3/3/07  San Jose Mercury News, by Scott Lindlaw,  Associated Press

The Bush administration selected Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's design Friday for a new generation of atomic warheads, advancing a plan to update the nation's arsenal amid criticism from nuclear weapons opponents.  The Lawrence Livermore design beat one submitted by Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico because it can be built with more certainty in the absence of underground testing.

``Both teams developed brilliant designs,'' said Thomas P. D'Agostino, acting administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration.  The warhead would replace those now atop missiles on submarines, the most numerous warhead in the U.S. arsenal.  Critics fear the project could send the wrong signal to the world at a time when the United States and its allies are trying to curb the spread of nuclear technology.

Feinstein opposed:  California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said she was ``100 percent opposed'' to the new program, even though the choice of Lawrence Livermore brings great prestige, and possibly jobs, to her home state.  ``What worries me is that the minute you begin to put more sophisticated warheads on the existing fleet, you are essentially creating a new nuclear weapon. And it's just a matter of time before other nations do the same thing,'' Feinstein said.

The announcement comes at a time when the administration is engaged in delicate disarmament negotiations with North Korea, which reportedly possesses several nuclear weapons, and Iran, which the administration fears wants them.  Iran recently called on the United States to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

``Today is a sad day for global security,'' said Marylia Kelley, executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs, a Livermore-area watchdog group. ``Our government is sending a signal that will increase international proliferation pressures and increase the nuclear danger.''

Underground testing:  Opponents of the program also question whether a next-generation bomb can improve reliability and safety if it cannot be tested. Congress has financed the research on the condition that the redesigned weapon reduce the need for underground testing, which can leave residual radiation.

The goal is to replace the arsenal of aging warheads with a generation meant to be sturdier, more reliable, safer from accidental detonation and more secure from terrorist theft.  The replacements will have the same explosive yields and other military characteristics of the current weapons, officials said, a point that senior administration officials have made to Russia in arguing that the new weapons do not represent an expansion of the U.S. arsenal.

Even so, the potentially costly initiative faces an uncertain future and has generated much criticism from skeptics who argue that a new design for the nuclear arsenal is unneeded and a potential stimulus to a global nuclear arms race.

Feinstein cited a report in December saying plutonium pits in existing weapons have a lifespan of at least 85 years, leading critics to question whether the new weapons are necessary.

``This is a solution in search of a problem,'' said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association.

``There is an urgent need to reduce these weapons, not expand them. This will keep the Chinese, the Russians and others on guard to improve their own stockpiles.''

Leaps in computer modeling and experimental capabilities in probing the internal structure of plutonium allowed scientists to draw up an essentially new weapon without testing, said Bruce Goodwin, associate director of defense and nuclear technologies at Lawrence Livermore.

Goodwin said he and his team were ``honored'' by the selection. Competing designers at Los Alamos had won the last two races for supplying Navy submarine warheads in the 1970s and 1980s, carving out a near-monopoly on U.S. ballistic missile warheads and garnering responsibility for about three-fourths of active U.S. weapons.

Many of the warheads in the nation's stockpile were designed and built 40 years ago, and their plutonium and other components are deteriorating in ways researchers do not fully understand.  The government spends billions of dollars each year tending to its aging stockpile.

Reopening facilities:  As the program progresses over the next six years, Lawrence Livermore will work closely with production plants, assuming Congress will pay for it, and that manufacturing facilities that have been shuttered as the U.S reduces its nuclear stockpile are brought back to life.  If funded by Congress, the new warhead developed with engineering assistance from Sandia National Laboratories would be used on the Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile system.

The administration's Nuclear Weapons Council found several proposed features of the Los Alamos design ``highly innovative'' and said they could be integrated into the future warhead design.  Glenn Mara, principal associate director for weapons programs at Los Alamos, said his lab will review the design and has expertise in the technology to trigger detonation.  Revamping the nation's warheads will nurture a new generation of nuclear scientists and engineers, Mara said.