A federal study is under way this week to assess the possibility of moving the University of California-managed Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratories from the Department of Energy to the Department of Defense, according to an internal memo from the Federal Office of Management and Budget.
The labs ‘shy;’shy;’shy;’mdash; currently co-managed by the university and the Department of Energy ‘mdash; are two of the nation’s premier nuclear weapons research facilities and are aimed at sustaining and improving the safety, reliability and performance of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
If the results of the study do advise such a switch, the laboratories would see a shift from civilian to military control by 2011. According to UC spokesman Chris Harrington, it is not yet clear whether a move from the Department of Energy to the Department of Defense would affect either UC management or employees currently employed at either lab.
The Livermore site is one in a trifecta of national laboratories that make up the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nuclear-design programs, the other two being the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories.
The Livermore lab was founded at the start of the Cold War in 1952 and has been co-managed by the university ever since. The Los Alamos location, founded a decade before Livermore, was the birthplace of the first atomic bomb.
Management of the Los Alamos lab opened to bids from other vendors in 2003 for the first time; in response, the university partnered with private companies and won the seven-year contract that is currently in place.
While both laboratories are still heavily involved in nuclear security activities, such as preventing the proliferation and use of nuclear weapons, they have expanded to host such projects as climate-change research and modernizing the nation’s energy infrastructure through nuclear fusion projects.
‘The University of California has a proud tradition of bringing strong science and technology to the important work of the Department of Energy national laboratories,’ Harrington said.
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