WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is expected to ask Congress next week for millions of dollars to resurrect a study on nuclear missiles that would burrow underground before exploding.
   The "bunker buster" research request will face a fight not only from anti-nuclear watchdog groups who view it as the start of a new arms race, but also from members of Congress on both sides of the political aisle who question the feasibility, need and expense of such a weapon and who killed a similar study last year.
    All members of Utah's congressional delegation voted in November for a 2005 Energy Department spending bill as part of a larger package of appropriations measures that eliminated $27.5 million for the study.
   However, the four Republicans in the five-member delegation supported the study in previous budget requests and have maintained they are not convinced the research would ultimately lead to experimental detonations at the Nevada Test Site. The White House said such a weapon is needed to deter potential enemies such as North Korea, which are storing biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in hardened underground bunkers.
    Rep. Jim Matheson, the lone Democrat in the Utah delegation, Tuesday lambasted the Bush administration after disclosure of a Jan. 10 memo from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to seek funding for completing the study in 2007.
    "The House was very clear last year in zeroing out the funding and the Senate backed that, so I am very disappointed that Donald Rumsfeld would do this," Matheson said. "It doesn't make sense and it's a bad idea."
    Critics of the so-called Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP) maintain it's impossible to develop a bomb casing and burrowing mechanism to penetrate the Earth deep enough to avoid spewing tons of radioactive debris into the atmosphere upon detonation.
    The Washington Post first reported on Rumsfeld's memo to the DOE on Tuesday.
    "I've been told by colleagues that they anticipate the fiscal request for 2007 will be for much more funding to complete the research and pave the way for production," said Vanessa Pierce of HEAL Utah, which monitors nuclear-policy issues affecting the state.
    Jim Bridgman of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability said he anticipates some of the study funding will be shifted from DOE's request to the Department of Defense's 2006 budget request. The Air Force is expected to ask Congress for funding to field test an unarmed RNEP, an experiment that could involve dropping a prototype of the weapon, minus its nuclear warhead, onto the Nellis Air Force Base training range in Nevada to determine whether it can burrow far enough underground before detonating.