Fort Worth Star Telegram February 05, 2004
UT System may bid on managing Los Alamos lab
By Patrick Mcgee
University of Texas System regents voted Wednesday to spend $500,000 to pursue a contract to manage a huge government nuclear lab that could be a boon to the system's research programs.
The $2 billion Los Alamos National Laboratory in northern New Mexico has been managed by the University of California System since it was created to develop the atomic bomb in 1943.
Last year, Congress passed a law mandating that national labs must put their management contracts out to bid if they have not done so in 50 years. Los Alamos' contract expires in September 2005.
"We're interested in the national lab business," said Dan Burck, a former UT System chancellor now leading a committee studying the issue.
Officials say getting the contract would bring the UT System prestige, the vast responsibility of managing plutonium pits and other hazards, and a probable pipeline to generously funded government research.
"The quality of science at Los Alamos is highly regarded, and we'd like to tie into it," UT-Austin President Larry Faulkner said at a College Board meeting in Dallas. "If we had a more formal tie that might be a readily active way to have more [research] collaboration."
UT-Arlington Science Dean Neal Smatresk said the UT System's management of the lab could give its nine universities closer ties to federal funding.
Charles Sorber has been appointed special engineering adviser to assist with the planning. He was UT-Arlington's interim president for 11 months until James Spaniolo became the institution's seventh president this week.
Sorber had prepared a system bid to manage Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico before Sandia decided to continue having Lockheed Martin manage the facility.
UT System Chancellor Mark Yudof said the system's management of Los Alamos would be an economic boost to Texas for all the research work it could bring.
"The payoff in Texas will be enormous if we are successful here," Yudof said.
The regents, who were meeting at UT-Brownsville on Wednesday, voted unanimously to allocate funds to pay consultants, hire staff, seek partners and prepare paperwork for the possible bid. Yudof said it could cost the system $6 million to put together that bid.
Last year, University of California System President Richard Atkinson testified before Congress that his system did not profit from managing the lab, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The California system took some bruises in 1999 when the lab was embroiled in controversies such as the Wen Ho Lee case in which a scientist was accused but later exonerated of spying for China.
UC System spokesman Chris Harrington acknowledged that mistakes were made "and we're aware of that, and we've taken corrective measures." He also said that the UC System would "compete aggressively" if its regents decided to go after the bid.
Sorber said that UC's security problems could be its Achilles' heel.
"If you track it in the California press, the Department of Energy has been less than pleased" with security issues, Sorber said. "So they might not be a shoo-in."
The Energy Department will issue the request for proposals.
Harrington said the UC System is paid $1.8 billion to $2 billion a year to run the 40-square-mile facility in Los Alamos.
Los Alamos spokesman Kevin Roark said the lab has 14,000 employees, about 9,000 of whom are paid by the UC System.
John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, a Virginia-based think tank, said only heavyweight defense contractors and huge university systems such as the ones in Texas and California can seriously vie to manage an institution as big as the Los Alamos lab.
"The number of university systems that think they could bite off that big of a piece of pie is probably not that great," he said.
Pike said university systems have an advantage over defense contractors because the national laboratories are like "universities without undergraduates" because they do so much research and have so many graduate students working there.
"Part of it is just the prestige of it," he said. "These are enormous, big operations."
© Copyright 2004, Star Telegram and wire service sources
