Anti-nuclear activists urge UT System not to bid on weapons lab

By JIM VERTUNO, Associated Press Writer
July 17, 2004, Saturday

Austin -- Anti-nuclear activists on Friday protested the University of Texas System's possible bid to manage the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of the atomic bomb.

The Los Alamos site in New Mexico, one of two government nuclear weapons laboratories, has been operated by the University of California since it was established in 1943. Federal officials decided to put the contract up for bid after recent scandals, including missing computers containing sensitive information.

The University of Texas System has informed the U.S. Department of Energy it is interested in the project and may bid to manage it. Federal officials will set guidelines for formal proposals in the fall and could award the contract in June 2005.

Although no final decision has been made whether to bid, the system's board of regents voted in February to prepare for one, authorizing up to $500,000 on planning.

Representatives of a coalition of students and anti-nuclear groups urged the board of regents not to approve a bid. The board is not expected to make a decision until later this year.

"Ethically and morally, we should all be opposed to the university getting into the business of managing the building of nuclear weapons," said state Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, director of the Dallas Peace Center.

"These are weapons of mass destruction, no matter what countr! y produces them," said Karen Hadden, chair of Peace Action Texas.

Opponents also complained they had been ignored until Friday's meeting.

UT System Chancellor Mark Yudoff said officials are "sensitive to the concerns of those who oppose any association with nuclear weapons because of deeply held religious or moral principles."

He said the Texas system is a long way from developing a bid and will seek input from its faculty and students and other interested parties.

But he also said winning the bid would give Texas an entryway into the federal laboratory system and research. The lab has about 11,000 workers with an annual budget of about $2 billion.

He acknowledged the lab's role in nuclear weapons technology but said it also plays a vital role in homeland security by helping the United States understand other nation's nuclear capabilities.

"If we got rid of every American nuclear weapon tomorrow, we would still need to understand the technology to defend ourselves," Yudoff said.

Yudoff said the lab also does research on energy, the environment and health.

Richard Smalley, a Rice University professor and winner of the Nobel Prize for chemistry who works with the federal government and the Los Alamos lab on nanotechnology, called Los Alamos "one of the great scientific temples in this country."

Smalley said the research at the lab may someday help find clean and reliable energy sources other than oil.

The regents received letters from several state officials expressing support of a possible contract bid. Texas Congressmen Mac Thornberry and Lamar Smith and U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, all Republicans, encouraged a bid.

The groups protesting the possible bid said the UT System should avoid getting involved ! in the lab's existing security problems.

On T hursday, the lab halted all classified work while officials conducted a wall-to-wall inventory of sensitive data. The stand-down came after the lab reported last week that two items containing classified information turned up missing. The items were identified only as removable data storage devices.

"I would think this is a mess the UT system wouldn't want to wade into in terms of liability," Hadden said.

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