AlternativeGalvinReport,fulltextDOE

[Greg Bischak <ncecd@igc.org>]

To: Concerned parties
From: Jim Bridgman, National Commission for Economic Conversion & 
Disarmament (ECD), 202/728-0815; fax:202/728-0826
Date: 2/10/95
Re: Alternative Galvin Report

The Alternative Galvin Report follows, except for graphs which cannot be 
emailed. Kudos to everyone who contributed to the report! 

On Feb. 1, the official release of the Galvin Report was preceded by 
an impromptu press conference on the Alternative Galvin Report. Ann 
Markusen of PRIE, Bill Weida of Colorado College & ECAAR, Jackie 
Cabasso of Western States Legal Foundation, and Greg Bischak of ECD 
spoke to a crowd of about 15 reporters. Additional comments were 
given during the break and during the Official Public Comment 
Period.

The Washington Post and NY Times articles on Galvin did not mention 
us. Defense News quoted Bill Weida twice (yea!) but did not mention 
the report. If you know of any press hits, please let us know.

If you want copies of the official Galvin Report, you can have it 
emailed to you (only if you can download binary files) by contacting 
Sean McDonald (DOE) at 202/586-6032 or by email : 
sean.mcdonald@hq.doc.gov. If you want a hardcopy, call 202/586-
5575. Be sure to ask for the full packet, including "Volume II: 
White Papers"(an overview/backgrounder of DOE labs, and other 
helpful fact sheets.

To respond to the Galvin Report, send comments postmarked or faxed 
NO LATER THAN FEBRUARY 15, to:
Galvin Task Force
Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, AB-1 U.S. Department of Energy
1000 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20585
Fax: 202/586-6279

The Military Production Network and ECD is working together to send 
the Alternative Galvin Report to the Galvin Commission, the Energy 
Secretary, the President (or better, VP Gore), and select members of 
Congress. In addition, at a recent Washington Economic Conversion 
Working Group meeting, it was decided that a SIGN-ON LETTER 
specifically commenting on the official Galvin report should 
accompany the report. ECD is working on drafting that letter. Any 
comments and suggestions would be welcome. We will circulate the 
letter for sign-ons ASAP.

An Alternative To The Galvin Report
On Futures for the DOE Nuclear Weapons 
Laboratories

February 1, 1995

GRAPH ON EXPENDITURES AT DOE WEAPONS LABS BY (MISSING)

Prepared By:

William J. Weida 
Director, Community Education Campaign For
Employment Alternatives At Defense Nuclear Sites
Economists Allied For Arms Reduction
Professor, The Colorado College 

Ann Markusen
Director, Project on Regional and Industrial Economics
Professor, Rutgers University

The Galvin Commission excluded many ordinary citizens who would have 
liked to contribute to this important process. This alternative 
report was generated by a task force of citizens, drawn both from 
communities hosting DOE facilities and those supporting the labs 
through taxes, who are concerned that DOE's labs be reorganized to 
yield the optimal economic and security returns for the United 
States.

Our recommendations are based upon the legitimate security and 
deterrence needs of the U.S. in light of our treaty obligations, the 
need for basic science research, our lagging pace toward 
sustainability, the need for applied research on non-defense 
problems, and the economic impact DOE has had in the past and could 
have in the future. We acknowledge Secretary O'Leary's role in 
moving DOE toward a more open and responsive environment, and we 
endorse the initial steps Los Alamos National Laboratory has taken 
to have Motorola evaluate its management. Many of the weaknesses 
noted in this report were brought to light through these actions.

These citizens' organizations listed below, both local and national, 
agree that nuclear weapons design work should cease for a variety of 
reasons which range from the ethical to the expedient and that it 
should be replaced with a limited curatorship of nuclear weapons 
technologies related to dismantlement and monitoring. These groups 
also generally support appropriate research and development for a 
sustainable society as an alternative to current weapons Lab 
programs, and they believe that missions associated with achieving a 
sustainable society must be allocated across a diverse set of 
institutions--government labs, universities, non-profits, business 
firms and community groups--each of which offers unique 
capabilities.

20/20 Vision Nation Project
Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives
American Friends Service Committee, Denver, CO
Arizona Council for Economic Conversion
California Peace Action
Campaign for New Priorities
Center for Economic Conversion
Church of the Brethren, Washington Office
Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping, Albuquerque, NM
Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, Santa Fe, NM
Connecticut Peace Action
Economists Allied For Arms Reduction, New York, NY
Fund for New Priorities in America
Greenpeace
Knolls Action Project, Albany, NY
Los Alamos Study Group, Santa Fe, NM
Maine Economic Conversion Project
Massachusetts Peace Action
Military Toxics Project, Sabbatus, ME
Minnesota Jobs With Peace
National Commission for Economic Conversion and Disarmament
National Commission on Economic Conversion and Disarmament, Washington, DC
NETWORK: A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby
New Mexico Alliance, Espanola, NM
Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, Oak Ridge, TN
Peace Action
Peace Action, Delaware Valley
Peace Action, Washington
Rural Alliance for Military Accountability, Questa, NM
Southwest Research and Information Center, Albuquerque, NM
St. Louis Economic Conversion Project
The 21st Century Project
The Military Production Network, Seattle, WA
The Western States Legal Foundation, Oakland, CA
Tri-Valley CAREs, Livermore, CA
Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, Washington Office
Women's Action for New Directions

Executive Summary

The Situation:
* The U.S. cannot continue at current levels of resource waste and 
ecological destruction.
* National support for all federally funded research and development 
is declining.
* The need for nuclear weapons research no longer exists and 
continued weapons RD&T is contrary to stated Lab and national goals 
of "reducing the global nuclear danger."
* With the current moratorium on nuclear testing and the diminished 
superpower nuclear threat, any nuclear dangers we face are best 
reduced by mutual disarmament and increased nonproliferation 
efforts.
* Large new national and international markets would be served by a 
shift of national mission toward an efficient and sustainable 
economy.

