Plutonium is mainly produced by reprocessing of spent fuels since it is not a natu­rally occurring element. Recycling of dismantled nuclear weapons could also pro­vide some plutonium! Here, we will not discuss those details, rather we will focus on the fabrication of plutonium. Fabrication of plutonium needs to be carried out with extreme caution as plutonium may cause extreme health hazard. A host of techniques, including casting, rolling, extrusion, drawing, and machining can be used. The characteristics of plutonium, such as low melting point, high fluidity, small-volume change, and high density, all are favorable for casting. However, the inherent differences between different forms of allotropes make precision casting of plutonium practically implausible. Generally, plutonium is melted and cast under controlled environment (under vacuum or inert gas) in a resistively heated or induction furnace. A number of materials can be used for the crucibles (for melting) and molds (for casting).

Alpha plutonium is relatively brittle and can be fabricated using machining or press forging. The beta and gamma phases also show brittle behavior, but can be plastically worked with due care. On the contrary, delta phase is relatively ductile and can be formed by traditional mechanical working techniques. Although ele­vated temperature working gives better deformation characteristics, oxidation is a problem. So, working at temperatures that has limited oxidation is desired. How­ever, the large volume changes associated with allotropic transformation may intro­duce distortions in the components. The delta phase can be extruded in the temperature range of 320-400 °C with care.