UC Moves Toward Bid to Keep Role at Los Alamos
SAN FRANCISCO — University of California regents took a crucial step Wednesday toward a bid to retain UC's longtime management of Los Alamos National Laboratory, giving initial approval for the university to enter the first competition to run the nuclear weapons facility in New Mexico.
UC's full Board of Regents plans to vote on the proposal today, and is considered likely to approve it.
UC has managed Los Alamos, the birthplace of the atomic bomb, on a no-bid contract for the federal government since 1943. But a series of much-publicized financial and security lapses prompted the Energy Department to open the contract to competition upon its expiration later this year.
Wednesday's unanimous voice vote by two key committees of the university's governing board came over the sometimes-raucous opposition of about 40 UC students and nuclear opponents, who twice caused delays. Police lined the front of the meeting room here and regents retreated out a side door as the protesters shouted. The discussions continued after the students agreed to remain relatively quiet, although another demonstration after the vote prompted the regents to leave briefly once more.
"We vote no!" several students shouted in response to the tally. They jumped to their feet and shook their fists but then quietly left the room at UC San Francisco's Laurel Heights campus and continued their protest outside.
During the discussion, which lasted more than two hours, several regents said the university had a duty to continue its long role at Los Alamos. "The nation needs us to do this job," Regent Peter Preuss said in a statement echoed by others. "We cannot shy away."
Other board members expressed misgivings, however, about a potential conflict between the educational mission of a public university and its management of a nuclear weapons lab. Some also said they worried that the lab's mission might change over time, from stewardship of the nation's nuclear stockpile to primarily bomb manufacture and assembly.
In response, UC leaders, including President Robert C. Dynes, said they had been assured by Energy Department officials that the lab's role as a center of civilian science as well as nuclear research was not likely to change fundamentally. They said the lab now made a small number of weapons components and it was not expected to begin manufacturing on a significantly larger scale.