The Problem:
* The weapons Labs' budgets rose disproportionately in the 1980s, 
partly to fund the unsuccessful Star Wars effort, and have gone down 
only marginally since that time. Downsizing, reorientation and 
release of the resources to the larger economy are imperative.
* Historically, the Labs have been poor neighbors to surrounding 
communities--both those that predated the Labs' existence and those 
that were created to support the sites.
* Management at the weapons Labs has created fundamental problems 
the Labs must confront before successful conversion can be 
accomplished.
* To maintain and decrease nuclear stockpiles, dismantle nuclear 
weapons, ensure nuclear safety, pursue nonproliferation, and 
responsibly address nuclear waste and related environmental damage 
requires a budget of about one third of the present weapons Lab's 
budgets.
* Remaining Lab capabilities, including highly educated personnel, 
sophisticated--albeit specialized--equipment, and a reservoir of 
research practices, technologies and ideas must be "converted," 
either publicly or privately, to other pressing societal needs.
* There is serious doubt that successful Laboratory conversion can 
coexist with a weapons program of any significant size.
* Secrecy and its accompanying security apparatus inhibits good non-
defense research and hampers efficiency in redeploying Lab resources 
toward new missions and commercial work.
* Technology transfer programs mounted to address national 
competitiveness are vulnerable to increasing controversy within the 
business community over fairness of opportunity and access, and to 
popular discouragement over the inability to enforce the U.S. 
preference clause to ensure taxpayer money creates jobs in the U.S., 
not abroad.
* The Labs' capabilities could be oriented in part to new national 
missions, but to date these appear to have been opportunistically 
promoted as "technology push" programs rather than as responses to 
"public pull" or "market pull" initiatives.
* To maintain high Lab budgets, Lab managers have emphasized 
technology transfer and new missions in their conversion efforts 
rather than attempts to transform the Labs into incubators to help 
scientists and engineers, technologies and ideas, and even Lab 
facilities to spin off and enter the commercial arena.

The Solution:
* Nuclear weapons-related activity at the Labs should be re-oriented 
toward post-Cold War realities: dismantlement and monitoring of 
remaining stockpiles. Civilian control of nuclear weapons must be 
maintained. The Labs should not be placed under the DoD.
* Most expenditures for weapons research are sunk costs. Conversion 
will require significant shutdown and consolidation of facilities.
* "Deterrence by capability," if deemed prudent after a thorough and 
public policy debate, can be assured through retention of small-
scale capital equipment and the personnel responsible for 
dismantlement and monitoring.
* Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship (SBSS) should not be 
implemented as currently envisioned by DOE because of its 
proliferation potential and unjustified costs.
* Specialization in applied science research uniquely positions the 
weapons Labs to contribute to projects central to the transition to 
a sustainable economy.
* The Labs should be given responsibility to pursue publicly-funded 
sustainability projects where they are uniquely qualified and should 
be encouraged to compete with other institutions (universities, 
businesses) for other projects.
* Technology transfer programs, especially those involving 
Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs) where 
taxpayers pay for research and private companies are given 
proprietary rights, should be seen as transitional and should be 
transformed in the longer run into either full pay-as-you-go 
programs on the part of the business partners or spin-offs of 
personnel, facilities and technologies.
* The Labs should devote more resources during transition to efforts 
to help move scientists and engineers, managers, facilities, 
technologies and ideas out of the Labs and into the larger economy, 
through entrepreneurial training and leave programs, equity 
investments, judicious management of patents and licensing, and more 
extensive marketing of Lab capabilities.

The Savings:
* A substantial amount could be saved by re-orienting the Labs: over 
$4 B could be saved in four years from the Defense Programs budget 
alone.
* Further budget cuts can be realized as the stockpile continues to 
shrink under new international agreements.
* Some of these savings could pay for energy, security, and 
sustainable society programs at the Labs, and for other government 
programs elsewhere.

Specific Recommendations

1.End Nuclear Weapon Research, Development and Testing
Re-missioning the Labs requires a major policy decision to end 
weapons research, development, and testing programs in a finite 
amount of time and in a planned and rational manner.

