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Nuclear aspect angers critics; officials say benefits outweigh risks
09:26 PM CST on Sunday, December 11, 2005
Los Alamos National Laboratory is best known as the birthplace of the atomic bomb. But lately, the New Mexico weapons lab has been known more for a string of safety and management problems, from missing classified data to employee credit card abuses. So why does the University of Texas System want to step in and help run Los Alamos? Any day now UT will learn whether it, together with aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, has won a contract to manage the lab. The University of California has run Los Alamos since 1943, when the lab was secretly created under the Manhattan Project. Recent security lapses and other troubles led the Department of Energy, which owns Los Alamos, to hold its first-ever competition for the contract. UC is fighting to keep the job. Just as UT has teamed with Lockheed, so UC has found an industrial partner, San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp. For the UT System, the potential benefits are Texas-sized. The system would gain prestige from co-managing a crown jewel of the nation's research laboratories. It would have a stronger voice in discussions on national science policy. Los Alamos would give UT an edge in recruiting scientists, professors and students, and UT could tap into millions more in federal research dollars. UT System officials call their pursuit of the Los Alamos contract a historic opportunity. "The work of Los Alamos is fundamental to our national security. As one of the finest institutions in the country, we have a duty to pursue this proposal," James Huffines, chairman of the governing Board of Regents, said in May, when the system decided to team up with Lockheed. But with the rewards come risks. The University of California's image has suffered from the run of problems at Los Alamos. Security breaches last year – including reports of two lost computer disks that, it turns out, never existed – led to a seven-month shutdown of the lab. The government gave UC an unsatisfactory rating, and, as a result, UC received only a third of its normal $9 million annual management fee. "It's still possible to receive those benefits of collaboration. However, the bottom line is that place is a mess," said Doug Roberts, a computer scientist who retired from Los Alamos in July. He runs a popular Web log, or blog, for employees called "LANL: The Real Story." UT officials say they would oversee the academic side of the lab, while Lockheed Martin would handle security and day-to-day operations, which have been the problem areas for UC. Some national lab experts, however, note that UT still faces risks because science and safety go hand in hand. For instance, a lab employee can be injured while doing research. There are also concerns about an industrial-academic team running a national lab. Corporate involvement is certainly nothing new to major universities – consider all the company-sponsored funding on campuses for research, buildings and the like. But some professors and students wonder how academic and scientific freedom – cherished values in higher education – would be respected by a for-profit partner. Then, corporate partnership or not, some professors, students and others say a university system shouldn't be in the nuclear weapons business at all. "We don't like the idea of the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and we attend a public university that wants to run one of the largest makers of nuclear weapons in the world," said Jim Spangler, a UT-Austin senior who is spokesman of a student watchdog group, UT Watch. The UT System says it would oversee the research side of Los Alamos, which does both classified and unclassified work. UT would be in charge of peer review – scrutinizing the research methods and findings of Los Alamos scientists – and doing some research itself. Toward that goal, the UT System has formed a network with 18 other universities and systems across the country to help with research. If Los Alamos has a project related to, say, metallurgy, it could ask the Colorado School of Mines (one of the university partners) to do the research. Such research could take place at the universities or at Los Alamos. UT campuses and other schools in the network would mentor junior scientists. Students, faculty and scientists would also have the chance to do research at Los Alamos. And scientists at Los Alamos might spend a few months at a campus to conduct research and teach. The work stands to benefit UT immensely, some say. "The University of Texas has a tremendous opportunity of having its name associated with, in my opinion, one of the greatest scientific institutions in the world," said Warren F. Miller, a former deputy director at Los Alamos who is now an administrator at the University of New Mexico. "I think it will definitely improve the science and research and prestige of the University of Texas." Then there's the money. The new managers will earn up to $79 million a year, almost nine times what UC now earns. (UT says its share of the fee would go back into research at Los Alamos.) UT would also have access to millions more dollars in federal research – something that big research universities rely upon. Government watchdogs say there's also a benefit to having different contractors run the nation's two nuclear weapons design labs – Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. The UC System now runs both, although the Livermore contract will also be put out to bid in the future. But the prestige would not come without hazards. Misplaced computer drives, unauthorized spending, accidents – these are the headaches that UC has had to deal with. There's also the famous 1999 case involving scientist Wen Ho Lee, who was wrongly accused of selling secrets. Investigators in the case found management problems at the lab. Last year, the lab was shut down for seven months after reports of missing computer disks (which, it turns out, never existed) and a laser accident that injured an intern. The lab also needs environmental cleanup after its 60-plus years of operation. UT officials say the problems at Los Alamos concern areas that they wouldn't manage – the job would fall to Lockheed. Chancellor Mark Yudof has said: "Our legal liability is no more than we assume every day in the operation of our campuses. In contrast with these limited risks, the potential benefits are immense." Plus, UT is not entirely new to the nuclear