TRITIUM TERMED ADEQUATE FOR U.S. NUCLEAR ARSENAL

CRITICS URGE CAUTION ON RESTARTING REACTORS

The Energy Department has enough tritium to sustain the U.S. nuclear arsenal for at least two years, according to critics of the government's bomb complex who urged the department yesterday not to restart three production reactors until questions about their operating safety have been resolved.

DOE and Defense Department officials have warned in recent weeks that the nation faces what one official called "unilateral disarmament" if reactors at the Savannah River Plant near Aiken, S.C., are not restarted within nine months.

The reactors, shut down for more than seven months because of safety questions, are the nation's only source of tritium, a component of nuclear weapons that enhances explosive yield.

"The government's claims are false," Thomas B. Cochran of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a leading analyst of the U.S. weapons program, told reporters yesterday. "National security is not threatened to the point where public safety should be further jeopardized."

Meanwhile, in the first direct challenge to DOE's plan to restart its beleaguered reactors later this year, lawyers for the NRDC, Greenpeace and the South Carolina Energy Research Foundation announced that they plan to sue to keep the reactors shut down unless the department agrees to prepare an environmental impact statement.

Concerns of DOE's safety officers frequently have been overridden by the Pentagon's need for tritium production to support the strategic arms buildup. Because tritium decays rapidly, about 5.5 percent a year, it must be replaced periodically in nuclear weapons.

In their report, NRDC analysts questioned whether the need for tritium is great enough to risk operating unsafe reactors. "Our nuclear deterrent is not going to dribble away in the next couple of years without this supply of tritium," Cochran said.

He said existing weapons are "recharged" with tritium about every five years, suggesting that the Pentagon does not consider recharging necessary until tritium has decayed about 25 percent. DOE thus could "stretch" its current supplies by refilling only half of the tritium that has decayed in five years, he said.

"The only significant impact would be that, instead of remaining in the field for five years, these warheads might have to be returned twice as soon, after about two to three years," he said.

A Pentagon spokesman said yesterday that reducing tritium charges in nuclear weapons was "an option" but added, "There are any number of potential options out there. I'm not aware of any planning to do that."

The NRDC won a lawsuit several years ago that forced the DOE to prepare an impact statement before restarting its L reactor at Savannah River after a 14-year shutdown.

Council lawyers accused DOE yesterday of misrepresenting reactor safety in that document, which stated that "no significant reactor accidents" had occurred at Savannah River in 30 years and that "fuel melting has never occurred" in the reactors.

Recently released documents from E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co., which operates Savannah River for the government, list more than 30 serious accidents since the 1950s, including at least one that involved partial fuel melting.

In a separate action yesterday, 12 members of Congress urged President Reagan to keep the reactors shut down until independent advisers have completed a review of safety modifications and DOE officials have corrected management problems at the 35-year-old bomb plant.

"Currently, the government is not in control of its own defense complex," said Rep. Mike Synar (D-Okla.), one of the letter's signers. "DOE is, in effect, a captive of its own contractors."

The White House had no immediate response to the letter, but Reagan encountered the increasingly volatile weapons-production issue yesterday in Columbus, Ohio, near the Fernald Feed Materials Production Center.

The Fernald plant, closed because of a labor strike, has come under scrutiny recently because of government documents showing that hundreds of thousands of pounds of uranium and other toxic contaminants were spewed into the air during its three decades of operation.

Asked whether he would heed Gov. Richard F. Celeste's request to close the plant, Reagan replied, "I have word from the secretary of energy that the plant will not be opened unless it's absolutely safe."

In a statement yesterday, the department also said reactors at the Savannah River plant will not be restarted "until the department's top managers can be satisfied that the reactors can be operated safely."

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.