NUCLEAR BOWL: CAL VS. TEXAS

Two of the country’s biggest uni­ver­si­ties are headed for a multi­bil­lion dol­lar show­down over who runs the nation’s most impor­tant nuclear lab.
The University of Texas’ board of regents voted unan­i­mously Wednesday to begin prepar­ing a poten­tial bid to oper­ate the trou­bled Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birth­place of the atomic bomb. The University of California has been run­ning the lab since its incep­tion more than 60 years ago. But after waves of scan­dals forced the ouster of most of Los Alamos’ senior staff, the Energy Department announced that it would put the lab’s $3 billion-​​per-​​year man­age­ment con­tract up for bid for the first time, when it expires next year.
Several cor­po­rate and aca­d­e­mic insti­tu­tions are expected to go after the Los Alamos con­tract in the upcom­ing year. By com­mit­ting $500,000 to start work on a bid, the University of Texas is the first major player to for­mally announce its inten­tions.
UT offi­cials say they won’t decide on whether to place a full-​​blown bid until after they see the Energy Department’s request for pro­posal on Los Alamos. But already, con­tro­versy is swirling around UT’s deci­sion. Some Los Alamos employ­ees are ques­tion­ing whether UT has the sci­ence exper­tise needed to run one of the world’s pre­miere research cen­ters.
Lab watch­dogs, on the other hand, are wor­ried that the school might be a lit­tle too cozy with the Republican estab­lish­ment in Washington, D.C., and could be par­tic­u­larly pli­ant regard­ing President Bush’s push for new nuclear weapons. After all, crit­ics note, Texas is the home state of the pres­i­dent, and of Rep. Tom DeLay, the House major­ity leader.
There’s more in my Wired News arti­cle.

February 5th, 2004 | Los Alamos and Labs | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.