National Labs: Sun Has Set on the Day of Competition : Coordination of efforts must mark these vital facilities in the 1990s
We have argued that the federal government’s huge investment in scientific talent and equipment at the national laboratories should be preserved, even though the end of the Cold War means the labs must shrink and must shift in mission. However, that leaves the question of how best to maintain a latent ability to design thermonuclear weapons in case of some future threat. Clearly, no more such weapons are needed now, and that is cause for celebration--but we cannot entirely relax the nuclear guard.
For almost half a century, the U.S. nuclear weapons program benefited from intense rivalry between the two labs that did the main design work--Los Alamos in New Mexico’s desert and Lawrence Livermore, a mile-square patch in California’s Livermore Valley east of Oakland. Both are managed for the Department of Energy by the University of California. Both dearly want to keep a strong hand in weapons work. Both know that the flush days of Cold War and Star Wars are over. Their 10,000 scientists and engineers are desperately seeking to shift into non-defense work that trades on their skills.
But when it comes to the remaining weapons work, the time for competition, redundancy and overlap is past. The labs should put aside past rivalries--which were based on bitter animosities between two famous physicists, J. Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos and Edward Teller at Livermore--and seek to complement each other. Some have argued that this rivalry helped fuel the Cold War. True or not, today they should stress their own strengths and share facilities where possible. Los Alamos is strong in high-performance computing and metallurgy, for example; Livermore in laser technology. Such cooperation is all the more important now that nuclear weapons cannot be tested, meaning that the labs must rely on computer and laboratory simulations.
There have been suggestions that the weapons work be consolidated at one lab or the other. For political and practical reasons, this would probably mean giving all weapons work to Los Alamos, near the Sandia National Laboratory, which does the engineering for the weapons. This would leave Livermore free to work on environmental cleanup and other non-military projects. One backer of consolidation, Rep. George E. Brown (D-Colton), chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, has shifted. His committee recently reported out a bill to redefine the labs’ missions and to eliminate duplication of weapons efforts. Los Alamos director Siegfried S. Hecker also wants redundancy eliminated and says that there is plenty of work for the three labs in safeguarding existing nuclear weapons and preventing nuclear terrorism and proliferation.
Consolidation is appealing on the surface but presents many complications. One top Livermore official argues this would be like pulling out the heart and expecting the animal to live, that weapons work has been the driving force behind Livermore’s excellence. Beyond that, weapons design without testing puts a premium on Livermore’s Nova Laser Facility, the world’s largest laser. It simulates the fusion energy released in a thermonuclear explosion. Livermore has made a strong pitch for a proposed new $800-million super laser, to serve the dual purpose of weapons simulation and research on fusion energy--the ultimate source of peacetime power, unlimited and nearly pollution-free.
A final decision by the Department of Energy is not expected until late next year. But Secretary Hazel O’Leary clearly favors Livermore over Sandia and the Nevada test site. “If we go forward, it has to be Livermore,” she said in an interview, adding: “Some of our best nuclear physicists are at Livermore. I do not believe we should break up a core team, nor throw away equipment. . . . These are not military bases.”
A special outside commission appointed by O’Leary is examining the future of the labs. Congress and the White House are also likely to have their say, and politics will certainly intervene. The decision on restructuring the labs is fraught with implications both for national defense and American industrial prowess. We oppose keeping these scientists and technicians working just to maintain their jobs and labs. But policy-makers must use care to balance continuing military needs with new civilian missions.
