Project planned for NTS shelved

The Energy Department may have to mothball a high-tech experimental facility scheduled to be moved to the Nevada Test Site, a project that was seen as a key link between the prestigious national DOE laboratories and University of Nevada system.

The DOE did not request funding to operate the $49 million Atlas pulse-powered generator, a major nuclear physics project being built at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, an inspector general investigation has concluded.

The lack of funding would not stop the move, which is scheduled for sometime in the next two years. It would only mean that the project would stand idle once it arrives at the Test Site.

Congress last year approved $12 million to assemble the unit in Los Alamos, then move it to the Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

"We were informed that the department plans to seek a (fiscal year) 2002 appropriation for the Atlas operating funds, however, at the time this report was issued there had been no resolution of the operating fund situation," Inspector General George H. Friedman said. Fiscal year 2002 begins in October, and the DOE has already submitted its budget request the White House.

DOE managers said they still plan to request funds from Congress this year. The project is expected to require $35 million a year to run.

Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, Nevada's senior senator, wasn't surprised when informed of the funding shortage.

Reid, the second highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, secured the funds to move Atlas and is prepared to request operating funds.

"There's never been enough money for the Atlas," said David Cherry, Reid's press secretary for the Senate Energy and Public Works Committee.

The DOE's Office of Defense Programs, when it was selling the program to Congress in 1998 and 1999, insisted the Atlas, a powerful machine that allows scientists to validate certain elements of nuclear weapons' computer codes, was vital to protect the U.S. nuclear arsenal short of full-scale nuclear testing.

It was to be moved to the Test Site because of subcritical experiments on nuclear weapons that occur there. The experiments do not create a nuclear chain reaction but allow scientists to see how the metals in a nuclear weapon react to an explosion.

A smaller part of the project, Pegasus, is scheduled to come to UNLV. It was seen as strengthening the link between the national labs and Nevada's universities.

The inspector general found that the Atlas did not appear that important within the division when it came to funding.

"Defense Programs has not effectively managed the Atlas project, because program officials did not assign the facility a priority high enough to fund its operations," Friedman wrote in the report.

The inspector general advised the DOE to rank the Atlas as a funding priority in relation to its weapons program, ensure future projects have operating funds and to notify Congress if there is any change in plans to operate the project when it comes to the Test Site.

The department did not agree with the inspector general's conclusions.

The DOE Nevada Operations Office is aware of the funding shortage, but the project is important to the Test Site's future, spokeswoman Nancy Harkess said.

The DOE's Defense Programs division is now under the guise of the National Nuclear Security Administration.

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