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

DATE: MONDAY, March 25, 1991                   TAG: 9103250245
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

AN ERA ENDS/ GOVERNMENT CUTTING BACK NUKE ARSENAL

WHEN A B-29 dropped the second atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki Aug. 9, 1945, the United States had exhausted its nuclear arsenal. Those two devices, nicknamed "Fat Boy" and "Little Boy," were all that had been completed following the successful test of controlled fission in New Mexico less than a month earlier.

That kind of shortfall would not recur. After World War II, the Department of Energy set up plants in 32 states; for the next nearly 50 years, the government produced tens of thousands of warheads, only a handful of which could have returned the planet to the Stone Age. At times it seemed as if a nuclear sorcerer's apprentice had lost control of the assembly lines, which went on churning out bombs far beyond any conceivable purpose.

A measure of sanity is returning. The Energy Department, envisioning a greatly reduced need for nukes in the 21st century, has proposed shutting down all but five of its weapons plants for good. Private companies would be allowed to acquire the factories and make the weapons' non-nuclear components.

These welcome changes owe not only to the Cold War's end, but also to the nuclear industry's own insularity. Hiding behind purported national-security needs, for nearly a half-century the government produced nuclear arms with little thought for the environment or public safety. First were conventional nukes; then thermonuclear bombs.

Shielded from scrutiny, the industry gradually bogged down in its own inefficiency, obsolescence, hazards and waste. As recently as 1988, there were nuclear arms plants, laboratories and other facilities at 17 sites in 12 states; since October of that year, six of the plants have been shut for safety reasons, two permanently. The department has admitted the unheeded dangers in its operations and is yielding to pressures from state governments to clean up its act - which will cost tens of billions of dollars.

The Energy Department's reduction plan poses various scenarios, but all of them look to a smaller number of nuclear weapons 25 years from now: as much as 85 percent less. Presently the United States maintains about 20,000 such warheads.

It is hard to foresee a time when the United States does not keep a nuclear arsenal. Still, the nation seems to have emerged from a period of madness when security meant erecting an ever-higher barricade of atomic weapons. We cannot simply close the door on that era; its environmental, financial and human consequences will long be with us. But we are edging out from a dark, menacing cloud, into the sun. That light, from 93 million miles away, results from thermonuclear reactions - about as close as most of us need come to that process.

by CNB