2.Equally Decrease Weapon-related Tasks At All Three Labs Instead Of 
Consolidating Them At One Lab
Several previous studies of the nuclear weapons Laboratories have 
recommended "consolidation" of weapons work at one site. As this 
report demonstrates, it is the presence of nuclear weapons work that 
compartmentalizes the intellectual resources at the Labs and 
pollutes the physical environment around the facilities. As a 
result, it is also the presence of nuclear weapons work that creates 
most barriers to conversion of the nuclear weapons laboratories. 
For these reasons, consolidation would transfer the entire cost of 
designing and maintaining the nation's nuclear weapons to a single 
region--a transfer that is not acceptable without the full 
concurrence of an informed regional population. A more equitable 
solution is to draw down weapons-related tasks at all three sites, 
eventually closing out this part of the Labs' mission as conversion 
occurs.

3.Laboratory /University/Industrial Relations
The quality of a Lab's technical interactions with other 
institutions is not merely a matter of structure and good management 
but is heavily influenced by the nature of the work being done and 
its possible applications. That is, the more useful the work of the 
Lab is to others, the easier interactions will be. Nuclear weapons 
work has comparatively little usefulness to universities and 
industry and it does not reliably provide new science or useful new 
civilian technologies. Further, the attendant secrecy and 
classification of information create enormous barriers to peer 
interaction.

This must change, but it should not be replaced with corporate 
secrecy, which has the potential for transforming the Lab into a 
warren of compartmentalized boxes. Public funds should be used for 
genuinely pre-competitive, openly scrutinized, peer-reviewed 
research where a clear public purpose can be demonstrated and where 
the results are available to all U.S. citizens and businesses. 
CRADAs and other arrangements where public funds are used to 
generate private property rights in innovations where there is no 
guarantee of the generation of U.S. jobs should be phased out. 
Funding of incipient efforts to increase spin-off and spin-out of 
people and technologies to private sector firms should be greatly 
increased, and bureaucratic impediments to such entrepreneurship 
should be eliminated. Because of the special responsibility of the 
federal labs to their host regions, it is expected that these 
activities would disproportionately take place in the surrounding 
region.

4.Energy, Environment, and New Missions
These tasks include assuring a sustainable, affordable, and clean 
energy supply; increasing energy efficiency; providing new 
materials; completing environmental cleanup; manufacturing with 
precision, agility, and less waste; and developing advanced 
computing.

New missions for the Labs in areas of sustainable development offer 
a long term strategy for using as much as one third of existing Lab 
facilities and budgets. These should be driven by a national needs 
agenda, not by a "technology push" process. A process should be put 
in place in the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which is 
currently trying to rationalize activities across agencies, to 
determine which capabilities uniquely qualify the Labs for "sole 
source" funding for certain missions and which mission areas are 
better met by competitively bidding them across public and private 
agencies, the Labs included. Appendix 1 contains a list of specific 
sustainable development activities where the Labs appear to have 
relevant expertise.

5.National Security
Science Based Stockpile Stewardship (SBSS) should be replaced with a 
smaller, more rational, problem- oriented program. There is no 
demand for stockpile improvement; in fact, there is every evidence 
that the uniformed services do not wish to deploy new designs that 
have not been proof-tested. SBSS is not necessary for maintaining a 
cadre of trained nuclear weapons experts sufficient to safeguard the 
remaining U.S. arsenal or counter the horizontal proliferation of 
nuclear weapons. The Labs' role in stockpile management should be 
limited to a narrow curatorship; tasks involving monitoring and 
dismantlement would be retained as required.

6.Management
Recent history has shown that new programs cannot be introduced in 
the defense sector without substantial change and retraining of 
management. However skilled the current managerial group at the 
Labs may be, their extensive experience within the nuclear weapons 
culture has prepared neither the academic/DOE managers at LANL and 
LLNL nor the defense contractor management at Sandia for the 
different and highly competitive challenges of civilian work. 
Creative management of new programs will be critical to their 
success. A new management force with different qualifications and 
experience from that now possessed at any of the Labs must be in 
place before any serious institutional change can occur.

7.Citizen Involvement
Publicly funded applied science needs a healthy system of checks and 
balances. The long-term viability of the Labs depends upon support 
from a diverse constituency consisting of R&D users, professional 
peers, environmental groups, and many others. The interplay of 
these and other actors will determine the long-range size of the 
Lab. Intimate, meaningful stakeholder involvement, including full 
citizen participation based upon a new policy of openness, makes 
good sense.

Citizen advisory bodies should review various aspects of each Lab's 
operations, including its research priorities. In most cases, 
citizens or citizens' bodies will have no background or opinion on a 
particular direction of research, but occasionally there will be 
policy questions raised. It would be better to find out what these 
are early in the process, rather than later.

Background

The Federal Laboratory System

There are 726 federal laboratories.1 Of these, 17 labs are run by 
the DOE and these include the three nuclear weapons labs [Los Alamos 
National Laboratory (LANL), Sandia Labs, and Lawrence Livermore 
National Laboratory (LLNL)], five multiprogram energy labs, one 
civilian nuclear energy lab, the Idaho National Engineering 
Laboratory (INEL), and eight single program labs.2 The Office of 
Technology Assessment (OTA) estimates that 60 percent of the $21B 
appropriated for all U.S. labs is for weapons research.3

The DOE Nuclear Weapon Labs

LANL, founded in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 1942, designed and 
assembled the first atomic bombs. After W.W.II, most physicists at 
Los Alamos preferred to work on atomic, not hydrogen bombs. 
Although LANL produced the first H-bomb, its opposition to the 
project helped establish LLNL as a source of H-bombs.4

LLNL was started in Livermore, California, in 1952 by E. O. Lawrence 
and Edward Teller, who successfully argued that a second lab would 
provide healthy competition for Los Alamos and thus speed the design 
and deployment of thermonuclear weapons. Since then, LANL and LLNL 
have competed with one another to design new warheads while a third 
lab, Sandia National Laboratory, founded in 1945 in Albuquerque, New 
Mexico, works on the rest of the warhead package.5 Like LANL, LLNL 
is run by the University of California; SNL is run by a defense 
contractor.

