Renew Nuclear Labs Role, UC Urged : Weapons: The committee recommendation suggests that board approval is likely, despite growing opposition.

Against a backdrop of broadening opposition, a committee of the UC Board of Regents on Thursday recommended renewal of the university’s federal contracts to run nuclear weapons laboratories at Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories.

The unanimous committee vote, along with comments from a majority of the regents, signaled that there will be a lopsided vote by the full board today for continuing the university’s long relationship with the laboratories.

Most regents indicated they will allow university officials to begin the laborious process of negotiating a five-year renewal of the Department of Energy contracts, set to expire in 1992.

Such a move was foreshadowed earlier this month when UC President David P. Gardner urged renewal of the multibillion-dollar contracts, citing benefits to national security.

On Thursday, Gardner reiterated his views, telling regents meeting at UCLA that UC withdrawal could jeopardize the facilities’ “significant” contributions to national security and to scientific and technological advancements.

The easing of East-West tensions and the realignment of world power gives the university “a unique opportunity to assume a broader and more beneficial role in the management of the laboratories,” Gardner said, adding that he plans to propose ways to improve UC’s management of the facilities.

While some regents said they are concerned about management and other problems at the facilities, they said they believe the benefits of UC involvement outweigh the drawbacks.

Regent Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, while supporting contract renewal, said she is concerned by faculty opposition and called for organizational changes that would--on paper, at least--serve to distance UC from the laboratories without relinquishing control.

One of the few regents who will vote no, as he has twice previously, is Yori Wada, who said the weapons laboratories are inconsistent with the UC mission.

Among witnesses voicing opposition to the labs Thursday were the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), faculty members, anti-nuclear activists and students, many of whom demonstrated outside the regents’ meeting.

“The design and manufacture of weapons is a profound contradiction of the ideal for which the University of California stands,” said Jane Badalato of the Society of Friends.

Retired aerospace engineer Jack R. Jennings, representing the Southern California Federation of Scientists said: “The bomb laboratories are not a college . . . they are not a part of the university structure, and they don’t belong there.”

The university has managed federal weapons research facilities since World War II, and that function has been debated since the 1960s. The opposition has increased in the last few years.

In 1988, after a series of controversies, UC took steps to strengthen its supervision of the labs. Last November, a UC systemwide faculty committee urged that managerial ties to the laboratories be severed on grounds that the secret research runs counter to the university’s commitment to academic freedom.

Earlier this month, 14 legislators called on UC to drop the contracts because of alleged environmental hazards.

Over the years, much of the opposition has centered on the morality of UC involvement in weapons research and on whether the laboratories divert the university’s attention from its primary missions of education and academic research.

In addition to the government-owned labs at Livermore in Northern California and Los Alamos, N.M., UC runs Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, but the university’s connection with the Berkeley facility has not been controversial because the energy and biotech research there are not related to weaponry.

In other action Wednesday and Thursday, various committees recommended the following:

Construction of a controversial power plant on the southern end of the UCLA campus. Opponents, led by neighboring Westwood homeowner groups, said the project is potentially dangerous and would cause severe air pollution and visual blight. UCLA officials, however, argued that the facility will cause less pollution than the campus steam plant it would replace. They said it also will provide the university with a cheaper source of electricity, which it currently must buy from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.