New design picked for warheads

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration took a major step Friday toward building a new generation of nuclear warheads, selecting a design that is being touted as safer, more secure and more easily maintained than today's arsenal.

A team of scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 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.

The new weapons program, which has received cautious support from Congress, was immediately criticized by some nuclear nonproliferation groups as a signal that the government wants to expand nuclear weapons production — not move toward eliminating the stockpile.

Critics also maintain that it sends the wrong signal around the world by pushing a new warhead — although characterized as a replacement for existing ones — at a time the United States is trying to curtail nuclear weapons development in North Korea and Iran.

"This is not about starting a new nuclear arms race," countered 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.