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UC Officials Keep Options Open on Weapons Labs
by Michelle Locke, January 15, 2004

University of California leaders are keeping their options open on the nuclear weapons labs they've run for decades, telling administrators to get ready to bid on management contracts but stopping well short of deciding whether to compete.

The system's governing Board of Regents voted Thursday to allow UC's president, with the agreement of the board chairman and the chair of a board committee on the labs, to agree to contract extensions, respond to government requests for information and hire outside experts.

The vote doesn't commit UC to competing, but officials called it an important first step.

"If we compete, we want to compete to win and we want to sweep the board," said Robert Foley, UC vice president for laboratory management.

UC has long been tied to the nation's nuclear weapons program, running the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico since it was formed to work on the atom bomb in World War II. It has managed the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Northern California since it was founded in 1952, largely because scientist Edward Teller wanted to speed up work on the hydrogen bomb.

But in recent years, UC's role as nuclear steward has been shadowed by a series of management lapses at the labs, mostly involving sloppy business practices. Last year, the Department of Energy announced it would require bids when the Los Alamos contract runs out in 2005.

A subsequent bill in Congress saying contracts more than 50 years old should be put out for bid means the Lawrence Livermore contract also may go up for bid as well as a third, nonweapons, UC lab, Lawrence Berkeley, founded in 1931 by pioneering physicist Ernest O. Lawrence.

Foley said officials don't know when bids will be sought. The Lawrence Berkeley management contract runs out Jan. 31, but officials are expecting an extension. The Livermore contract runs out at the same time as Los Alamos', but extensions of up to two years are possible.

Money for bid preparation will come from UC's federal lab management fees and won't dip into the system's state funds, which have been cut by hundreds of millions of dollars due to California's fiscal crisis.

Bringing in outside help is an unusual step for UC, but one that Foley said is necessary considering that UC has never competed for the contracts and needs to overcome the perception that, while its science is widely praised, its business and security practices have been lacking.

"What we do here cannot be seen as business as usual," he said.

Before the vote, a number of speakers urged regents to sever ties with the labs, reading from letters that were part of a 100-letter "UC Nuclear Free" campaign.

UC lecturer Urs Cipolat said UC has a moral responsibility to challenge using nuclear weapons.

"A security concept risking the total annihilation of humankind and life as such can and must not be sustained," he said.

Originally published by Mercury News.

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