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thedrifter
03-03-07, 07:13 AM
Government settles on design for new nuclear warhead

By: H. JOSEF HEBERT - Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- The country has not built a nuclear warhead in more than 20 years.

But that may change. The thousands of warheads now at the ready in silos and on submarines and those in reserve in storage are getting old and becoming ever harder to maintain.

Ending a high-stakes competition between the nation's two premier nuclear weapons labs, the Bush administration Friday selected a design for a new warhead to replace the current stockpile.

Developed by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, the warhead -- which is in its early planning stage -- is advertised as being stronger, safer, more secure and more easily maintained.

A rival design from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico lost out.

The team of scientists at the Livermore lab will proceed with the weapons design with an anticipation that the first warheads may be ready by 2012 as a replacement for Trident missiles on submarines. Other versions of the new design later will replace those operated by the Air Force.

The new weapons program, which has received cautious support from Congress, was immediately criticized by some nuclear nonproliferation groups and several lawmakers. They said it sets the stage for a possible expansion of nuclear weapons production -- not move toward eventually eliminating the stockpile.

Critics also maintain that it sends the wrong signal around the world by pushing a new warhead -- albeit one characterized as a replacement with no additional explosive yield-- at a time the United States is trying to curtail nuclear weapons development in North Korea and Iran.

"The minute you begin to put more sophisticated warheads on the existing fleet, you are essentially creating a new nuclear weapon. And it's just a matter of time before other nations do the same," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. "This could serve to encourage the very proliferation we are trying to prevent."

Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., chairwoman of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, called the announcement "an early step" toward a new warhead and promised "a long evaluation process" in Congress.

"This is not about starting a new nuclear arms race," insisted Thomas P. D'Agostino, acting head of the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the nuclear weapons programs.

Steve Henry, deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear matters, said the new design is hoped to lead to fewer warheads being needed. He said it has not changed administration determination to reduce the number of deployed warheads to fewer than 2,000 -- the lowest number since the 1950s.

There are believed to be about 6,000 warheads deployed and another 4,000 in reserve.

D'Agostino, briefing reporter on the design decision, said the intent is to develop a safer, more secure warhead to assure increased reliability without the need for underground nuclear tests.

He cautioned that the program remains in the early stages and that in coming months the Livermore team will expand on its design work to give a better estimate on overall costs, the scope of the program and a schedule toward full-scale engineering and production.

The administration is asking for $119 million for the next fiscal year for design work. The officials said they could not say how much the program eventually will cost.

The so-called "reliable replacement warhead" has been the focus of a yearlong, intense design competition between Livermore in California and nuclear scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico -- the government's two premier nuclear weapons labs.

Both of the labs developed proposals and at one point there was discussion to combine the designs into a single program. But that was rejected and D'Agostino made clear Friday the program would be Livermore's to develop.

The Livermore design was based on an existing warhead that reportedly had been exploded in an underground test in the 1980s, although never actually put into the stockpile. The Los Alamos design was based on a totally fresh approach but without a history of actual testing.

It was this "very robust test pedigree" -- as D'Agostino put it -- that gave Livermore the upper hand.

"It ... gave us the confidence ... to certify and go forward without underground testing," he said, adding that without that assurance "we were not going to go forward."

Congress authorized design work on the new warhead in 2005, but with a stipulation that its primary goal be to assure the reliability of the nuclear arsenal without resumption of bomb testing, and that it will help in the consolidation of the Energy Department's nuclear weapons complex.

Some nuclear weapons critics warned the warhead could lead to an increased likelihood of future testing, calling it a ploy to rebuild -- not dismantle -- the nuclear weapons infrastructure.

"This is a first installment on a plan to develop and produce warheads on an ongoing cyclical basis ... similar to what we had during the Cold War," said Lisbeth Gronlund, a scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nuclear nonproliferation advocacy group.

John Isaacs, executive director of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, said there's no need for a new warhead when "the U.S. nuclear stockpile, based on 50 years of research and over 1,000 underground nuclear tests, has been confirmed safe and reliable for at least another half-century."

-- Associated Press writer Scott Lindlaw in San Francisco contributed to this report.

Ellie