AIKEN, S.C. - The Savannah River Site could soon find out if it's in line for a $4 billion plant.

Linton Brooks, the administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration, says a highly anticipated report about the nation's nuclear stockpile was being review and will be given to Congress within weeks.

Officials had delayed locating the multibillion dollar plutonium trigger production plant until the agency outlined current and future conditions of the country's nuclear arsenal.

Brooks had joined Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham at SRS this past Friday to recognize the Savannah River National Laboratory. Brooks declined to discuss the report or which of five potential sites he favored, The (Augusta) Chronicle said.

Other sites in contention for the modern pit facility are the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas; the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, both in New Mexico; and the Nevada Test Site.

"You can't make intelligent decisions if you don't know what the stockpile is," Brooks said.

The plant would build plutonium pits used to detonate nuclear weapons.

Brooks' agency at first wanted to have a final environmental impact statement and choose a site by April. But it was announced in January that any decision would wait until Congress could review the country's nuclear weapons and what the United States might need in the future.

"In my view, it is a complete mistake to reopen the nuclear door, so I am pleased that the administration has recognized - in light of congressional concern - that consideration of a modern pit facility is 'premature,' at least," U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in a statement she issued in January.

Congressional delegates from South Carolina and Georgia have pushed to have the modern-pit facility at SRS.

U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett, R-S.C. recently wrote to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld urging the decision happen sooner rather than later.

A spokeswoman for his Barrett's office said the U.S. Rep.had hoped to already have received the report.

Supporters say SRS's extensive experience with plutonium and its vast infrastructure make it the best selection.

"We have said from the beginning, if (Brooks) makes his recommendation to the secretary based on technical and economical matters, that SRS will win," said Mal McKibben, the executive director of Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness.

"The secretary has to deal with the politics of it."

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Information from: The Augusta Chronicle, http://www.augustachronicle.com/