What to do with 50,000 nuclear weapons?

While the world celebrates the peaceful disposal of nuclear weapons, energies now focus on their careful disassembly. Recently, the United States' main focus for dismantling has been the safe dispersal and storage of the various nuclear components and their uses for peaceful purposes rather than weapons of destruction. It should be noted that the treaties currently in effect do not require weapons to be dismantled, only that each country withdraw the weapons from the deployed status and remove the means of delivery. The US current program dismantles weapons into their various components. The disassembly of a nuclear weapon involves numerous components. Many of these components can be disposed of or recycled after changing their shape. The nuclear components create the most safety and proliferation concerns. These nuclear components typically consist of three materials: tritium, highly enriched uranium and plutonium. Some of these nuclear components will be placed in a strategic reserve, while other nuclear components will be declared surplus. Both tritium and uranium can be re-used. The tritium is repurified and used for the active weapons stockpile. The uranium can be blended down and used in commercial nuclear power plants. At this time, plutonium disposal is the most vexing challenge. This paper will briefly describe how a nuclear weapons works, the mission of the Pantex Plant which dismantles the weapons, and the research opportunities for use of dismantled nuclear weapon components