the UK to a laboratory at Orano's Melox plant in southern France. The samples will be used to determine if the plutonium can be used in the ...

More information: Stephen K. Wilke et al, Plutonium oxide melt structure and covalency, Nature Materials (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41563-024-01883-3 ...

B: Initially, plutonium oxide samples were matte grey but they changed to shiny black after intense heating. C: The inset shows a sample after heating under pure O2 gas.

Getting to know how plutonium behaves The project builds on previous fundamental Argonne research, which found that the plutonium in the tanks takes the form of plutonium oxide nanoparticles.