From the issue dated November 7, 2003
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Los Alamos: Up for GrabsThe competition to manage the Los Alamos lab will be fierce, but some critics wonder if universities are right for the job
A day after the University of California learned that its contract to manage the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico would be up for grabs for the first time in its six-decade history, the university system's president, Richard C. Atkinson, told members of a Congressional subcommittee that the institution had yet to decide whether it would be among the contenders to oversee the lab. After all, he said, the university had actually lost money running the lab, which cares for the nation's nuclear stockpile and conducts weapons research. While the federal government pays the university up to $16-million annually in fees for running Los Alamos -- along with Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, in Northern California -- and reimburses it for operational costs, the university has long held that it does not make a dime on the government contract. The nearly $1.5-million the university spends on tuition benefits for lab employees and their families, as well as the costs of its other efforts in the Los Alamos community, like offering college-preparation and education-planning classes to secondary-school students and their parents, comes out of the institution's pocket and isn't reimbursed by the Department of Energy, which oversees the facility. If any money is left over after paying the legal fees and other administrative costs that the federal government doesn't cover, it is invested in research. "I think we've carried a heavy burden in running these laboratories," Mr. Atkinson told a House of Representatives' subcommittee in May. "We've done it as a matter of national service." That national service has come at a price that at times goes beyond dollars and cents. Last year allegations that Los Alamos funds were mismanaged swept through the media, tarnishing the university's name. (While university and lab officials admit that their oversight wasn't perfect, they say that some media reports exaggerated the problem.) Additional government regulations have meant more time and people devoted to paperwork. And even if the university decides to compete for the multiyear contract in 2005, officials estimate that it could cost between $10-million and $25-million just to bid, a hefty price to pay for the pride and prestige that comes with the contract. While the university still sees value in its presence at Los Alamos as a steward of groundbreaking science, some politicians, professors, and corporate executives wonder if universities are the best managers of these billion-dollar enterprises. "I strongly believe that the better management of the weapons laboratories can be done by private corporations," William J. Spencer, the chairman emeritus of the semiconductor consortium International Sematech, told a Senate committee. A Call to Serve University of California officials are quick to note that it was the federal government that asked the institution to manage the laboratory during World War II, when J. Robert Oppenheimer, a university physicist, led the group of scientists that created the atomic bomb. The relationship between the university and the government was fine through the 1970s, according to several former and current lab officials. But the thawing of the cold war diminished the immediate need for nuclear weapons, and the role of the laboratories changed from that of bomb factory to a maintenance facility for plutonium pits. The weapons facilities, which had largely operated in secret, were also thrust into the national spotlight in the 1980s, when lawmakers and watchdogs accused the Department of Energy of being in bed with negligent contractors, who failed to adequately care for the environment or the public's health. Siegfried S. Hecker, who served as director of Los Alamos from 1986 until 1997, says those incidents "changed the dynamic of the interaction of the Department of Energy and the contractor." Mr. Atkinson says that the Energy Department began to treat the university less like a partner and more like a hired contractor. By the 1990s, scrutiny of the university's management of Los Alamos was heightened as the department began evaluating the lab, based on a series of benchmarks and mandates. One former high-ranking nuclear lab official likens them to punishment. Joe Martz, the program manager for weapons materials at Los Alamos, says the conditions instituted in the 1992 contract graded the lab and the university not on the science it produced, but on its handling of waste, security, and employee safety. Mr. Martz argues that a cynic could look at the measures and suggest, "If we produce no work at all, what would happen to our performance indicators? Many of them would score perfectly." And then came Wen Ho Lee, a Los Alamos scientist accused in 1999 of spying for the Chinese government. While he was later exonerated, investigators blamed the university for lax security, including the failure to account for computer hard drives that contained secret information. Last year marked the beginning of the end for the university's hold on the Los Alamos contract. Two whistle-blowers were fired from the lab after they came forward with concerns about fraud and misuse of government funds. Congressional hearings and calls for a new contractor soon followed. In late April, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham held the university responsible for the lab's woes in his statement that announced the coming competition. Mutual Benefits In making the decision on whether to bid for the lab, universities must assess exactly what they get for all the grief. "In 15 years of studying the lab, I find this one of the most puzzling questions," says Hugh P. Gusterson, a visiting professor of public policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who has written two books on nuclear scientists. "I very clearly understand why the labs want to be managed by the University of California. I have a hard time understanding why the University of California is so passionately committed to managing the labs." Profit does not appear to be a motive. Leftover fees from the government go toward new research, and while the university holds patents to discoveries made at the lab, none of them have been major cash cows. But Lawrence Pitts, a professor of neurosurgery at the university's San Francisco campus and president of the Faculty Senate, suggests that the university's contract might give it a strong voice in public-policy debates. "There is no dollar amount you can put on that," says Mr. Pitts, who is also a member of the Board of Regents. Then there is the issue of access. Mr. Atkinson has repeatedly said he believes UC