251

Billionaire Peter Thiel backing first privately developed US uranium enrichment facility in Paducah (www.wkms.org)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

38 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A California-based company with ties to billionaire investor and Trump ally Peter Thiel announced plans Friday to build America’s first U.S.-owned, privately developed facility to enrich uranium in far western Kentucky.

In an email sent to WKMS, General Matter said that the company intends to make a “historic investment in American nuclear infrastructure” by restoring a shuttered facility in Paducah. The gaseous diffusion plant in McCracken County, which ceased operations in 2013, was built by the U.S. government in the 1950s to bolster national defense efforts – and later to generate fuel for nuclear power plants.

Oh wow, good to see California and Kentucky working so closely together these days on so many important things.

Massie, Khanna hammer Republican leadership for thwarting Epstein transparency push

It just goes to show that no matter who you are, Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Liberal, we can all come together over as ~~recipients of Thiel money~~ Americans.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] [email protected] 89 points 1 week ago

Oh yes, lets give the billionaires access to nukes, that sounds safe, I'm sure we can trust them.

[-] [email protected] 29 points 1 week ago

I asked ChatGPT and it said this was fine. I asked Grok and it said this was based and cool.

[-] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago

enriched uranium is not a nuke by itself

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Yet.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago

Why do all y'all jump to nukes with this story!? He clearly wants more power for his AI schemes. No conspiracy, the motivation is simple.

U235 enrichment:

Power plant: 3-5%.

Weapons grade: 90%+

Even a bugfuck administration like Trump's isn't going to allow private enterprise to produce weapons-grade fissile material without serious fucking oversight and total control over every step. Why would any government give up their most powerful weapons?

On top of that, it takes hella tech to assemble a thermonuclear weapon. Every government that has a solid intelligence apparatus tracks the tools, scientists and materials involved. An atom bomb is not a hydrogen bomb, not by an order of magnitude, and you can't exactly hide the means for rolling your own Little Boy.

Not trying to bag on you OP, just feel like I'm taking crazy pills when we think a billionaire could get access to nukes.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

The same admin that fired like half the nrc because they didn't know what they did?

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

The technology behind 5% and 90% is the same.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

They already have them:

trump, putin, xi, the unholy trinity axis of evil

[-] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Netanyahu, although they refuse to acknowledge it.

this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2025

251 points (98.8% liked)

Technology

73795 readers

4389 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related news or articles.
Be excellent to each other!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]