The Bush administration selected Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's design for a new generation of atomic warheads, two officials familiar with the decision said Friday.The decision, to be announced later in the day, came a year after the administration ordered a competition between Lawrence Livermore near San Francisco and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because it had not been formally announced.
The administration decided the design submitted by Lawrence Livermore, with engineering assistance from Sandia National Laboratories, could be built with greater confidence without underground testing because it was more closely tied to earlier designs that had been tested, officials said.
The Nuclear Weapons Council also found several proposed features of the Los Alamos design "highly innovative" and held out the possibility they will be integrated into the future warhead design. As the program progresses, Lawrence Livermore will work closely with production plants, assuming Congress will pay for it and that those manufacturing facilities can be brought back to life.
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