Event Details

The lecture will cover the context and history of the UK's plutonium programme, from its origins in development of nuclear weapons, through plutonium's potential use as reactor fuel, to the 2025 decision to dispose of most of the UK's separated plutonium as a waste.

The UK first made plutonium in the early 1950s to support its nuclear weapons programme. Over the following decades, the nuclear programme transitioned to generation of electricity from nuclear power, but the UK continued to separate plutonium from used nuclear fuel and now holds 140 tonnes- only the Russian military stockpile is larger. Use in fast reactors, which massively increases the energy available from nuclear fuel, was the original rationale for separation but the economic climate around nuclear energy changed in the 1980s, and fast reactors became much less attractive. As a result, the UK plutonium stockpile continued to grow until 2022. In January 2025, Government decided to manage this stockpile as waste, a decision with major financial, technical and environmental implications.