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The Bush administration is exploring the possibility of developing a controversial new type of nuclear weapon at laboratories managed by the University of California.

Scientists at the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories have begun research on a “bunker-buster” bomb that if ever used, would be able to penetrate rock and explode below the surface.

“It would go into the earth and explode and collapse tunnels around the bunkers,” said Brian Wilkes, a press aide for the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Washington has set aside $15 million for feasibility studies on the weapon, officially known as the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. Scientists assigned to the project would be paid by the university, though UC administration would not oversee the research.

Weapons projects “are not things the (UC Board of) Regents would follow or the Office of the President would follow,” said UC press aide Jeff Garberson.

The United States used bunker busters with conventional warheads to destroy underground targets in the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. An existing nuclear bunker-buster, the B61-11, is not designed to penetrate rock surfaces.

A successful version of the weapon would be capable of destroying targets buried thousands of feet underground, said Fred Celec, deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for nuclear matters.

These targets, Celec said, could not be destroyed without resorting to nuclear weapons.

“There are hard, deeply buried targets around the world today that we cannot hold at risk with anything we have in the inventory today or any conventional weapon we see in the inventory in the future,” he said.

But critics of the administration’s nuclear policy say the bomb, which could target deep bunkers storing chemical or biological weapons, will not penetrate deep enough to contain fallout produced in a nuclear explosion.

“It’s impossible for it to work in the way people envision it would work,” said Stephen Young, a senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists, an organization focusing on environmental and anti-proliferation issues.

In a report released last month, Young wrote that the B61-11, designed to punch through earth, can only penetrate 20 feet into frozen soil. At this depth, an explosion with a one kiloton yield could produce one million cubic feet of fallout.

To contain fallout, a one kiloton bomb would have to explode 200 – 300 feet underground, Young wrote.

Under current law, it is illegal to research a nuclear bomb with a yield this low. A law passed by Congress prohibits research on weapons with yields under five kilotons.

The B61-11 can carry a warhead with a yield as high as 340 kilotons, several times more powerful than the 15-kiloton bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II.

Celec said the RNEP would produce fallout, though he said the amount of radioactive debris from an underground explosion would be less than if the bomb detonated on the surface.

The Bush administration’s nuclear policy generated controversy last year when the Nuclear Posture Review, a confidential assessment of national nuclear strategy, was leaked. The NPR, which is not a formal policy, stated the United States could use nuclear weapons against seven countries listed as potential threats.

The seven nations were China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

The UC has been the government’s nuclear partner for 60 years. In 1943, the UC took on the task of managing the newly built Los Alamos lab, though the regents were not told Manhattan Project scientists were building the first atomic bombs.

Contracts between the UC and federal government have allowed for nuclear weapons research ever since. The most recent contract to manage the weapons lab went into effect in January 2001.

In the wake of financial control problems at LANL, the Department of Energy announced last week it would put the lab’s contract up for bid in 2005.

With reports from Daily Bruin wire services.