
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, February 7, 1991                   TAG: 9102070553
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

N-PLANT PHASEOUT PLANNED

The Energy Department estimates that by the year 2015, the United States will need only about 15 percent of the nuclear warheads in storage today, and recommends that some production facilities be closed, according to sources familiar with a new department report.

Details about the proposed restructuring of the nuclear weapons program were to be sent to Congress today, although the blueprint is expected to be refined further over the next several years.

The report recommends that production facilities at a number of weapons plants, including Fernald in Ohio and Rocky Flats in Colorado, be phased out because of a declining need for warheads.

Under the plan, some of the functions of the closed plants would be transferred to other parts of the nuclear weapons complex.

The report envisions no need to produce new plutonium by the year 2015, relying instead on plutonium recovered from retired warheads. The phaseout of stockpiled warheads would be expected to occur over the next 15 to 20 years, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The consolidation and other changes are designed "to take us into the next century" in nuclear weapons production with a "smaller, less diverse, less expensive and more efficient" program with greater emphasis on environmental and health safeguards, said one DOE official.

by CNB