LANL and LLNL eventually developed specific warhead designs both for 
new missiles and for special effects like enhanced radiation or 
earth penetration. In the 1970's, President Carter started a shift 
to non-weapons research in areas such as renewable power sources. 
However, this was reversed by the Reagan administration in the 
1980's. Together with the Nevada test site, the three Labs expend 
nearly $4 billion a year, of which budget-designated nuclear weapons 
work accounts for $1.7 billion; actual spending on weapons-related 
work is substantially higher.6 Although total Lab funding is down 
from the historic highs of the late 1980s, it is still twice as 
high, in constant dollars, as it was in 1974.7

Figures 1, 2, and 3 show how the mission emphasis has changed within 
each of the three large weapons Labs. These figures emphasize the 
increase in nuclear weapons spending that took place in the 1980, as 
well as the low level at which alternative Lab programs were 
maintained. The importance of nuclear weapons funding to each Lab 
indicates how difficult it will be to wean them away from a source 
of funding that has so dominated their mission. In fact, Lab 
managers continue to hope for a 20%/80% mix of private and federally 
funded projects--something that appears unrealistic given current 
funding trends.

THREE GRAPHS OF R&D AT DOE WEAPONS LABS (MISSING)

National support for federally funded research and development as a 
whole is declining--spending for this category of R&D has fallen 
seven percent in real terms since 1988.8 The disintegration of the 
former Soviet Union and the consequent reduction in the need for 
weapons research, this trend has contributed to reduced funding for 
the three weapons Labs and to efforts to involve them in conversion.
The Weapon Labs and Federally Funded R&D

If the weapons Labs were part of the normal market economy of the 
United States, it would be easier to predict how they would respond 
to the market signals incorporated in these funding changes. But 
the Labs have operated in a protected and rarefied environment where 
secrecy, performance and timelines have dominated over cost and 
other market considerations. As a result, even though the overlap 
between the declining need for nuclear technology and programs and 
the growing markets in other research-intensive fields presents a 
clear opportunity for conversion projects, the actual path the 
weapons Labs will take is not clear. The likely outcome of various 
transition strategies for the Labs, and whether conversion is a 
realistic alternative, is the subject of what follows.
U.S. Treaty Obligations

It would remiss not to mention that the changes facing the Labs take 
place fifty years after the bombing of Hiroshima and after the end 
of the Cold War. In 1968, the United States proclaimed that it 
would seek to end the nuclear arms race and move toward disarmament 
in a timely manner. This pledge was codified in Article VI of the 
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which became U.S. law in 
1970. Article VI commits the nuclear powers to the elimination of 
nuclear weapons, but research, development and testing of new 
weapons continues. A true commitment to international nuclear non-
proliferation demands:

* A commitment to nuclear disarmament and a clear timeline to 
achieve zero nuclear weapons.
* An immediate halt to nuclear weapons research, testing and 
development.
* A Comprehensive Test Ban which bans all nuclear weapon tests.
* A ban on the separation, production or use of weapons-grade 
fissile material for any purpose.
* The end to the international trade in nuclear weapons-usable 
materials and technologies.

In April 1995, the NPT will come up for review and extension. At 
that time, the international community will examine the compliance 
of the U.S. and other declared nuclear powers with their disarmament 
obligation, while considering how long to extend the treaty and 
under what conditions. Many non-nuclear weapons states believe that 
by maintaining nuclear weapons RDT&E capabilities in its labs, the 
U.S. is ensuring for itself a permanent and overwhelming advantage 
in nuclear weapons technology. Any changes proposed for the U.S. 
nuclear weapons Labs must address these very real concerns.

Conversion and Re-orientation Of The Labs

Conversion at the weapons Labs raises two general levels of concern. 
At one level, conversion must be viewed from the national 
perspective, since all U.S. citizens contribute to and should 
benefit from Lab activities. From this perspective, resources going 
into and existing at the Labs should be efficiently directed to 
solving national needs, from national security to technological 
change to new investment for jobs and enhancement of the quality of 
life. Since nuclear weapons are no longer the centerpiece of our 
defense, Lab capabilities should be redirected toward other national 
goals.

At another, more localized level, the nation has a responsibility to 
help communities and regions around the weapons Labs re-orient 
themselves to new activities to sustain their economic base, and 
this could be most directly accomplished via the Lab conversion 
process. To this end, the following general goals for Lab 
conversion are suggested:

* Re-orient Laboratory facilities and programs to make them 
compatible with the economic and political realities of the 21st 
century.
* Create a stable contribution to a diversified, economic base for 
communities and regions around the Labs that respects the history 
and culture of these areas.
* Have Laboratory campuses open with most facilities doing 
unclassified work by the year 2000.
* Re-configure Lab facilities to make them compatible with regional 
environmental requirements.

