The University Should Not Play a Part in the Production of Nuclear Weapons

[helderheid]

May 22nd, 2007

BY Will Parrish
Contribution Writer
http://www.dailycal.org/sharticle.php?id=25064
Monday, May 21, 2007
Daily Californian
illustration/Harmony Larson

For over six decades, the University of California has been the United States government’s primary nuclear weapons research and design contractor. It has managed the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore nuclear weapons compounds since their inceptions. Scientists at these laboratories—UC employees, all—have designed every nuclear warhead in the U.S. arsenal, of which there have been 65 designated types. UC nuclear weaponeers have also carried out close to every U.S. nuclear weapons test detonation since the dawn of the Nuclear Age, of which the official tally is 1,054.

The fealty of the UC Board of Regents to the nuclear industry is such that, during Fiscal Year 2005-06, the UC received almost as much money from the Department of Energy to conduct nuclear weapons programs ($2.76 billion) as it received from the State of California for education ($2.85 billion).

On May 9, 41 UC students, alumni and faculty members began a hunger strike to demand that the UC retract its management of the Los Alamos and Livermore labs. The hunger strike marks a new approach for a student-driven UC labs severance campaign that has taken place for the past five years. Individuals at four campuses—Berkeley, Santa Cruz, San Francisco and Santa Barbara—are part of the hunger strike roster. They are being joined by one “solidarity faster” in Albuquerque.

This bold act of civil resistance comes at a critical time. In March, the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Council, an interagency committee of executives from the Departments of Defense and Energy, announced that the UC’s Livermore facility would develop a new hydrogen bomb. Officially, this is to be the first new U.S. nuclear weapon since the end of the Cold War. Los Alamos is slated to manufacture the plutonium bomb cores, or “pits,” for these weapons.

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http://blog.pdamerica.org/?p=1114#more-1114

[slackmaster]

1. UC has the best minds

Would it be better to have second-tier researchers and engineers working on nukes?

How about the lowest bidder?