Over the past several decades students and faculty of the University of California, often in tandem with nuclear disarmament NGOs in California and New Mexico, have conducted a series of campaigns to end the UC's involvement in nuclear weapons research, design, testing, and production at the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore laboratories. These campaigns represent an important contribution to the global nuclear abolition movement, which historian Lawrence Wittner has described as "the largest, most dynamic international citizens' movement of modern times."

A new, comprehensive resource for information on the University of California's role in the design, research, testing, and production -- every nuclear weapon in the US arsenal was designed by a UC employee! -- is now online. The Web site, ucnuclearfree.org, is intended to give students, faculty, staff, and community members a clearinghouse of information to strengthen their efforts in trying to sever university involvement in the production and maintenance of weapons of mass destruction.

The issue of UC weapons lab management has become especially timely in recent months. Within the next two weeks, the Department of Energy is expected to select a new contractor to "manage" the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the legendary facility responsible for 80 percent of the nuclear weapons designs in the US arsenal. Once managed exclusively by the University of California, the LANL management contract was put up for a competitive bid this past May.

Two conglomerates are vying for the contract, one led by the University of California and Bechtel Corporation; the other, by the University of Texas and Lockheed Martin.

The other weapons lab managed by the UC, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, will remain under the UC's auspices until at least 2007.

[ A People's History of UC Weapons Lab Mangement ]

see also: DeNuke UC! -- UCSC Students Rally Against Bechtel and Nuclear Proliferation