Los Alamos: "Born at the Crosshairs"

The first national nuclear weapons laboratory was built in 1943 in the high desert of Los Alamos, New Mexico, near where “the boundaries of Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico intersect like the crosshairs of a gunsight” (in the words of Grey Brechin, author of Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin). (2) Due to the involvement of UC scientists, the UC Regents agreed to manage the lab, in partnership with the federal government. The lab’s location in Los Alamos was specifically requested by UC Berkeley scientist and “Manhattan Project” research director J. Robert Oppenheimer.(3)

According to the standard historical record, most UC officials initially did not intend for the Los Alamos management contract to stay in their camp after the completion of the “Manhattan Project.” UC Treasurer Robert Underhill inserted a clause in the original contract whereby the UC would sever ties to the labs within 90 days after the end of World War II. After the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the UC’s role in their creation became publicly known, many UC Regents and administrators argued for this clause to be exercised with all due haste.(4)

But powerful forces within the UC scientific community and the university upper-administration strongly favored maintaining, formalizing, and even expanding the relationship. The Regents voted to sign a series of short-term contract extensions with the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC – later the Department of Energy) from 1945-47. At that point, UC scientist Ernest O. Lawrence successfully pressed the Regents to agree to a multi-year contract extension with the AEC.(5)

The Soviet Union’s first nuclear test in 1949 gave Lawrence the pretext to pursue his next bold move: lobbying the federal government to create a second nuclear weapons facility, this time in Livermore. The new lab was to be built ostensibly for the purpose of creating a fusion bomb. Influential University of Chicago physicist Edward Teller and other allies of Lawrence also lobbied heavily for the construction of the new facility. President Harry S. Truman approved the idea in relatively short order, and the “Livermore Site” of the UC Radiation Lab (now the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) was completed in 1952, initially as a branch of the Berkley Radiation Lab at UC Berkeley.(6)


Navigation

Introduction
Part 1 - Los Alamos: "Born at the Crosshairs"
Part 2 - The First Disarmament Movement Wave and the ‘60s
Part 3 - Challenging the UC's “Mantle of Legitimacy”
Part 4 - The Early-‘80s: A Series of Radical and Creative Actions
Part 5 - The Rise of Faculty Activism
Part 6 - A New Generation Emerges
Part 7 - Moving Forward
Works Cited