Many observers believe Department of Energy and University of 
California management of the weapons Labs creates fundamental 
problems the Labs must confront before successful conversion can be 
accomplished. Further, there is no evidence that successful 
conversion can coexist with a weapons program of any significant 
size--security requirements and the top-down environment that 
surrounds weapons programs are in fundamental opposition to the 
open, market-based approach necessary for successful civilian 
projects. Thus, significant reconfiguration of the Labs and their 
resources including spin-offs and the formation of new firms will be 
required for most conversion activities to succeed.

Spin-offs will tend to involve the development of products rather 
than advances in science, increasing regional employment as the 
development of products creates local production jobs. The creation 
of local jobs translates to tax base strength and, of course, this 
translates to better services and school funding.

For conversion to succeed on any meaningful scale, Lab management 
must change its practices. Further, for conversion to address both 
the needs of the nation and the region, representatives of citizen's 
interests at both levels must be involved in the process. The 
initial attempts by Secretary O'Leary to move DOE in this direction, 
and the recent efforts of LANL to seek advice from Motorola on its 
management problems are the first steps in a long journey, but they 
contrast sharply with the relatively closed environment at Sandia. 
Fostering citizen involvement is a partial responsibility of Lab 
management, but it is also a direct outcome of citizen sensitivity 
to the impact of the Lab on the region around it and on the national 
economy.

Factors Involved In Redirecting Laboratory Output

Most problems afflicting the Labs did not arise because of the end 
of the Cold War. While a continuation of the Cold War would have 
allowed more funding of weapons projects, the decline of the weapons 
Labs as research institutions occurred over a long period of time -- 
in the presence of Cold War funding -- and it can be directly traced 
to the research environment and leadership at each facility. More 
recently, the decline in nuclear weapons work has coincided with an 
increased need for DOE funds to clean up nuclear sites. Additional 
financial pressure on weapons programs occurred as DOE redirected 
funds from other DOE sources to clean up contamination from weapons 
production.

The weapons Labs are generally involved in applied science, and 
funding for research in applied science at U.S. universities is 
limited. The National Science Foundation prefers non-applied work 
and, since the Mansfield Amendment, the Department of Defense has 
generally only funded work with specific mission or hardware 
applications. Thus, despite their faults, the weapons Labs occupy a 
niche no other segment of the research community now fills.

However, the search for new missions for the weapons Labs has not 
yielded the employment-producing tasks necessary to maintain the 
economies of the regions around the Labs, nor have the Labs 
identified major programs to replace nuclear weapons work and 
subsidize the rest of their operations. A significant problem in 
any Lab conversion scenario is the secrecy and accompanying security 
apparatus surrounding nuclear work. Secrecy inhibits good research 
and is detrimental to achieving the levels of efficiency necessary 
to make the Labs a useful resource. To survive the current period 
of rapid contraction, the Labs must undergo major changes in form, 
function, facilities, management and orientation.

The long term vision of each weapons lab is similar to that of LANL 
which wants "to solve large, complex problems of national importance 
where science makes a difference."9 Weapon Lab capabilities were 
accrued to fit the nuclear weapons mission and are thus concentrated 
mainly in the physics, chemistry, and mathematical sciences with 
some engineering capability. For a few societal problems, bridging 
these disciplines is sufficient. However, for most problems, 
greater expertise than that possessed by the Labs will be required 
in the biological, geological, medical or social sciences.
Major Impediments To Lab Efficiency

Sig Hecker, director of LANL, has said "We've got to do things that 
someone wants to pay for. In retrospect, defense was easy."10 
However, not only do people have to want to pay for research, but it 
must be done efficiently enough that they will be able to pay for 
it. For the Labs to re-orient themselves, at least three major 
internal problems must be solved:

* They must remove the layers of bureaucracy that set them apart 
from other research institutions.
* They must take responsibility for their actions, both economic and 
environmental.
* They must develop a clear direction for their activities.

Closing Down Weapon-related Activities

Edward Miller, president of the National Center for Manufacturing 
Sciences, has called the weapons complex "the biggest untapped 
intellectual asset in the US."11 However, when considering the 
Labs, one must guard against the "nuclear expense fallacy" that we 
have spent so much on nuclear weapons research that we must have 
created valuable resources in the process. It is more likely that 
most expenditures for weapons research are simply sunk costs and 
that conversion can best be accomplished by shutting down the 
defense part of the Labs. Insofar as these facilities are sunk 
costs, their closure would increase efficiency at the remaining Lab 
facilities and better enable them to exist as credible research 
institutions in a non-weapons environment.
Approaches To Converting the Labs

The Office of Technology Assessment's recent report on the DOE Labs 
laid out three divergent future courses for the Labs:12
* Drastically shrink and restructure the entire system.
* Maintain and reinforce the Labs traditional focus on nuclear and 
energy technologies.
* Give the Labs major new civilian missions (competitiveness or 
environmental technologies).13

