Posted on 01/06/2007 5:29:34 PM PST by calcowgirl
GREEN LLC wanted move toward nonproliferation
Federal nuclear weapons officials have rejected a bid by disarmament and renewable energy activists to manage Lawrence Livermore weapons design lab, saying the "green team" didn't fit federal plans.
The team, calling itself GREEN LLC, was led by two weapons-lab watchdog groups, Livermore-based Tri-Valley CAREs and Nuclear Watch of New Mexico, who never really expected to run the sprawling bomb lab.
But they were offended that the National Nuclear Security Administration said the team's proposal ran afoul of federal law and "did not demonstrate an understanding of the requirements of the solicitation where it proposed 'change in the overall direction' "at Livemore lab.
Officials of the nuclear agency so far haven't identified what laws might have been broken by the GREEN LLC bid, which proposed a gradual shift from weapons work into unclassified research on climate change and renewable energy.
"It's ironic because our bid proposed to bring Lawrence Livermore Lab more in line with national and international law," said Marylia Kelley, head of Tri-Valley CAREs.
For the first time, the activists figured, the lab could be managed in accordance with U.S. promises in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to work toward full disarmament, rather than maintaining and designing new weapons.
"Our proposal was arbitrarily and improperly eliminated because NNSA rejects the principle that the U.S. should lead the world toward nuclear nonproliferation by demonstrating restraint in its own weapons programs," said Jay Coghlan, head of Nuclear Watch of New Mexico.
Federal officials say GREEN LLC was proposing a different lab than the government specified in its bid request. "The bottom line is their proposal did not meet the criteria for running the lab," said NNSA spokesman Bryan Wilkes. The activists said federal officials erroneously claimed that mandatory pieces were missing from the team's bid, yet the NNSA hasn't made itself available to discuss the matter in a required post-bid debriefing.
"So in a weird way, there's no way for us to even tell them, 'Why don't you look on this page and find what you say is missing,'" Kelley said. "We are expecting our next step will be a (formal contract) protest."
(snip)
Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment) out of Livermore, New College in San Francisco and two allied groups filed the bid for the Livermore contract on Oct. 27. At the time, they acknowledged they had little chance of winning it, but said they hoped the bid would encourage public support for phasing out the lab's nuclear weapons work and diverting its thousands of scientists into research on global warming, alternative energy sources and other peaceful enterprises.
The other two organizations bidding in partnership with Tri-Valley were Nuclear Watch of New Mexico and WindMiller Energy, a small wind-energy firm in rural New York state.
"I am surprised and dismayed that the NNSA is attempting to toss our bid aside summarily and without due consideration," said Tri-Valley Executive Director Marylia Kelley. She said that the agency is required by law to answer a bidder's questions about why its bid was rejected, but that it has so far failed to "fully and properly" do so.
Run a nuclear facility?
*snicker*
They have invaded every political nook and cranny of our society, and it never occurs to them that certain disciplines, like nuclear research, requires, absolutely, genuine smarts and training, as well as psychological health.
This person is clearly insane.
It's like wanting to run the American Auto Manufacturer's Association with the stated goal of ultimately producing no autos...
This is a great example of how far up the ivory tower these people reside. How do you 'divert' thousands of nuclear physicists into climate research? It's not like a 40-hr seminar will make someone a climatologist or an engineer! A PhD takes years to get, and a decade or two to refine before anyone's an expert at anything!
Oy Vay!
The idea that if the United States disarms its nuclear weapons, then the rest of the nuclearly armed world will follow suit is naïve.
Yes, but would they be any worse than the University of California?
The idea that if the United States disarms its nuclear weapons, then the rest of the nuclearly armed world will follow suit is naïve.
"Okay Mr. Armed Robber, I got you covered. Now put your gun down like this. See how I did it?"
They are very intelligent, ignorant, but intelligent, in what thye are doing. They are fertilizing the ground for future lawsuits to get what they want. They hope to find a sympathetic federal judge that will force the government to take their bid seriously and to force answers fromthe government on why they were rejected. Any answers the government gives them will be used against the government in future court challeneges until they achieve what they want.
They are intelligent only insofar as carrying out classic communist revolutionary internal sabotage and agitprop techniques within the legal machinery of the host state is "intelligent".
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