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White Sands Missile Range is on a short list of places that the Defense Threat Reduction Agency will consider for new bunker-buster bomb test, said a spokesman for Sen. Pete Domenici, an Albuquerque Republican.

The bomb, dubbed Divine Strake, will have 700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil equal to about 560 tons of TNT.

A "strake" is a piece of hull planking on a ship.

The goal of the test, planned since 2002, is to predict damage to deep underground facilities.

The blast will happen on ground over a test tunnel so scientists can determine how much underground shock it causes, said Irene Smith, an agency spokeswoman.

The bomb will not use any nuclear components. Any actual weapon developed with data from the test should not be nuclear, said Chris Gallegos, the Domenici spokesman.

"They're not even supposed to be studying nuclear bunker-busters," Gallegos said. "This would be a conventional weapon."

Local environmental groups aren't so sure about that, said Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, an anti-nuclear weapons group.

"This is a test to develop and demonstrate a low-yield, nuclear, Earth-penetrating weapon," Mello said. "This is a weapon the U.S. does not need and it will send a very dangerous signal to the world."

In 2005, Domenici, chairman of the Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, led a Senate group that removed funding from the 2006 budget for nuclear bunker-buster tests, Gallegos said.

The idea was that agency should focus more on conventional bunker-buster-type weapons, such as this one, Gallegos said.

But Mello is worried that the upcoming test could eventually pave the way for a nuclear bunker-buster.

"All they need is for the president to say `make it,' " Mello said.

The experiment was originally slated for the Nevada Test Site earlier this year.

In May, the Nevada Site Office and National Nuclear Security Administration delayed the test because of environmental concerns, Smith said.

"That action was based on NNSA/NSO's decision to clarify and provide further information on the impacts, if any, of background radiation on the Divine Strake site," Smith said in an e-mail.

The agency has been investigating the environmental concerns and is still considering conducting the test in Nevada as well as "other possible sites," Smith said.

"The earliest the experiment could be conducted would be several months into calendar year 2007," she said.

White Sands hasn't conducted above-ground explosives tests like this one since the early 1990s, when the agency built the Large Blast-Thermal Simulator on the site, said Jim Eckles, a spokesman.

The simulator is an underground tunnel that scientists can use to re-create the shock waves and heat of a nuclear blast without radiation, Eckles said.

The biggest test blast at White Sands when it was testing above-ground explosives was in the mid-1980s. It consisted of 4,700 tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil - about seven times larger than the Divine Strake test, Eckles said.

Ammonium nitrate is readily available as fertilizer. A mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil was used in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, he said.

DTRA has conducted tests at White Sands "for decades," Eckles added.

Mello said he's not overly concerned about ground contamination, but he is concerned about air quality issues that could arise with a new above-ground test in New Mexico.

White Sands might not have the proper permits to conduct the test, as regulations might have changed since the 1990s, he added.

"To me, it remains an open question," Mello said.

Smith referred the question to Eckles at White Sands, but Eckles isn't sure about air quality permits either.

It is too soon to tell because DTRA hasn't reached a final decision on where and if it will conduct the experiment, he said.

"I doubt if our environmental office would have an answer without seeing proposed details of the test," Eckles said.