ABSTRACT

During the Cold War, three weapons labs, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories, designed and engineered the US nuclear arsenal. The 1989 legislation authorized the labs to form technological partnerships with companies and universities so long as their joint projects benefited both the government and the private partners. Many of the partnerships took the form of Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs). A number of weapons lab partnerships hold promise for both the environment and industry. The Galvin Commission warned the labs against becoming short-term "job shops" for the private sector and insisted that they continue to perform long-term, fundamental research. The Galvin Commission recommended that the civilian labs be converted into a not-for-profit research and development (R&D) corporation, funded by Congress, with the Department of Energy (DoE) as the customer.