Test Site is finalist for nuke bomb plant

Friday, Sept. 27, 2002 | 11:20 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

The Nevada Test Site is among five finalists to replace the contaminated nuclear bomb plant at Rocky Flats, Colo., administration officials said.

The Bush administration wants to build a plant to produce plutonium "pits" that make up the heart of nuclear weapons and is studying the Test Site as the future home.

Nevada's congressional delegation was studying the proposal today.

"While the Nevada Test Site is one of the most safe and secure locations in the nuclear weapons complex, I would need to take a serious look at what the Department of Energy has planned before I would support construction of this facility at the Test Site," Sen. Harry Reid said.

A spokeswoman for Sen. John Ensign said that he was collecting more information on the proposed facility before commenting on it.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said she would be "perfectly fine with this project going to what appears to be the DOE's first choice of sites, located in South Carolina."

"Nevada has long since done its nuclear duty to the country," she said. "Given the DOE's record on environmental issues, I don't support placing this project in Nevada."

Hearings have been scheduled throughout October in Las Vegas, Amarillo, Texas; Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico; the Waste Isolation Pilot Project in Carlsbad, N.M.; and the Savannah River site in South Carolina. A public hearing will also be held in Washington, D.C.

The Las Vegas hearing has been set for 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Oct. 17 at the Nevada Operations Office, 232 Energy Way, North Las Vegas, said a notice published Monday.

The Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects is watching the upcoming hearings, Executive Director Bob Loux said.

Savannah River, Carlsbad and Pantex in Texas all want the project, Loux said.

"We are watching it and gathering more information," Loux said.

The plant is expected to cost $2 billion to $4 billion. A decision on where to build the facility is expected in April 2004.

Up to 1,500 permanent jobs could be created at the new facility.

The National Nuclear Security Administration, the Test Site's manager, is responsible for considering environmental impacts from building the soft ball-sized plutonium cores at the center of nuclear weapons.

No plutonium pits have been made since 1989, after the Rocky Flats facility, near Denver was shut down.

The Bush administration supports a new plant to replace aging nuclear weapons stockpiled by the United States.

Less than 50 pits per year could be produced at Los Alamos in New Mexico through 2007, according to the federal documents.

However, the United States will need bigger and permanent production facilities after that time.

Last spring the federal government said it intended to replace Rocky Flats, but promised not to build near a major city again. Denver just barely escaped major contamination during a fire at Rocky Flats at the height of the Cold War.

One site under consideration for the new factory is the federal government's Savannah River nuclear facility in South Carolina -- even though Gov. Jim Hodges earlier this year threatened to lie down in front of trucks to stop plutonium from being shipped to his state from Colorado for storage.

Savannah River once had five reactors producing plutonium for Rocky Flats bombs. Some experts say that experience makes it the front-runner. It is 20 miles from Augusta, Ga., a city of 42,000.

"Since we're shipping our plutonium to Savannah River, they'd have the material to get started," said Hank Stovall, a Broomfield, Colo. City Councilman who serves on a group of city and council government officials monitoring Rocky Flats.

The other possible locations are the Pantex nuclear plant, 17 miles northeast of Amarillo, Texas; and two places in New Mexico -- the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the atomic bomb was produced, and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant 26 miles from Carlsbad. That plant is a deep underground storage site for nuclear waste, including Rocky Flats plutonium.

The new plant is expected to cost $2 billion to $4 billion and won't be finished until 2020, said Bryan Wilkes, spokesman for the National Nuclear Safety Administration.

Wilkes said one factor in picking the five locations was community interest. "There was even some lobbying to have it," he said.

Carlsbad's mayor has said the plant could bring 1,500 jobs.

The government wants a new plant to manufacture plutonium in grapefruit-size "pits" that are the core of a nuclear weapon "because we haven't had any new nuclear weapons since 1989," Wilkes said.

"We know that plutonium pits have a limited lifetime," Wilkes said. Without replacing the bombs, "we could wake up and find out half our stockpile is gone to waste."

But opponents, such as Don Hancock of the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque, said no proof shows plutonium pits decay, and "we have enough pits to obliterate the world 20 times over," he said.

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