Starting Thursday, Westinghouse Savannah River Co. will offer volunteers the same severance package it plans to give those it will lay off in mid-April - one week's pay for every year of service, to a maximum of 26 weeks.

But those who choose to "take a bullet for their buddy" by filing an application between Feb. 24 and March 4 aren't guaranteed a money-sweetened departure, Westinghouse spokesman Will Callicott said.

"It's not an automatic, but I would expect the acceptance rate would be high," he said.

The company, which must reduce its work force by 1,200 this fiscal year, says it will carefully review each application with an eye toward keeping volunteers who have skills that can't be easily replaced or who are working on critical projects, he said.

Still, Westinghouse will be less finicky than it has been in past voluntary severance programs, he said.

The company hopes that about 200 employees of Westinghouse and its five partner companies will voluntarily leave. That would mean that only about 800 workers will have to be let go to reach the layoff target for the 2005 federal fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Under a plan approved Monday by Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, the company will cut as many as 800 additional employees next year.

"In the past, if you wanted to volunteer, we would let you take a bullet for your buddy and fill your job with someone likely to be laid off," Mr. Callicott said. "This time around, we're less concerned with backfilling the position."

Review of voluntary severance applications should be completed by late March, Mr. Callicott said. After that, 60-day severance notices will be sent out in mid-April. For security reasons, employees who get notices will be on the payroll for that time period but won't be allowed on the site.

Whether employees leave voluntarily or are laid off, they still will get health benefits for one year by paying what they paid while employed at SRS.

The federal nuclear reservation employs about 13,000 people. Roughly 10,500 of those work for Westinghouse and its five partners.

The layoffs are driven by three main factors - the completion of environmental cleanup projects aimed at mopping up the site's Cold War legacy of atomic and chemical waste, the end of construction projects such as the new Tritium Extraction Facility and the reduced demand for support personnel for those projects.

The Westinghouse plan approved by Mr. Bodman states that 67 percent of the layoffs scheduled for this year will come from cleanup and construction projects and that 23 percent will come from support services. In addition, there will be a 10 percent reduction in departments such as human resources, supply and business planning.

The plan also provides a detailed snapshot of planned cutbacks for specific projects.

For example, the F Area Closure project is nearing completion and will lose about 248 employees by the end of this fiscal year and an additional 255 in federal fiscal 2006. As such cleanup projects near an end, the need for environmental management technicians and scientists at the Savannah River National Laboratory also will decline. The lab will lose 19 of 358 positions of this type in 2005 and will see a 25 percent drop by 2007.

Even relatively stable missions, such as the Defense Waste Processing Facility, which encases high-level waste in glass canisters, will lose 21 positions this year as several improvement projects come to an end.

The voluntary severance program will appeal to three types of employees, said Mal McKibben, the executive director of Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness and a former SRS project manager. Senior employees on the verge of retirement might be enticed by the severance package. So might younger employees who have a line on another job or who want to return to college for advanced degrees.

"People have known for a long time this was coming," he said. "People have had plenty of time to find other jobs or check their bank accounts to see if they can afford to retire. This will happen pretty fast."

Reach Jim Nesbitt at (706) 828-3904 or jim.nesbitt@augustachronicle.com.