1,800 jobless nuke workers

By The Daily Progress Staff

Published: June 15, 2008

The good news: The United States no longer needs vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

The bad news: Reduction in weapons maintenance also means reduction in workforce, with 1,800 people being laid off so far at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Some people wonder where those laid-off experts might go. Over to the enemy?

Insulting, says a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administra-tion — a slur upon workers’ patriotism.

Unthinkable, says a laid-off Liver-more physicist, who contends that he and the colleagues he knows would never betray their country.

But possible, argues Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

“The fact is, these are all people who are human — they have homes, they have families, they have educations to pay for,” she said. “And I very much worry where they go for their next job.”

A University of Virginia professor, former inspector general of the Central Intelligence Agency and author of the new book “Why Spy?: Espionage in an Age of Uncertainty” cites money and revenge as two of the seven classic motives for espionage. Frederick P. Hitz was not writing about the nuclear layoffs, but his observation could be pertinent. Lay-offs could provide those two motives.

Out of 1,800 laid-off personnel, it would take only one disaffected ex-employee to cause great damage.

Then there’s the issue of counterespionage and data analysis.

Some critics fear the United States is creating a nuclear brain drain. It’s not that the United States needs to worry so much about nuclear knowledge going over to the enemy, it’s that we should be worrying about keeping it for ourselves, they say.

The nation needs the kind of expertise embodied by the Livermore scientists to analyze information and track the nuclear intentions of other countries. In an increasingly dangerous world, where nuclear proliferation seems inevitable (think Iran), America needs scientists on the payroll to help confront these issues.

In a third version of concern, espionage might never come into play one way or another. American nuclear scientists might be recruited to work overseas in perfectly legitimate jobs. But that would still create a brain drain.

And if the need ever arises to rebuild a nuclear arsenal, America might have lost its edge by losing its experts.

Ironically, it was the one-time apparent decline of nuclear danger that helped set in motion today’s layoffs. After the Cold War ended, the United States in 1992 decided to self-impose a ban on nuclear weapons testing.

Technology also played a role. Monitoring of the weapons stockpile and design of new weapons is largely performed by computers.

Livermore is offering severance pay to personnel, in a move that might mitigate any monetary incentive to work for other nations, overtly or covertly.

But the idea of 1,800 former nuclear workers at liberty, with potential motive for harm, remains disturbing — however remote the possibility of betrayal might be.

It would take only one disaffected ex-employee to cause great damage.