WASHINGTON, April 15 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. government plans, by the end of the year, to select the design of a new generation of nuclear warheads that would be more dependable and possibly able to be disarmed in the event they fell into terrorist hands, The Washington Post reported Saturday. 

    The new warheads would be based on nuclear technology that has already been tested, which means they could be produced more than a decade from now to gradually replace at lower numbers the existing U.S. stockpile of about 6,000 warheads without additional underground testing, Linton F. Brooks, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), and other government officials were quoted as saying.

    The NNSA oversees the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.

    The warhead redesign is part of a larger, multibillion-U.S. dollar program to refurbish the nation's nuclear-weapons stockpile and to consolidate nuclear plants and facilities in nearly a dozen states, the report said.

    The next-generation warheads will be larger and more stable than the existing ones but slightly less powerful, and might contain "use controls" that would enable the military to disable the weapons by remote control if they are stolen by terrorists, according to the report.

    The NNSA will choose between two competing designs submitted by teams at the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories by November, Brooks said in an interview with the Post.

    The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program was first proposed two years ago, and has been adopted as part of a major restructuring of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex being proposed by the Bush administration in light of the findings of its 2002 Nuclear Posture Review.

    But this is just the beginning of a decades-long process of replacing the stockpile with smaller warheads. Even if the government meets its year-end deadline for choosing a feasible design for engineering development and production, Congress will still have to debate and approve the choice. After that, it will probably take almost 10 more years before the first new warheads appear, the report said. Enditem