scientists would receive similar access to Los Alamos, regardless of its manager. Sheldon Landsberger, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, concurs. Many of his students work at the lab. "We get funded from Los Alamos, and we're not a part of the University of California," he says. But some lab officials disagree. Allen Hartford, Los Alamos's director of science- and technology-based programs, says that more than 2,000 students worked at the lab this year and that UC's share of that number was "significant." In addition, Mr. Hartford argues that the affiliation helps the university attract top talent, like a neutron-scattering expert who recently joined the faculty at its San Diego campus. The federal government benefits from the relationship as well. Lab officials say Los Alamos's affiliation with a major university is an effective recruiting and retention tool. That was evident last spring, when fear that the university would soon lose its contract prompted a record number of lab employees to file retirement requests. After the Energy Department asserted that the university would hold onto the contract through 2005, 80 percent of those who had sought retirement abandoned the idea, according to a Los Alamos spokesman. The lab's academic affiliation is attractive because a university's primary mission is research and public service. That fosters a creative and collaborative environment, say lab officials. They are doubtful that a lab managed by a corporation could provide a similar atmosphere. "There are very few industrial companies that you can truly say live and breathe research," Mr. Hecker says. In addition, the university's nonprofit status lends credibility to the lab's scientific findings because it is not motivated by profit, something a defense contractor could not claim, Mr. Martz says. "The ultimate product of our work at Los Alamos is our judgment," he says. Recommendations to Congress and the White House from a corporate-run lab could be undercut by an appearance of a conflict of interest, Mr. Martz says. "Would people second-guess our judgment because we work for a for-profit defense contractor?" he asks. "You bet." Not everyone believes that academic institutions are the best managers of the highly complex labs. "We think the best models are ones where you bring industrial research experience and business acumen like Battelle and blend it with university expertise," says William J. Madia, a veteran director of four national labs and vice president for lab operations at the Battelle Memorial Institute, a nonprofit entity that is itself considering a partnership with a university to bid for the Los Alamos contract. Battelle currently co-manages four national labs, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Jeffrey Wadsworth, the director of the Oak Ridge lab and a former Lawrence Livermore official, argues that lab contractors need to excel in national security and safety, as well as research. And while universities are obvious leaders in research, they are not necessarily leaders in the other two areas. "Labs don't survive or succeed only on science and technology," he says. He says the nonprofit partnership between the University of Tennessee and Battelle, which jointly manage Oak Ridge, allows the lab to excel in all three. The competition to manage Los Alamos will undoubtedly be fierce. In addition to Battelle, Lockheed Martin Corporation and the University of Texas are also considering bids. All three have experience in such battles. Last year Texas lost a competition to manage Sandia National Laboratories to Lockheed Martin. Mr. Landsberger, the Texas professor, says the Los Alamos contract "would give us more visibility, and from visibility comes opportunities." But some scientists and UC officials are critical of these designs to bring the labs under corporate control and worry about the motivation behind the future bids to manage Los Alamos. Mr. Hecker, its former director, says contractors should not seek prestige from their association with the labs. Instead, the labs should gain prestige by their association with their contractor. He also warns about a desire for profit, suggesting that the management of the weapons lab should continue to be viewed as a public service. Keeping Free of Scandals The UC Board of Regents recently appointed Adm. S. Robert Foley, a retired naval commander, to the post of vice president for lab management in an effort to keep the place scandal-free until the contract ends in 2005. What's more, university officials say they have spent $5-million of their own dollars to fix problems ranging from purchasing to property management at the lab. This month officials plan to seek approval from the regents to create an external board of directors to oversee both the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore labs. Mr. Pitts, of the Faculty Senate, says professors are still trying to determine whether they will support the university if it decides to bid. "Historically there have been strong voices that the university should not be associated with the labs," he says. "Other voices have said that we've had a very beneficial relationship with the labs. And at least one view that is held is who better than the University of California to be involved with something as important to national defense?" Mr. Hecker believes the model of a lab owned by the government and operated by a contractor must change to make the relationship worthwhile. He suggests that Congress shift the lab's regulatory responsibilities away from the Energy Department to other government bodies, "in order to allow the Department of Energy to be more of a partner in mission accomplishment and less of a policeman." In an interview this fall after he retired, Mr. Atkinson spoke candidly about the Energy Department's decision to hold a competition for the lab's contract. "I really do believe this has become a political matter," he said. Mr. Atkinson believes that companies interested in managing the lab exerted political muscle on members of Congress and officials at the Energy Department. "These are federally funded laboratories, and the work that comes out of them should be in the nation's best interest, not in the best interest of a particular company." While Mr. Atkinson acknowledges management failures of the past, he says the university's 60-plus-year record is still strong. "Aside from the Wen Ho Lee thing ... I think the university has done a phenomenal job in terms of protecting the security of the labs and in terms of the quality of the work," he said. "I would hate to see the university cease to run the laboratories just because of the implication that we have not done a phenomenal job." http://chronicle.com Section: Government & Politics Volume 50, Issue 11, Page A22 |
Copyright © 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education