Rate of Nuclear Weapons Production Under Scrutiny

Despite the publicized problems of the Department of Energy’s aging nuclear weapons complex, including shutdown of production reactors and curtailments at other facilities, the department’s Pantex plant in Amarillo, Tex., continues to turn out nuclear missile warheads, bombs and atomic artillery shells daily, Bush Administration and congressional sources say.

Under the production program approved in the last year of the Reagan Administration and still in force, eight types of nuclear warheads are in production this year and four more are being developed for production later.

However, the rate of production has slowed somewhat and could be reduced further because of problems in the Energy Department’s facilities and reduced U.S.-Soviet tensions.

Sources said Saturday that a new schedule of nuclear weapons production, which previously has been set by the Pentagon based solely on military requirements, is being debated in an interagency process that is putting new emphasis on costs and Energy Department concerns about safety.

“We are weeks away from a final decision, but requirements to counter (a Soviet) threat are no longer the driving force,” one Administration source said.

Meanwhile, the first curtailment of nuclear warhead assembly caused by the shutdown of some operations of a components plant at the Texas complex for safety reasons might take place as early as next month, sources said.

But while public attention has focused on the problems that could sharply limit traditional nuclear weapons production, Energy Department scientists are exploring ways of keeping the present nuclear stockpile reliable and adding new weapons even if new supplies of atomic materials are cut off and underground testing is barred or sharply limited.

Energy Department and Pentagon officials, in answers to congressional questions, described “repackaging programs” under study that would permit using older warheads on new delivery systems by remanufacturing and repackaging them. They also discussed experimental systems that would permit laboratory-size tests that might be used to take the place of underground nuclear tests, should some comprehensive test ban be approved in negotiations with the Soviet Union and other nuclear nations.

Nuclear warheads are extremely complicated to build, and the work is slow. Most of the assembly work at the Pantex plant is done by hand. Each warhead must be assembled in its own secure, cavernous space. So only a limited number can be worked on at any time.

Although troubles at the Energy Department’s production reactor facilities will complicate production schedules, assembly of warheads at Pantex can proceed for years with components already available.

The primary nuclear materials in nuclear weapons--plutonium and highly enriched uranium--decay so slowly that the plutonium and enriched uranium for new weapons primarily come from the dismantling of old warheads.

Only tritium, used to boost the explosive power of some thermonuclear weapons, decays by 5% each year, requiring replacement in some weapons after several years to maintain the expected yield should the warheads be exploded.

The components in each warhead are fabricated in Energy Department facilities in various parts of the country. Often, work on specific parts for a warhead is initiated years before they are brought to Pantex for final assembly. For example, the first of more than 3,000 W-76 warheads for the Trident I submarine-launched ballistic missile was produced in June, 1978, and the last in 1988, according to the Nuclear Weapons Data Book, produced by the Natural Resources Defence Council. The large number is needed because each Trident submarine carries 24 missiles, each with eight warheads.

The shutdown last November of the Rocky Flats, Colo., facility that fabricates plutonium triggers will begin to have its effect next month on the Pantex line producing warheads for the new sub-launched Trident II (D-5) missile, these sources said.