Saturday, April 15, 2006
Nuclear power facilities are to be consolidated in nearly a dozen states.
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON -- By the end of the year, the government plans to select the design of a new generation of nuclear warheads that would be more dependable and possibly able to be disarmed in the event they fell into terrorist hands, according to the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration.
The new warheads would be based on nuclear technology that has already been tested, which means they could be produced more than a decade from now to gradually replace at lower numbers the current U.S. stockpile of about 6,000 warheads without additional underground testing, said Linton F. Brooks, administrator of the NNSA, which oversees the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, and other government officials.
The warhead redesign is part of a larger, multibillion-dollar program to refurbish the nation's nuclear-weapons stockpile and to consolidate nuclear plants and facilities in nearly a dozen states, including California, Florida, Texas, Tennessee and New Mexico.
The next-generation warheads will be larger and more stable than the current ones but slightly less powerful, according to government officials. They might contain "use controls" that would enable the military to disable the weapons by remote control if they are stolen by terrorists.
Here's the schedule
Brooks said in an interview Thursday that, by November, his agency will choose between two competing designs submitted by teams at the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories.
Brooks said the November timetable for the submission of the design plans would give his agency time to develop preliminary cost estimates that could be included in the administration's fiscal 2008 budget, to be submitted to Congress early next year.
The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program, as it is called, was first proposed two years ago by Rep. David L. Hobson, R-Ohio.
It has been adopted as part of a major restructuring of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex being proposed by the Bush administration in light of the findings of its 2002 Nuclear Posture Review.
Looking ahead
The new warheads envisioned as part of the RRW are expected to be larger and heavier than those now deployed and in reserve, which originated from the Cold War years, when they needed to be light but still carry the maximum explosive yield for knocking out reinforced Soviet missile silos, submarine pens and underground command posts.
But this is just the beginning of a decades-long process of replacing the stockpile with smaller warheads. Even if the government meets its year-end deadline for choosing a feasible design for engineering development and production, Congress will still have to debate and approve the choice. After that, it would probably take almost 10 years before the first new warheads appeared.
Though most U.S. nuclear weapons contain permissive action links, or "PALS," which need to be activated before they can be used, Brooks said that technological advances might provide security measures that are far superior.
Last week, Thomas P. D'Agostino, the NNSA's new deputy administrator for defense programs, told a House Armed Services subcommittee that the government has already added a number of safety features that would disarm a missile warhead inthe eventof a theft.