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Los Alamos National Laboratory is going to be changing hands—it is only a question of whose hands it will be. On Dec. 1, the Department of Energy will decide on new management for the Los Alamos National Laboratory(LANL), possibly replacing the University of California (UC), which has managed the labs for 62 years.
The laboratory, located in New Mexico, had its infamous start during WWII for the Manhattan Project, the secretive operation to build an atomic bomb. At its conception in 1942, UC Berkeley physics professor J. Robert Oppenheimer led the lab, and in 1943 UC began managing Los Alamos.
The Los Alamos of today focuses on national security issues, but also studies improvements in technologies related to energy, the environment, and infrastructure. One recent development includes creating bio-detectors to help prevent the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction.
Competition for the contract began after the Walp/Doran case of 2002, where an incidence of retribution against whistleblowers Walp and Doran, employees of LANL, led to the intervention of the U.S. government.
Despite problems with security, including the high-profile case involving Chinese-American scientist Wen Ho Lee in 1999 and 2000, the movement for new management did not begin until the whistleblower case came to the attention of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002.
The prize of management of one of the most prestigious labs in the world is between two groups. One is UC, along with a team from private industry: Bechtel, Washington Group International, and BWX Technologies. Bechtel and Washington Group are both engineering firms, the former built the Bay Area’s BART, and both helped to build the Hoover Dam. BWX is a company focusing in nuclear and national security operations.
The second group is headed by Lockheed Martin, a government defense contractor, and the University of Texas System, analogous to the UC system, along with two other companies: CH2M Hill, an engineering firm that specializes in environmental clean-up and restoration, and Fluor Corporation, another engineering firm.
Robert Dynes, president of the UC system, told the San Francisco Chronicle in an interview that he saw this situation as a choice. “The nation gets to choose whether they want the nuclear weapons programs overseen by a science-and-technology-based organization or a defense contractor.”
Whether or not UC wins the bid, the management of the labs will undergo significant changes. If UC wins, because of the addition of the three other companies, the board running the lab would be separate from the UC system.
When asked about losing the bid by the San Francisco Chronicle, President Dynes said, “The University of California’s mission, nowhere does it say that we are responsible for the nuclear stockpile in the United States. Our mission is to create new knowledge, create the next generation of creators and take those creations for public service. That’s our mission.”
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