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Thursday, October 09, 2008
Nuclear Weapons Complex Changes Advance
By H. Josef Hebert
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Energy Department moved ahead Thursday on further restricting the nation's most dangerous nuclear material, part of a plan to scale back and modernize management of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.
The department gave preliminary approval to an environmental impact study on the consolidation program, which includes limiting plutonium and highly enriched uranium to just five sites, compared with seven today. The government also would close 600 buildings and structures at the facilities and reduce the number of workers involved in weapons programs by 20 percent to 30 percent.
None of the seven primary weapons complex facilities, including three nuclear weapons research labs, will be closed. But activities will be combined in many cases.
"The world is changing and we are changing along with it," said Thomas D'Agostino, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency within the Energy Department that oversees the weapons program.
"The number of U.S. nuclear weapons is shrinking, budgets are flat or declining and we need a smaller, more secure, more efficient infrastructure that reflects these realities, and yet retains our essential capabilities," D'Agostino said.
In a conference call from the government's Y-12 National Security Complex near Oak Ridge, Tenn., D'Agostino said the program will not require new money beyond the agency's five-year spending plan, and would save dollars in the future.
The next administration will have to carry out the effort. D'Agostino said he is "very comfortable" it will stand up to scrutiny.
A final go-ahead cannot be made for at least 30 days.
The agency already has taken nuclear material from Sandia National Laboratories near Albuquerque, N.M., and will complete the transfers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco by 2012.
Plutonium stockpiles at Lawrence Livermore have concerned citizen groups because suburban neighborhoods have moved right up to the facility's boundary lines in recent years, causing more complicated security requirements.
Late last year, the NNSA proposed to consolidate operations from the eight nuclear weapons sites around the country to move the Cold War complex into what it said would be a smaller, more secure and less expensive operation. Each facility would get various "centers of excellence," with the plan giving northern New Mexico's Los Alamos National Laboratory centers for excellence for nuclear design and engineering and for plutonium and Sandia centers of excellence in non-nuclear design and engineering and for major environmental testing.
The plan also would:
—Focus uranium manufacturing, dismantlement and research at a new center within the Y-12 Oak Ridge complex.
—Concentrate manufacture of plutonium triggers and other plutonium research at Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico. The plan calls for making a maximum of 20 triggers a year.
—Continue to use the Pantex weapons facility near Amarillo, Texas, as the center for plutonium warhead assembly and disassembly as well as some warhead surveillance work now done at Lawrence Livermore. An underground storage facility would be built for plutonium triggers, reducing the size of the facility and cutting security costs.
—Concentrate tritium research and manufacture at the Savannah River complex near Aiken, S.C. Tritium is a gas use to boost the efficiency of a nuclear warhead. Excess plutonium also is being shipped to Savannah River for storage.
The other sites affected by the plan are the Nevada Test Site; Sandia, with locations in New Mexico and California; and the Kansas City Plant in Missouri.
Copyright ©2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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