arena. The flagship, UT-Austin, is home to a research nuclear reactor. UT has also done research before at Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratory, also in New Mexico. But Peter Stockton, an investigator with the Project on Government Oversight, a federal government watchdog group, says that just being associated with Los Alamos would be liability enough. "They do risk the fact they're talking over kind of a broken system there, and if they don't get it up and running, then they can get their reputation tarnished," said Mr. Stockton, who was an adviser to former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson. Mr. Roberts, the former Los Alamos employee, said the lab is "in dire need of an overhaul," at least on the operations side. But there's also a problem of low morale and high turnover, he said. Retirements are up at the lab, due to an aging work force and concerns about the lab's future, including the pension system and other benefits. Dr. Miller, the lab's former deputy director, said it's impossible to promise there will never be another accident or missing piece of classified data. "The risk is always associated as to whether some unknown, unpredicted controversy might come along," he said, adding, "I happen to think the benefit is greater than the risk." Some groups in Texas and California have protested any university involvement with a nuclear weapons lab. Universities should pursue research for the greater good, said Karen Hadden, chairwoman of Peace Action Texas. "This completely flies in the face of that more noble undertaking. It is inappropriate for a university to pursue research that leads to the building of nuclear bombs." The issue has been divisive within the University of California, and the subject of several forums and debates. UC's Academic Senate has polled members every few years. Last year, two-thirds said they favored UC competing for contracts at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore. But most faculty did not want UC to delegate the business, security and environmental safety aspects of the labs to an industrial partner. Some politicians, professors and students question whether UT or UC could stay independent in a partnership with industry. "It's a totally unholy, immoral alliance," said state Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, who has asked the UT System regents to abandon the bid. "University systems should not be going to bed as partners with the nuclear weapons complex." The government is already using university/industry teams at national labs that do not focus on nuclear weapons. The thinking is that while universities excel at research, they're not experts in management and safety. This year, the contract to run Idaho National Laboratory went to a consortium led by Battelle Memorial Institute, a nonprofit company, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (The Texas A&M University System lost its bid for the contract and was on a team with Bechtel and two other companies.) There's a strong case for getting universities involved and not leaving the labs to contractors, said Michael Witherell, former director of Fermi National Laboratory in Illinois. "As a nation, do we really want the development of nuclear weapons to be done by those who have a financial interest in what is being developed? Do we want military contractors making those decisions?" Dr. Witherell added, "I think it actually is important for universities to maintain a relationship with the national laboratories. It's important for the nation." The growing trend of university/business partnerships – outside the national labs – is a hot potato on campuses, and has raised questions among academics and ethicists. One early controversial deal was UC-Berkeley's $25 million agreement in 1998 with a biotechnology company called Novartis. The company funded research in an entire biology department in return for first dibs on licensing promising inventions. Critics said the arrangement jeopardized the department's academic freedom and integrity. An external review found the deal did not cause great harm, but that similar ones should be avoided in the future. But a Berkeley/Novartis situation can't be compared to Los Alamos and its bidders, according to Sheldon Krimsky, a Tufts University professor who studies corporate research conflicts on campuses. With a national lab where there's federal oversight, Dr. Krimsky said. "It's such a different entity we cannot apply the same standards. It's truly difficult to know how the arrangement is going to work. Is this kind of partnership going to affect other aspects of the university?" That is, would the relationship with Lockheed encourage UT to take on other confidential research projects? Will a culture of secrecy seep into other areas of the university system? Daniel Levine, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, said he's not familiar with the Los Alamos details, but that the issue raises more universal concerns. "Certainly, universities should not be apart from the world and need to be tied into other institutions," Dr. Levine said. "But if the corporations push them too far so they don't feel independent, and the researchers can't play an advisory role ... that's not good." Dr. Krimsky suggests that if UT wins the contract, it should build a firewall between the work at Los Alamos and the work on its campuses. That would give some protection, he said, so that "secrecy won't flow from [Los Alamos] to other parts of the university." Both the UT-Lockheed and UC-Bechtel partnerships have created new corporations that would run Los Alamos. UT's university network is also a separate entity and would not overlap with the other programs and departments within the UT System, officials say. "Those safeguards have been addressed very vigorously with Lockheed Martin," UT spokesman Michael Warden said. The man who would run Los Alamos for the UT-Lockheed team, C. Paul Robinson, has said he would seek assurance from Lockheed that science and the national interest, not corporate interests, come first. Dr. Robinson had such an agreement when he was the director of Sandia lab, which is also run by Lockheed Martin. Back in May, when UT decided to pursue the bid, Chancellor Yudof expressed deep confidence about the system's prospects. "We wouldn't be entering," he said, "if we didn't think we would be successful." E-mail hhacker@dallasnews.com Academic side Money for research 'Immoral alliance' Case for universities
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