Anti-nuke groups: Government plan costly

WASHINGTON, March 26 (UPI) -- A peace group says a U.S. government plan to move all nuclear weapons manufacture to Los Alamos, N.M., and Oak Ridge, Tenn., is unworkable.

"It's like trying to get someone who has a size 12 foot into a size 8 shoe," David Culp of the Friends Committee on National Legislation told the Albuquerque Journal.

Under the government plan, a plutonium lab would be built at Los Alamos and a uranium lab in Oak Ridge. The price tag for the Los Alamos facility is estimated at $2 billion, while the Oak Ridge one is put at $1.4 billion to $3.5 billion.

The proposal would give the United States the capacity to manufacture 50 to 80 nuclear weapons a year.

John Broehm, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration, told UPI though some money will need to be spent, there will be savings in the long-run.

"We will be able to do this transformation within projected budgets," Broehm said. "We will realize savings by bringing down other buildings, consolidating our footprint and consolidating weapons materials."

The anti-nuclear group Nuclear Watch New Mexico said, however, a consultant's report indicates the two projects would add more than $1 billion annually to the agency's baseline budget at least through 2012, the Journal said.