Quest for weapons rejuvenates U.S. research labs

SUE MAJOR HOLMES, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Originally published Sunday, April 7, 2002

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. -- With the demise of the Soviet Union, America's nuclear weapons laboratories lost much of their mission.

The United States and Russia agreed to cut back stocks of nuclear warheads and ratchet down the targeting of each others' cities. They even stopped testing new bombs.

But after Sept. 11, the Department of Energy's aging weapons labs -- Los Alamos National Laboratory is almost 60 years old -- got a new vocation: developing counterterrorism gear.

The two New Mexico weapons labs, Los Alamos and Sandia, have embarked on projects including collar cameras for rescue dogs, explosive-sniffing robots and anthrax-killing foam.

Now it appears their old expertise, nuclear bombs, may also be returning to vogue.

The U.S. military has asked Sandia and Los Alamos to design a new bunker-busting nuclear bomb, one that can destroy underground command-and-control centers or stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons.

The Bush administration's new Nuclear Posture Review, leaked to the news media in February, fingered Russia, China, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria as countries that could conceivably be targets for such new nukes.

For the two weapons labs in New Mexico, the first impetus to jump into anti-terror technology stems from an attack closer to home.

After the 1996 Oklahoma City bombing -- in which two Americans were convicted and one executed -- lab scientists began girding for the possibility that terrorists might someday build, buy or steal a nuclear bomb.

Government logic postulated that scientists who design America's bombs know the best way to detect nuclear or other hazardous materials and somehow prevent a terrorist-mounted nuclear assault.

The labs' scientists have hatched several anti-terrorism projects, including:

- A device that physically dismantled and preserved evidence of a bomb that authorities say airplane passenger Richard Reid carried in his shoe in December.

- A method of pinpointing genetic strains of anthrax and other deadly germs through DNA analysis.

- An anthrax-killing foam used to decontaminate buildings in Washington, D.C., and New York.

- Tiny cameras on rescue dogs' collars used in search missions in the wreckage of the World Trade Center.

- The Sand Dragon Robot, a wheeled metal device fitted with an explosives-sniffing sensor.

- Air monitors at the Salt Lake City Olympics that checked for signs of a bioterrorist pathogen.

- An early warning computer network for public health officials to spot trends in infectious diseases.

New Mexico's two weapons laboratories each enjoy $1.6 billion budgets and provide a combined total of 14,000 jobs -- big numbers in one of the poorest states in the country.

For people in Los Alamos, the war on terrorism has meant employment. Sandia hired more than 600 people last year, and officials expect to add a similar number this year. Los Alamos is expected to hire 1,000 this year.

The Bush administration's push in counterterrorism is already showing up in lab budgets. This year, Los Alamos has about $100 million for research and development into such technology. Los Alamos director John Browne expects that to increase to $116 million in fiscal year 2003.

Research on "bunker-busting" nuclear bombs is expected to bring $15 million a year for three years to the two New Mexico labs and the nation's third weapons lab, Lawrence Livermore in California.

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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