In our view, the third option understates the complexity of the 
conversion problem and conflates several distinctively different 
types of conversion initiatives which should be evaluated and 
possibly pursued at the weapons Labs. Three distinctive types of 
activities are involved in converting unneeded Lab capabilities to 
non-nuclear work: technology transfer, new missions, and incubation 
of new firms and other private sector entities. To date, Lab 
conversion programs have focused on technology transfer initiatives. 
Yet, the competitiveness rubric which has been used to justify 
technology transfer programs is proving to be increasingly 
problematic for two reasons:

First, in the CRADA process, taxpayer money is matched to company 
expenditures, but proprietary rights to the output of the joint 
research are invested in the company. Other (and usually smaller) 
companies who do not have this access have protested vigorously for 
a more level playing field. They could not spare the money, and/or 
found themselves competing with the outcome of the CRADAs, and they 
may file lawsuits challenging this process. Although the Labs are 
trying to work with inclusive consortia as a remedy to this problem, 
this is difficult in industries with differently sized firms.

Second, CRADAs and other joint research projects were originally 
marketed to the public as conversion/job creation programs. In the 
enabling legislation, the Labs were required to negotiate U.S. 
preference clauses to ensure that jobs created as a result of 
publicly-funded Lab participation would be located in the U.S. 
However, in the actual process of negotiating CRADAs, this provision 
has been gutted. Competitiveness is increasingly seen as making 
private sector companies strong, whether or not they increase 
activities in the U.S. Indeed, these companies may close U.S. 
facilities and open new ones elsewhere with the new technologies.

As a result of these problems, CRADAs and technology transfer 
programs in general should be seen more as a transitional activity, 
where the fruits of past work, embodied in machinery and human 
resources, are shared with the rest of the economy. They should not 
be seen as a permanent form of activity where the public sector 
subsidizes proprietary research. Private sector firms must be 
willing to pay the entire bill.

New missions uniquely matched to Lab capabilities are a more 
fruitful course to pursue in the longer term. The Labs do have 
applied research capability in certain scientific areas, both in 
human resources and facilities, which can be redirected toward 
solving research problems in energy, environment, transportation and 
other areas with a clear public purpose, but where the private 
sector is unwilling to invest.

However, it is not appropriate to argue that because the Labs 
currently possess certain capabilities, their efforts to apply them 
elsewhere should continue to be funded. This "technology push" 
argument should give way to a more appropriate "national needs pull" 
argument. If the nation decides environmental cleanup, energy self-
sufficiency, and transportation efficiency, collectively conceived 
of as sustainable development, is a legitimate national mission, 
then the government should survey the existing delivery 
infrastructure--the national Labs, other federal Laboratories, the 
National Science Foundation, universities, non-profits, and 
businesses to determine what portions of the mission are best done 
where. If the Labs are uniquely qualified to perform research where 
a sole source award can be justified without competitive bidding, 
they should be given that mission. In other cases, other 
institutions will be more appropriate. Sometimes a particular lab 
facility might best be sold to another organization, public or 
private, or its personnel hired away. Similar spin-offs and 
restructuring have been a major method used by private sector 
defense firms to optimally reconfigure capacity.

A third type of Lab conversion activity--which has received only 
limited support and funding--is incubation: providing services to 
facilitate the movement of Lab personnel, equipment and technologies 
into the private sector where they can translate accumulated Lab 
expertise into new and useful products for the commercial market. 
Lab employees are often the best conduits of Lab commercial 
potential and, with moderate training, can become successful 
entrepreneurs.

Currently, more public dollars are going into Lab technology 
transfer programs to generate CRADAs and build big business 
constituencies for Lab funding than are going into entrepreneurship 
efforts. Furthermore, managers of successful small and medium-sized 
businesses which employ Lab technology or personnel point to 
difficulties in getting started, from absence of encouragement, 
hassles in securing entrepreneurial leave, unreasonable delays or 
denials in accessing patents and licenses, the ineffectiveness of 
Lab efforts to help secure financing (as has been done at other 
national Labs, even via equity programs), to ongoing competition in 
product markets from the Labs themselves. Although some recent 
efforts at the weapons Labs have improved entrepreneurial spin-offs 
and access to licenses and technologies, much more could be done in 
this area.

Future Choices for the Weapons Laboratories

In 1994, a study by the Congressional Budget Office suggested three 
general ways to change the direction of the Laboratories. Two 
options would trim existing weapons experimentation without greatly 
altering the Laboratories' missions; i.e., they would result in a 
loss of budget funds and a decrease in the size of each facility. 
The third option concentrates weapons design at Los Alamos while 
LLNL went out of the bomb-building business and expanded its role in 
trying to curb nuclear proliferation. According to the CBO, such a 
change in mission would mean a 20 percent cut in LLNL's budget and a 
$1.2 billion savings over five years.14

The U.S. doesn't need the current weapons capability in the three 
Labs to maintain any proposed level of nuclear deterrent, but it is 
highly unlikely that any region would agree to gather all nuclear 
weapons facilities in their area. Thus, while the general nature of 
the CBO options prohibits the suggestion of concrete alternative 
tasks for the Labs, these options also fail to take into account the 
important role of the Labs in local and national communities. These 
failures stem from an unwillingness to explore three major factors 
that will govern the future viability of any Lab program. These 
factors are:

