[NukeNet] University of Mass Destruction / UC Students Protest

[Mike Ewall]

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=51&ItemID=12812

University of Mass Destruction:
UC Students Demanding "No More Nukes In Our Name!"

by Will Parrish
May 13, 2007

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 US arsenal, of which there 
have been 65 designated types (1).  UC nuclear weaponeers have also 
carried out close to every US nuclear weapons test detonation since 
the dawn of the Nuclear Age, of which the official tally is 1,054.(2)

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).(3)

On Wednesday, May 9th, 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 US 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 US nuclear weapon 
since the end of the Cold War.

Los Alamos is slated to manufacture the plutonium bomb cores, or 
"pits," for these weapons.  Owing in part to its technical complexity 
and political baggage, pit manufacturing is the pivotal step in 
creating a new generation of nuclear bombs.(4)

The larger context for these programs is that the US nuclear weapons 
complex is attempting to renew itself, to prepare its infrastructure 
and employees for the task of building dozens of new nukes a year by 
the year 2030.  The Department of Energy (DOE) has outlined that plan 
in its "Complex 2030" document, released this past November.(5)

The UC stands to play a central role in these developments.  But it 
is instructive to note that the Regents do not really "manage" LANL 
and LLNL in any meaningful sense.  As a UC faculty committee observed 
in 1970, the UC's role at the weapons labs is akin to that of a 
"benevolent absentee landlord."  The Regents rubber-stamp everything 
the labs do, providing no actual oversight of their programs and 
policies -- precisely as the (DOE) requires of them.

 From the perspective of the DOE, then, what is the benefit of UC 
weapons lab management, or the illusion thereof? As the largest 
public research university system in the world, the UC provides the 
ultimate fig leaf of academic respectability to nuclear weapons 
science.  Over 30 years ago, the late grassroots organization the UC 
Nuclear Weapons Labs Conversion Project noted: "The UC does not 
manage the nuclear weapons labs, but rather the public relations 
about the weapons labs."  By casting the UC's intellectual and 
political capital on the side of the nuclear weapons industry, the 
Regents help to legitimize everything these labs do.

By contrast, if the Regents withdrew their management of LANL and 
LLNL, they would effectively do the opposite: They would provide the 
weapons labs with the worst publicity possible.  The political 
consequences of their doing so would be vast.  A major crisis would 
ensue for the nuclear weapons complex.  Congress might awaken to the 
necessity of overseeing the labs' work in a more meaningful 
way.  Morale among lab workers would plunge.  The public discourse 
about nuclear weapons would shift in a small but significant 
way.  Those who favor disarmament would have achieved a major victory 
that they could mobilize in their effort to eliminate nuclear weapons 
once and for all.

That is particularly so at this critical juncture.  The Regents have 
rarely been more politically vulnerable in their capacity as nukes 
lab managers.  The labs' new hydrogen bomb program, misleadingly 
referred to as the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW), has virtually 
no technical justification and is clearly contrary to the 1970 
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which commits the US to pursuing 
negotiations in "good faith" for nuclear disarmament.  The RRW is 
deeply unpopular even among many long-time nuclear weapons 
supporters.  It is even opposed by The Navy.(6)

If the RRW dies, the US nuclear weapons complex will be, in turn, one 
step closer to the grave.  One of the complex's dirty secrets is that 
it is currently in a state of crisis.  The post-Cold War world is 
producing increasingly few young scientists interested in working on 
nuclear weapons.  Many of the weapons labs' projects lack a clear 
purpose and a clear goal. UC weapons lab severance would cause this 
crisis to deepen appreciably.

The day prior to the hunger strike, the UC officially received a new 
contract, only with a twist: It will manage the lab as part of a 
limited-liability corporation with Bechtel Corporation, two other 
multi-national firms, and Texas A&M University.  In 2006, 
UC-Bechtel's Los Alamos Security, LLC likewise took over from the UC 
alone as manager of Los Alamos.  The contradictions of UC weapons lab 
management, thus, have never been greater.

The focus of the UC hunger strike is, in many ways, the UC Regents 
meeting at UC San Francisco on Thursday, May 17th.  Hunger strikers, 
hundreds of their supporters at UC campuses, and other supportive 
activists and individuals throughout California will mobilize for 
direct action at the meeting.  In the meantime, we are attempting by 
every non-violent means possible to pressure The Regents to sever 
their nuclear ties.  If The Regents fail to withdraw their weapons 
lab management, many of those participating (including the author) 
have pledged to sustain their hunger fasts indefinitely.

We invite everyone who supports a livable future to support this 
effort in any way you can.  There are endless ways to do so.  For 
more information, please visit nonukeshungerstrike.blogspot.com and 
www.ucnuclearfree.org, or e-mail wparrish at napf.org.


Will Parrish is an alumnus of UC Santa Cruz, a coordinator of the UC 
Nuclear Free campaign (www.ucnuclearfree.org), and an anti-war 
organizer living in Santa Barbara, CA.


http://www.brook.edu/fp/projects/nucwcost/50.htm
http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/Usa/Tests/
http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/regents/regmeet/nov06/502attach.pdf
http://www.lasg.org
http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=2159&issue_id=51
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/03/AR2007030301077.html 

http://nonukeshungerstrike.blogspot.com


Mike Ewall
Energy Justice Network
215-743-4884
catalyst at actionpa.org
http://www.energyjustice.net