A Cautionary Note About Administrative Changes at Los Alamos. (June 15, 2006)

    At the beginning of the month the US Los Alamos National Laboratory came under revamped management. For 63 years it had been managed by the University of California, but from the first of June, a consortium of the university together with three commercial companies (Bechtel National, BWX Technologies and Washington Group International) will run the world's best-known nuclear-weapons laboratory.

Los Alamos National Laboratory

In reviewing the change-over, Nature, in one of its June 15 editorials issues a cautionary note which in many ways would seem pertinent to the current situation in which CSIRO finds itself not to mention the forces being brought to bare on our universities.

But for scientists at the lab, this hope [that the change will quell public criticism of the laboratory] is tinged with concern that the new management will shift its focus away from basic research. Both BWX Technologies and Bechtel have a track record in engineering management, overseeing production facilities for US nuclear weapons. They are for-profit institutions, more interested in meeting government schedules than nurturing scientific excellence.

There are still grounds for optimism that science won't take a back seat at Los Alamos. The lab's new director, Michael Anastasio, is a physicist with a distinguished career in nuclear-weapons design. Other Department of Energy facilities under joint business and university management, such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, have continued to do good science.

None of these places enjoy Los Alamos's intellectual reputation, however, and fears persist of a shift in priorities at the New Mexico laboratory...

The main strength of Los Alamos has always been its ability to attract good people by offering exceptional facilities dedicated to a range of scientific enquiry... The laboratory also houses acknowledged global leaders in neutron science, mathematics, computer science, nuclear non-proliferation, and more. The scientists and engineers who work on nuclear weapons there rely on the non-weapons work to retain links with the wider academic world. That interface is what makes Los Alamos special, and the laboratory's fresh management team should nurture it with care.