Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: LLNL

  • Livermore Lab – Perception Versus Reality

    Marylia Kelley


    This article was originally published by the San Francisco Chronicle.


    When I first began monitoring Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a working scientist there told me, “Follow the money if you want to know what is really going on.” Look at the Department of Energy’s 2012 budget request for the Livermore Lab and it becomes apparent that PR has an inverse relationship to budget.


    Some 89 percent of the funds are for nuclear weapons activities. Yet, more than 89 percent of the press releases showcase programs like renewable energy and science that receive less than 3 percent of the spending. This has caused many to believe that Livermore Lab is converting from nuclear weapons to civilian science.


    A major consequence of the chasm between public perception and where the money actually goes is that science at Livermore continues to exist on the margins – underfunded, understaffed and at the mercy of the 800-pound gorilla of the nuclear weapons budget.


    Witness a recent press release announcing that Livermore Lab has teamed with a renewable energy company that has developed floating, tethered towers so that wind turbines can generate more power by locating them in deeper water. Livermore will model ocean circulation and wake turbulence to predict power generation. This data will improve offshore wind-farm siting. Imagine what could be accomplished if renewable energy received more than 0.6 percent of the federal monies at Livermore Lab.


    Consider the many benefits of transitioning Livermore from nuclear-weapons design to a “green lab,” focused on nonpolluting energy development, climate research, basic sciences, nonproliferation and environmental cleanup. Livermore Lab is uniquely qualified to contribute in these areas. The lab already employs the right mix of physicists, other scientists, engineers, materials specialists, and support personnel for these undertakings.


    Further, Livermore Lab houses current programs in all of these areas, albeit supporting them with miserly funding. What if these programs were to receive 89 percent of the budget? How might civilian science at the lab grow in scope and democratize in practice? What might that transformation do to boost employee morale and increase community acceptance?


    Our country needs its national laboratories devoted to clean energy, environmental restoration, developing a “green” economy and reducing nuclear dangers more than it needs a new nuclear bomb. Transforming Livermore to meet pressing 21st century challenges is technically feasible. It can be accomplished without adding new monies to the federal budget.


    What is lacking is political will. Today, congressional committees are looking at the Department of Energy’s 2012 budget request, with each committee marking up its own version of the budget. The final appropriations bill will go to the president before Oct. 1, the beginning of the fiscal year. Timely public input can influence spending priorities.


    Historically, social and political changes have come about when the people have stepped forward to lead. The politicians then followed. Change may not happen overnight, but if we all work together, we can ensure that Livermore Lab’s public relations and its actual budget become one and the same.

  • Nuke U: How the University of California Is Helping to Blow Up the World

    This article was originally published by The Bohemian.

    On my way to the Los Alamos National Laboratory a few years ago, I found it listed in a New Mexico phone book—under “University of California.”

    Since the early 1940s, UC has managed the nation’s top laboratories for designing nuclear bombs. Today, California’s public university system is still immersed in the nuclear weapons business.

    Sixty-five years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, the University of California imprimatur is an air freshener for the stench of preparations for global annihilation. Nuclear war planners have been pleased to exploit UC’s vast technical expertise and its image of high-minded academic purpose.

    During most of WWII, scientists labored in strict secrecy at the isolated Los Alamos lab in the New Mexico desert, making possible the first nuclear weaponry. After the atomic bombings of Japan, UC continued to manage Los Alamos. And in 1952, when the government opened a second nuclear bomb generator, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory east of San Francisco, UC won the prize to manage operations there, too.

    A few years into the 21st century, security scandals caused a shakeup. UC lost its exclusive management slots at Los Alamos and Livermore, but retained major roles at both laboratories.

    In mid-2006, the Los Alamos lab went under a new management structure, widened to also include Bechtel and a couple of other private firms. A year later, a similar team, likewise including UC and Bechtel, won a deal to jointly manage Livermore.

    At Los Alamos, I learned that the new management team was, legally speaking, an LLC, a limited liability corporation. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the concept of “limited liability” for managers of a laboratory that designs nuclear weapons.

    Weird, huh? But not any stranger than having the state of California’s top system of higher education devoted to R&D for designing better ways to blow up the planet.

    Yes, those laboratories do some nifty ecological research and other laudable things. But nuclear weapons remain central to the labs’ mission. And, lofty rhetoric aside, the federal government is pouring billions more dollars into the continuous high-tech pursuit of nuclear weapons “modernization.”

    Last spring, the White House announced plans for this decade that include investing $80 billion “to sustain and modernize the nuclear weapons complex”—in addition to “well over $100 billion in nuclear delivery systems to sustain existing capabilities and modernize some strategic systems.”

    In fact, the U.S. government is now on a jag to boost spending for its nuclear arsenal. As the Livermore-based organization Tri-Valley CAREs noted weeks ago, “the 2011 budget request for nuclear weapons is the largest in our nation’s history; bigger than under George W. Bush and a whopping 40 percent higher than the amount spent for nuclear weapons activities on average during the Cold War.”

    Credit where due: the UC-managed laboratories for nuclear bombs have been on the cutting edge of digital advancement. Their record recalls a comment from Martin Luther King Jr., who noted the proliferation of “guided missiles and misguided men.”

    When I interviewed Los Alamos press officer Kevin Roark, he explained that “this laboratory has been at the forefront of computing research and development” from the Manhattan Project days of slide rules and punch cards to the lab’s present-day computers, with one able to do upwards of 100 trillion calculations per second.

    An official website of the University of California boasts that “UC has been involved in the management of these laboratories since their inception—a relationship spanning seven decades—as a public service to the nation.” With a lab on the UC Berkeley campus included in the mix, “the three laboratories have a combined workforce of more than 21,000 and operate on federally financed budgets totaling more than $4 billion.”

    For sure, there’s plenty of money sloshing around to reward the masters—and academic servants—of the nuclear weapons industry. But should the University of California be managing laboratories that design the latest technologies for nuclear holocaust?