Washington Supporters and opponents of a proposed nuclear explosives factory will converge on North Augusta, S.C., Monday night to urge the Energy Department to bring the plant to the Savannah River Site -- or to keep it away.

The plant would manufacture the plutonium explosive cores -- known as "pits" -- for American thermonuclear weapons.

The sprawling Savannah River installation near Aiken is one of five locations being considered for the plant.

The others are:

- The Pantex plant in Texas;

- Los Alamos National Laboratory, N.M.;

- The Nuclear Test Site, N.M.;

- The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, N.M.

Critics say that with the Cold War over and more than 12,000 leftover pits stored at the Pantex plant, there is no need for what the Energy Department calls the modern pit facility, or "MPF."

They also warn construction of the new plant might be part of a Bush administration plan to embark on developing new kinds of nuclear weapons, such as small battlefield bombs and "bunker busters" for use against deep underground targets.

But supporters of the new plant say the small stream of new pits being produced by a recycling facility at Los Alamos is insufficient for national security needs.

Monday's hearing, at the North Augusta Community Center, is part of a process finalizing an environmental impact study. A first draft, issued last month, recommended building the plant but did not recommend a site.

"The Department of Energy's going to find out there are a lot of people in the area who are concerned about security and environmental impact," said Tom Clements, a nuclear weapons specialist with the environmental activist group, Greenpeace. "They are going to hear voices (at the hearing) that they normally don't hear at these meetings."

The Atlanta chapter of Women's Action for New Directions will hold a news conference with church and civil rights leaders and environmental activists at Georgia's state Capitol Monday morning before going to North Augusta in a bus-led caravan carrying opponents of the proposed plant.

The caravan will stop in Athens to collect more opponents, organizers said.

But Scott MacGregor, a vice president of the Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce, said most residents and businesses would like to see the plant built at the Savannah River Site.

"I think you'll find that the Augusta-Aiken community, on the whole, is extremely supportive of the Modern Pit Facility," MacGregor said. "The opponents will come from somewhere else in buses, and the supporters will drive over to the hearing from their homes in their cars."

He said the Columbia County Commission and the Augusta-Richmond County Commission have passed resolutions supporting the MPF.

The hearing follows on the heels of a federal court ruling that the Energy Department has violated federal environmental laws in its handling of high-level nuclear waste at the Savannah River Site and elsewhere.

Ruling in a lawsuit brought by the National Resources Defense Council and three Indian tribes, the Yakama Nation, the Shoshone-Bannock tribes and the Snake River Alliance, a U.S. district judge in Idaho held that the Energy Department violated the Nuclear Waste Policy Act when it granted itself authority to reclassify high-level nuclear waste as "incidental waste."

NRDC officials said the ruling affects millions of gallons of high-level waste, some of which is stored in leaking tanks at the Savannah River Site.