Learn more :: Media Coverage :: UC Regents weigh life with, without labs

UC Regents weigh life with, without labs
by Ian Hoffman, September 23, 2004

SAN FRANCISCO -- In World War II, the Army gave the University of California a job in the New Mexico desert so secret that the school's governing regents could not be told. One university executive whispered that scientists were building a death ray.

It's taken 61 years, but on Wednesday regents ventured into their most serious debate yet on whether America's largest research university should keep its monopoly on inventing U.S. thermonuclear explosives.

At that assignment California's scientists excelled: They devised dozens of A-bombs and H-bombs, from multi-megaton monsters to backpack demolitions, nuclear torpedoes to atomic hand grenades and ultracompact ICBM warheads.

It took two secret cities of Soviet scientists to rival the university's products for efficient lethality. University officials cast the weapons work as "a public service to the nation." The federal government was so satisfied it never asked anyone else to apply -- until now.

After years of safety, security and operating problems, Congress and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham are entertaining new bidders for running Los Alamos lab in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. And while many university regents are drawn by the research collaborations, prestige and national security mystique of running two nuclear weapons labs, some are questioning the benefits of tying the university so closely to classified H-bomb work and searing public criticism of its failings in nuclear safety and security.

"If we think somebody can do a better job, we should step aside," said Regent David Lee. "If someone can do a better job, they should tell us."

Board chairman Gerald Parsky and regent Judy Hopkinson said regents must be sure that "very serious" safety and security weaknesses at Los Alamos are fixed.

"Unless they have been corrected, it will be very difficult for us to bid, let alone secure it," Parsky said.

Federal officials say it could be months before the bidding starts, leaving the university time to weigh a bid.

Top university advisers praised the quality and direction of the labs' work. The UC President's Council on the National Laboratories urged the university to bid on the two weapons-lab contracts, as well as a third contract for Lawrence Berkeley lab, an unclassified research facility located on university land and run by the university.

The three labs' scientists are deeply loyal to the University of California, said Council Chairman William Friend, and routinely claim a large share of scientific awards, most recently five of the U.S. Energy's Department seven coveted E.O. Lawrence awards for creative research.

"You owe it to those 20,000 university employees," Friend said, to keep the university running the labs "as powerhouses of the nation."

Regents also heard from two leading scholars on the labs from different sides of the debate. William Kastenberg, professor of nuclear engineering at University of California, Berkeley, said the issue centers around whether an academic institution should be in the business of making weapons and whether the work at the labs falls within the core mission of the university.

In his opinion, it does.

He urged regents to look at the labs as more than just weapons factories. The scientific research, study opportunities for students and the prestige that the lab's work offers to the university are unparalleled, he said. Further, the labs play an important part in national security, he said.

"The university's mission in terms of service, research and students is well-served," Kastenberg said.

Walter Kohn, emeritus physics professor from UC Santa Barbara and a 1998 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, countered that the university should be dedicated to the highest scientific pursuits, and those should not include creating weapons of mass destruction.

"Academic and military cultures are fundamentally incompatible," Kohn said. "UC management (of the weapons labs) raises questions in the minds of students and faculty about university integrity."

He also disputed a common argument spouted regularly by some UC regents -- that UC, with its reputation for scientific excellence, is the best steward of the labs.

The record does not bear out that UC is the best manager, Kohn said, alluding to managerial troubles that have beset the labs, especially Los Alamos, in past years.

Several students and community activists asked regents to get UC out of the nuclear weapons business.

UC Berkeley junior Chelsea Collonge, a member of the student-led Coalition to Demilitarize UC, urged regents not to enter the competition to retain management of Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"We understand it's a public service, but what's going on is the design of more dangerous weapons," Collonge said.

"We want you to demand science in the public interest and not science of mass destruction," said Loulina Miles, a UC-Santa Cruz alumna.

Regent and media mogul Norman Pattiz was applauded by disarmament activists for suggesting that the university steer lab research to global warming and energy independence, rather than new H-bombs.

"Isn't it possible for the University of California to take its weight and say, 'This is the direction we ought to be going in?'" Pattiz asked.

UC President Robert Dynes acknowledged to reporters that he faced similar questions years ago when the university tapped him for advice on its weapons labs and their classified research. He leaned toward saying no, he said.

"I finally realized those laboratories were going to exist anyway, and I would rather have some influence over those decisions rather than be a bystander," he said.

Originally published by the Tri-Valley Herald.

Learn more :: Media Coverage :: UC Regents weigh life with, without labs