U.S. Blocks Buying of Russian Plutonium : Nuclear: The Bush Administration reportedly is holding up the Energy Department’s efforts to purchase the fuel for use in deep-space flights.

The Bush Administration has blocked the U.S. Energy Department’s efforts to buy plutonium from Russia that would be used as fuel in deep-space probes, a published report said today.

The $6-million deal was one of several stymied by the Administration in its efforts to prevent Russia’s military-industrial complex from ever again posing a threat to the United States, in this case by starving it of income, the New York Times said, citing federal and industry experts.

It said negotiations to buy the plutonium 238 from Russia began in 1989 and were all but completed by last year, when they were abruptly halted.

The deal has been in bureaucratic limbo for almost a year, the report said.

Russian officials and workers, desperate for hard currency, prepared the radioactive substance even before a purchase contract was signed, the report said.

It quoted the assistant secretary for nuclear energy, William Young, as declining to say where in the government the deal was being held up.

But Young said that there is no impasse in the talks and that the government is still “considering the possibilities,” the report said.

Plutonium 238 is a radioactive isotope that emits heat, which can be harnessed into electrical power. American supplies of the substance are running low, the newspaper reported.

Plutonium 238 has been used to make batteries for U.S. space flights into the distant reaches of the solar system, where sunlight is too weak to power solar panels, the newspaper reported.

The batteries have powered moon and Mars probes, as well as the current Galileo mission to Jupiter, it said.

Experts said that, since all such purchase deals have hit a roadblock, they suspected there was a secret directive banning such trade, the newspaper said.

A different isotope, plutonium 239, is used to build nuclear bombs. Both substances are made in nuclear reactors.

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