The end of the Cold War created a problem: what to do with the USSR’s nuke stockpile. The solution: a 1993 agreement to convert 500 metric tons of Soviet weapons-grade uranium into fuel for American nuclear plants. Russia got paid, the US got power, and scientists who might otherwise have gone rogue got jobs. Former warheads now fuel about 10 percent of the electricity the US consumes. When the program finishes in 2013, the equivalent of 20,000 Soviet missiles will have been repurposed to light the same US homes they were built to annihilate.
See how it’s being done at: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/st_processnukes
