UC Moves Toward Bid to Keep Role at Los Alamos

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.

Los Alamos, which covers nearly 40 square miles, has about 12,000 employees including UC workers and contractors, and an annual budget of $2.2 billion.

Most regents who spoke Wednesday said they had concluded, despite their concerns, that the university should enter the competition.

Dynes, a physicist who worked at AT&T; Bell Laboratories and served on advisory committees at Los Alamos before coming to UC, said he initially had concerns about involvement with the nuclear weapons lab, but had changed his mind.

“I concluded ... that I’d rather be on the inside -- having a voice, playing a role in the decision-making and bringing the values of good science to the institution -- than on the outside looking in,” he said. “And that has been my basic position ever since.”

The regents were also introduced Wednesday to leaders of the three firms that will be the university’s partners in any Los Alamos competition: Bechtel National, a division of San Francisco-based Bechtel Group, the construction and engineering giant; BWX Technologies, a Virginia-based company with a long history in nuclear manufacturing and operations; and Washington Group, an engineering and construction company based in Idaho and a frequent Energy Department contractor. UC said it also would work with a coalition of New Mexico universities in any bid.

The team will be led jointly by UC and Bechtel, officials said, with each represented on the board of a new entity, a limited-liability corporation, that would actually run the lab and whose creation is required under terms of the Energy Department’s recently released specifications for the contract. A UC representative would chair that board, university officials said.

The university will face stiff competition for the contract from defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp., which is expected to be joined in its bid by the University of Texas.

Another expected competitor, Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman Corp., announced Wednesday that it had decided against a Los Alamos bid after reviewing the government’s request for proposals. A Northrop statement did not elaborate on the reasons for the decision, and a spokeswoman could not be reached.

The lab’s contract expires in September but is likely to be extended for several months, with the new team expected to be on the job by June 2006. The new contract will be for seven years, with the potential to extend for 13 more.

It also will be far more lucrative than the current contract. The Energy Department said last week it would pay the lab’s next manager up to $79 million annually, about nine times the maximum yearly fee it paid UC.

UC and Bechtel officials declined Wednesday to specify how they would divide that fee if they won the contract, saying the information could help their competitors. Dynes said, though, that the university, which traditionally has put most of its fee back into research at the lab, had no plans to start making a profit on the contract.

Under terms of the new contract, the lab’s next manager will be required to create a stand-alone pension plan, a change that worries several regents. Los Alamos employees now are covered by UC’s retirement plan.

The regents chairman, Gerald L. Parsky, said the university would do everything it could to ensure that the new pension plan mirrored the old one.