At Oak Ridge National Laboratory — the sole Western source of californium-252 — a quiet experiment begun nearly a decade ago has finally reshaped how one of the world's rarest and most consequential isotopes is made. By eliminating a week-long chemical bottleneck from a two-year production cycle, researchers have expanded capacity at precisely the moment the United States is staking its energy and national security future on nuclear power. It is a reminder that civilization-scale ambitions often hinge on incremental breakthroughs made in a single glovebox.