By Walter Pincus
<http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/email/walter+pincus/>
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 20, 2006; Page A11

The United States took another step yesterday toward building a new
stockpile of up to 2,200 deployed nuclear weapons that would last well
into the 21st century, announcing the start of a multiyear process to
repair and replace facilities where they would be developed and
assembled and where older warheads could be more rapidly dismantled.

Thomas P. D'Agostino, head of defense programs for the National Nuclear
Security Administration (NNSA), told reporters that the "Complex 2030"
program would repair or replace "inefficient, old and expensive [to
maintain]" facilities at eight sites, including some buildings going
back to the 1940s Manhattan Project that built the first atomic bombs.
He said the sites -- primarily in California, New Mexico, Texas and
Tennessee -- "are not sustainable for the long term."

Yesterday's announcement comes as the Bush administration is pressing
its allies to take harsh steps to halt nuclear weapons programs in both
North Korea and Iran that it says are violations of the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty. That same treaty calls for the United States
and other members of the nuclear club to eliminate their own stockpiles,
but it gives no deadline by which that should take place.

The Bush administration plan would replace the aging Cold War stockpile
of about 6,000 warheads with a smaller, more reliable arsenal that would
last for decades. It would also consolidate the handling of plutonium,
the most dangerous of the nuclear materials, in one center that would be
built at a site that already houses similar special materials. Another
part of the plan would be to remove all highly enriched uranium from the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, D'Agostino said.

Key to the Bush plan is an expected decision in December by the NNSA on
a design for the new "Reliable Replacement Warhead" (RRW). The nation's
two nuclear weapons laboratories, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore, are
competing for the new warhead design. Before going ahead with any new
warhead, however, the NNSA would have to get Congress's approval to move
into actual engineering development.

A requirement of the new design is that it must be based on nuclear
packages tested in the past so that it will not require the United
States to break the moratorium on underground tests to make certain the
RRW will work.

The process initiated yesterday will provide the public the first chance
to give its views on the Bush nuclear program. To carry out the
rebuilding of the complex, the agency must prepare updated
environmental-impact statements for the eight sites, including public
comments, and hold hearings at each location.

Although the administration has decided to go ahead with the Complex
2030 plan and sees the RRW as a way to have a more reliable weapon, the
public will also get a chance to comment on two alternative plans for
handling the nuclear stockpile -- plans that the administration has
rejected.

The Bush option, titled "Transform to a More Modern, Cost-Effective
Nuclear Weapons Complex (Complex 2030)," would call for stepped-up
dismantling of older warheads, a process that has been slowed by the
aging of some facilities and by efforts to refurbish other deployed
warheads.

The second option to be placed before the public is called the "No
Action Alternative," which is described as "the status quo as it exists
today and is presently planned," according to yesterday's notice in the
Federal Register about the upcoming environmental-impact hearings. That
approach would keep the current programs going and defer decisions on
the future of the nuclear stockpile.

The third option, titled "Reduced Operations and Capability-Based
Complex Alternative," could draw support from arms control and
anti-nuclear activists.

Under this approach, the NNSA would keep its current technologies for
manufacturing weapons and its production facilities would not be
upgraded. The production of plutonium triggers for current weapons,
called pits, would remain limited at about 50 per year. Under the Bush
plan, the new plutonium center could produce 125 pits a year, a number
D'Agostino said would satisfy current planning for the 2,200 RRW
stockpile of the future.