The regents voted overwhelmingly to bid on the Los Alamos labs
Thursday, and if the University of California does beat out its
competitors for control of the nuclear research center, it needs to
make drastic changes so that the university doesn’t continue
the labs’ troubled past.
The UC has had control of the labs for 63 years. But instead of
invaluable prestige, its reputation has recently been plagued by
management mishaps.
Disks and laptop computers containing sensitive information have
gone missing. And the person the UC brought in two years ago to
tidy things up ““ Pete Nanos ““ has since stepped down.
Conditions at Los Alamos didn’t improved during his
tenure.
Los Alamos also has a controversial image among students. At the
regents meeting this week in San Francisco, students showed up to
give an emphatic “no” to the UC lab bid because of the
labs’ weapons research ““ but the regents ignored
them.
Regardless, the decision has been made, and the UC now has a
chance to reinvent the image of the labs. The university needs to
construct a plan to resurrect what has become a broken
institution.
The regents need to lay out a comprehensive explanation to both
the Department of Energy and UC students and faculty as to why it
is bidding for the labs and why it can be trusted not to mess
things up again. Both parties deserve to hear reasons from the
university because the ones provided so far have been weak and
unconvincing.
And like the complete overhaul of the management of the UCLA
Willed Body Program, there should also be a complete overhaul of
the labs.
UC officials have blamed a reckless “cowboy” culture
among lab employees for past security lapses. But when disks
allegedly containing classified information go missing, prompting a
lab-wide shutdown, and then officials discover those disks never
existed, that isn’t a “cowboy” culture. That is
pure incompetence on many levels.
The regents cannot afford to let the labs slide anymore. There
must be extensive questioning and a large-scale overhaul of lab
management. It is important for the regents to take a step back,
completely evaluate the programs and then prepare to take the labs
through another 63 years.
The UC has already made some strides toward reconstruction,
including a nearly ten-fold spending increase on management fees.
But that is not enough.
In the past, the Daily Bruin has said that despite one’s
feelings toward nuclear research, it was better for the labs to be
run by the UC than another institution.
But this also means that the labs need to reflect the UC’s
commitment to quality, students and community research as opposed
to focus on helping construct weapons of mass destruction.
This means the creation of additional student programs,
internships, scholarships and fellowships for students to study at
the labs, and the conducting of beneficial nuclear research.
It is upsetting that the regents decided not to address student
and protester concerns. One can only hope they do a more thorough
and transparent job of laying the groundwork for the management of
Los Alamos.