* Our civilization cannot continue indefinitely at current levels of 
ecological destruction and resource waste. The goal of robust 
economic growth in the U.S. will be increasingly difficult to 
achieve without adjustments to the realities of energy and resource 
supplies as well as global environmental decline.
* National security is not provided by maintaining a large and 
evolving U.S. nuclear arsenal, but by its general elimination, along 
with effective nonproliferation.
* Other nations which focus more R&D on environmental cleanup, 
pollution reduction, renewable energy, and resource conservation are 
capturing growing shares of rapidly growing markets--collectively 
worth half a trillion dollars over the next decade -- in addition to 
the savings these nations enjoy by more effectively addressing these 
areas. U.S. benefits in employment, trade balance, economic growth, 
environmental protection and quality of life would be enormous. 
These opportunities and dangers [see (1) above] require urgent 
attention.

Under talented management, and with acceptance of risk by staff, the 
weapons Labs could play a major role in transitioning to a 
sustainable society. Building a sustainable society has wide 
acceptance, simplicity, breadth, and urgency. It could serve as an 
effective organizing principle for Lab activities as well as those 
of other federal agencies (Energy, Transportation, EPA, etc.) for 
the next two decades.

This type of new mission could succeed if the Labs were prepared to 
act with efficiency and to dedicate the appropriate resources to 
research into sustainable projects. Such a change in direction 
would leave room for "science-based stockpile stewardship" (SBSS) 
and other missions of the Labs as long as they, too, were efficient, 
necessary projects. However, this implies that these tasks would be 
accomplished in simpler, cheaper, and more problem-focused ways 
instead of the current approach which is exemplified by the proposed 
National Ignition Facility (NIF)--a large, complicated, employment 
maintenance program without a clear mission.

Given the above caveats about the appropriate process to use in 
translating national missions into budgetary allotments, we 
anticipate that something in the neighborhood of $800 million to $1 
billion a year might be allocated to the weapons Labs to pursue new 
missions in sustainable development. Some elements of these 
programs are already in place. A rough estimate of project areas 
might be made as follows:

Assuring a sustainable, affordable, and clean energy supply $200M
 - renewable energy R&D
 - efficient acquisition and utilization of fossil fuels
Increasing energy efficiency $200M
 - in transportation
 - other targeted large initiatives
Providing new materials $100M
Pure and applied basic sciences $100M
Environmental R&D, cleanup $100M
Advanced computation $75M
Enhancing global security $75M
Manufacturing with precision, agility, and less waste $50M
Biosciences and biomedical $50M
Contract work for other organizations $30M

These programs could be scaled up or down as investment is spread 
among the three institutions. Each Lab would have to demonstrate it 
could compete in civilian missions to gain funding. National policy 
paralysis, high costs, a defense-oriented culture, and outmoded 
technical specialization would have to be overcome in order to make 
this transition.

Additional Savings From Realigning the Labs

DOE's proposed SBSS program should be changed to a program of 
dismantlement and monitoring. If implemented over four years, 
about $4.2B could be saved from the Defense Programs budget, not 
including complex-wide savings in stockpile and materials support 
and in the management of the wastes from these activities. Those 
savings probably would be in the neighborhood of $8-10B over the 
next five years. It is likely that further cuts would be possible, 
particularly if the stockpile continued to shrink under new 
international agreements, or if particular weapons systems were 
retired. Cuts in Defense Programs are best directed at the largely-
obsolete RD&T function, in response to political realities that 
currently support a nuclear deterrent but no new weapons. If that 
deterrent shrinks substantially, materials support and stockpile 
support costs can also shrink substantially.

Conclusion

The end of the Cold War offers Americans an unprecedented 
opportunity to rethink our national security arrangements and 
reallocate our resources to the challenges of the next century. The 
nuclear weapons Labs, the core institutions of the Cold War, 
received disproportionately large budget increases in the 1980s, 
primarily for the Star Wars initiative. Since that time, their 
funding--now at nearly $ 4 billion a year--has been what economists 
call "sticky downwards," despite the failure of Star Wars and the 
end of the Cold War. Each Lab is now considerably larger than most 
top-ranked American Universities, yet arguably, each has much less 
to show for its research efforts.

At the same time, the Labs are unique reservoirs of specialized 
expertise, tools and technologies that can be applied to new 
national missions, especially in the area of sustainable 
development. They can also operate as incubators to foster the 
transfer into the larger society of people, machinery and ideas that 
would be welcome in the commercial sector.

The worst Lab transition would be one in which the Labs retreat 
under the nuclear umbrella, justifying all their efforts, even 
conversion activities, as required for national security. If this 
happens, valuable national talent will continue to be devoted to 
nuclear weapons development in ways that threaten our national 
security and constitute a huge and wasteful tax on the American 
public. In a nation where real incomes are not rising, and in a 
world where environmental degradation threatens to reverse gains in 
the quality of life, we cannot afford a business as usual approach 
that uses weapons Labs chiefly as a public works program for 
scientists and engineers.

