The University of California (UC) has managed the two oldest and largest nuclear weapons labs since their creation nearly 60 years ago. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have been at the forefront of the research and design of all nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal. University employees even created the bombs that dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over the last five years, the UC has partnered with such multi-national corporations as Bechtel Group and BWXT to continue managing the labs as a limited liability corporation.
As classes are starting up again on UC campuses across California, the movement for a nuclear free UC is also starting up again. A new avenue to demand accountability from the university is emerging – students & alumni pledging to withhold post-graduate support through an online campaign, until the UC takes action:
http://www.thepoint.com/campai…
Five reasons the UC should sever ties to the labs:
– The UC is implicitly endorsing non-compliance with the UN Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by participating in the creation of new nuclear weapon technologies.
– The nuclear industry is notorious for its devastating environmental and health impacts.
– Nuclear weapons testing and waste disposal from the labs is a major factor in the ongoing genocide of Native American peoples today. The Nevada Test Site and the proposed waste disposal site at Yucca Mountain are both on Western Shoshone land.
– Bechtel Group, UC’s lab-management partner, has a long history of irresponsible environmental practices and human rights violations. Currently, they are one of the largest profiteers of the Iraq War.
– UC holds no real control over research directions or policy at the labs nor does the funding they receive from the Department of Energy go towards anything but the labs themselves. Their management is in name only and simply acts as a stamp of legitimacy for the nuclear weapons, military-industrial complex.
Calling all UC students & alumni – take a stand now against nuclear development and corporatization at your school. Show the UC how you feel about being complicit in the nuclear industry by joining the “No Nukes at the UC” campaign: