U.S. May Hasten Cutbacks in Nuclear Weapons Sites : Defense: Energy Secretary says the fall of communism offers chance to reduce facilities. Rocky Flats complex could close sooner than expected.

The rapid disintegration of communism and its accompanying Soviet nuclear threat has raised the possibility that existing U.S. nuclear weapons sites can be consolidated or shut down at an accelerated pace and new sites scaled back, Secretary of Energy James D. Watkins said Monday.

Three days after he ordered the restart of a 37-year-old reactor that makes tritium for thermonuclear warheads, Watkins said that the opportunity exists for nuclear weapons outlays “to be spent in the private sector . . . in a more productive way.”

While avoiding many specifics, Watkins said that he plans to move quickly toward consolidating the non-nuclear manufacturing work of the weapons program.

At the same time, he announced a new review of plans for future tritium production and suggested that weapons shops at the notorious Rocky Flats complex outside Denver could be phased out much sooner than he had predicted last fall.

The Energy Department had hoped to shut down Rocky Flats permanently sometime after the turn of the century, but Watkins said Monday that he will give Congress a new report by Feb. 1 on the future of the plutonium-contaminated site, where triggers are made for nuclear warheads.

Rocky Flats has been closed since 1989 because of the radioactive contamination; preparing it for reopening has been one of Watkins’ top priorities. But cutbacks in the U.S. nuclear weapons program now leave it with only one weapons project--the W-88 warhead for the new Trident II submarine-launched missile.

The future of the facility, Watkins said, rests on strategic decisions that could be made by early next year.

Meanwhile, Watkins announced plans to consolidate the non-nuclear manufacturing work now being done at the Energy Department facilities at Mound, Ohio; Amarillo, Tex.; Pinellas County, Fla.; Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Rocky Flats.

He said that he hopes to finish an environmental impact statement by the end of 1992, clearing the way for the work to be done at the Energy Department’s Kansas City, Mo., plant.

The move would reduce the work force by about 4,000 and save an estimated $100,000, he said.

Watkins also disclosed plans to sharply reduce spending on the development of a new $6-billion production reactor that had been planned as a long-term source of tritium for the nuclear stockpile.

Although Congress authorized more than $500 million for the project this year, Watkins said that the teams working on designs will be reduced and spending cut to $370 million. At the same time, Energy Department officials will reconsider using a particle accelerator rather than a reactor as a source of tritium.

Tritium gas is used to boost the power of thermonuclear weapons, making it possible to manufacture them with less plutonium and uranium fuel. But unlike plutonium and uranium, tritium decays rapidly--by 5.5% per year--meaning that the supply in nuclear warheads must be replenished regularly.