State lawmaker asks UT regents
not to bid on Los Alamos

Rep. Lon Burnam says participation
in nuclear weapons is unethical

By Ralph K.M. Haurwitz
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, July 16, 2004

A state legislator urged University of Texas System regents today to abandon plans for a possible bid to operate Los Alamos National Laboratory, a federally owned nuclear-weapons lab.

State Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, said it would be immoral, unethical and illegal for the university system to participate in such activities.

"Los Alamos is about building nuclear bombs," Burnam told the Board of Regents at a meeting in Austin. "We can't run away from that."

The regents clapped politely but did not change the marching orders they gave system officials in February — namely, to explore the possibility of competing for the contract to operate Los Alamos, a sprawling complex in New Mexico for designing and maintaining nuclear weapons.

At that time, Charles Miller, then chairman of the regents, described the work at Los Alamos as legal, moral and important for national security.

The University of California has run the lab since the 1940s, but the federal government has decided for the first time to open the contract to competition. The move was prompted by a series of security and money-management irregularities. In the most recent security flap, lab officials on Thursday halted classified research to conduct an inventory after two data-storage devices were reported missing.

A student at the University of Texas and two peace activists also spoke to the regents, urging them to forgo a Los Alamos bid. But Nobel laureate Richard Smalley, a professor of chemistry and physics at Rice University, offered encouragement for a bid. U.S. Reps. Mac Thornberry of Clarendon and Lamar Smith of San Antonio, both Republicans, were among elected officials who sent letters to the regents urging them to pursue the contract.

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