Bomb Bottleneck

One of the most bizarre shortages that may result from the Reagan defense buildup concerns a man-made mineral that many people feel is already in all too abundant supply: plutonium, a uranium byproduct used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The Reagan defense budget calls for stepped-up production of the ground, sea-and air-launched cruise missile and the Navy's Trident II submarine-based missile, as well as deployment of the MX missile system. Most of these weapons will be tipped with nuclear warheads.

With an average of 15 Ibs. of the silver-white, highly toxic metal needed for each warhead, the Reagan plan will require upwards of 130 tons of weapons-grade plutonium to build the 17,000 or so new warheads that defense specialists estimate will be added to the U.S. nuclear arsenal by the mid-1990s. But according to congressional testimony earlier this year by F. Charles Gilbert, an Energy Department nuclear expert, the lack not only of plutonium but also of tritium, an associated radioactive gas, threatens eventually to present "a serious problem."

The Government will not say what its plutonium stockpiles are, but consideration is being given to construction of two new plutonium production reactors alongside plants currently operating in Savannah River, S.C., and Hanford, Wash. Neither project is expected to be completed before 1990, and the eventual cost is estimated by one weapons authority to be "fantastically expensive--in the billions."

The manufacture and assembly of nuclear weapons are bid out to private suppliers, as is the case with every other item in the U.S. defense arsenal. Final assembly takes place in a spread of low buildings, protected by guard dogs and a high cyclone fence, that range over several acres north of Amarillo, Texas. The heavily guarded facility is owned by the Department of Energy, but the day-to-day business of building warheads and bombs at the site is the responsibility of the little-known Kentucky-based engineering firm of Mason & Hanger-Silas Mason Co.

The companies that perform this sensitive work are reluctant to talk about whether they can produce nuclear weapons in the quantities wanted. Independent observers are much less reticent. Says Richard Whittington, a research analyst at Wall Street's Bache Halsey Stuart Shields: "Capacity will be challenged across the board." Adds Rob Laufer, editor of Nucleonics Week, an industry newsletter: "Plutonium is the critical issue."

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