The best Lab transition would be one in which the Labs' nuclear 
capabilities are redirected toward safeguarding the world against 
nuclear disaster through dismantling warheads, vigorous non-
proliferation activities, and innovative nuclear waste cleanup. 
Since only about one third of Lab personnel are required for these 
activities, the rest would be free to contribute to society in other 
ways. We anticipate another third of the current level of funding 
would remain at the Labs to spawn initiatives in new mission areas. 
The last third would be available for other public and private 
activities--for which the Labs could also compete.

The range of possible futures for the weapons labs is quite broad. 
To date, deliberations have taken place mainly within circles of 
experts, without sufficient public involvement. Recently, groups 
living near the Labs have become more insistent participants in the 
regional Lab conversion process, but much more needs to be done on 
this front. Similarly, at the national level we face a growing 
crisis in the public acceptance of science, apparent in the 
difficulties of funding large science projects such as the 
superconductor/supercollider and in the support for basic science at 
the National Science Foundation,. The Labs comprise a key element 
of our national heritage. We must redirect their talents to other, 
more pressing needs. The debate over the future of the Labs must be 
conducted much more broadly to ensure the best possible use of these 
resources while sustaining the economies of host regions and not 
wasting the considerable expertise at the Labs.

Appendix 1

Specific Conversion Programs For The Weapons Labs

Within the guidelines in this paper, a large number of specific, 
potential conversion programs could be implemented at the Labs. One 
way to match candidates from these programs with individual weapons 
Labs is to identify those tasks that will create the most local 
production and procurement employment while best serving national 
needs for sustainable society technologies.

The Labs will find it difficult to select from among these programs, 
but if they are willing to act as "technical agents of change," 
providing the technical competence necessary to develop both 
community and nationally-based sustainability projects, the Labs 
could significantly enhance local employment while, at the same 
time, pursuing national technology and competitiveness goals.

Of the many projects available to the Labs, the following have the 
promise of creating the largest regional and national returns:

Environmental technology--i.e., pollution cleanup and control
 Ground water cleanup
 New cleanup technologies
 Environmental sensing and monitoring
Non-fossil fuel energy sources
Alternative agriculture
 Smart irrigation
 Other high-tech agriculture
Alternative manufacturing processes
Alternative vehicles and transportation (manufacturing, not 
research)
New light composite materials manufacturing processes
Pollution remediation -- both the technical aspects and actual 
cleanup
Alternative energy including fuel cells, hydrogen, solar
Energy efficient retrofitting
Materials and associated processing technologies
 Materials Processing
 Environmental Technologies
Sustainable Manufacturing Techniques
Recycling technologies
Green manufacturing
 Long-lasting materials
 Recyclable materials
 Toxic use reduction
 Resource use reduction

FOOTNOTES (cut and pasted from footnotes to placed here as endnotes 
so that email transfer is possible; hence the formatting problems)

15Adam, John A., "Federal Laboratories Meet the Marketplace," IEEE SPECTRUM, 
October, 1990, pp.40.
15U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Defense Conversion: 
Redirecting R&D, OTA-ITE-552 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 
May, 1993), pp. 2-15.
15Adam, Op. Cit., pp.40,41.
15Too Many Nuclear Labs, New York Times, August 26, 1994.
15Ibid.
15Ibid.
15Defense Conversion: Redirecting R&D, OTA 1993, Fig.1-9.
15Cohen, Linda R. and Roger G. Noll, Privatizing Public Research, Scientific 
American, September, 1994, pp. 72-77.
15Browne, John C., Impact of Defense Spending Cuts, Los Alamos National 
Laboratory, 1992.
15McCartney, Scott, With Cold War Over, Los Alamos Seeks New Way of Doing 
Business," The Wall Street Journal, July 15, 1993.
15Davis, Bob, "Nuclear Arms Plants Show off Technology", The Wall Street 
Journal, December 4, 1990, p.1.
15Defense Conversion: Redirecting R&D, OTA 1993, p.24.
15Defense Conversion: Redirecting R&D, OTA 1993, pp. 2-15.
15Too Many Nuclear Labs, New York Times, August 26, 1994.
1Adam, John A., "Federal Laboratories Meet the Marketplace," IEEE SPECTRUM, 
October, 1990, pp.40.
2U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Defense Conversion: Redirecting 
R&D, OTA-ITE-552 
(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, May, 1993), pp. 2-15.
3Adam, Op. Cit., pp.40,41.
4Too Many Nuclear Labs, New York Times, August 26, 1994.
5Ibid.
6Ibid.
7Defense Conversion: Redirecting R&D, OTA 1993, Fig.1-9.
8Cohen, Linda R. and Roger G. Noll, Privatizing Public Research, Scientific American, 
September, 1994, 
pp. 72-77.
9Browne, John C., Impact of Defense Spending Cuts, Los Alamos National Laboratory, 
1992.
10McCartney, Scott, With Cold War Over, Los Alamos Seeks New Way of Doing 
Business," The Wall 
Street Journal, July 15, 1993.
11Davis, Bob, "Nuclear Arms Plants Show off Technology", The Wall Street Journal, 
December 4, 1990, 
p.1.
12Defense Conversion: Redirecting R&D, OTA 1993, p.24.
13Defense Conversion: Redirecting R&D, OTA 1993, pp. 2-15.
14Too Many Nuclear Labs, New York Times, August 26, 1994.