Los Alamos' Future Up In The Air

It was 60 years ago that America dropped the most powerful bomb the world had ever seen on the Japanese city of Hiroshima and three days later a second bomb on Nagasaki ending World War II and igniting the nuclear age.

CBS News Correspondent Jerry Bowen reports that this weekend, as there have been every year since, vigils and protests marked the Aug. 6 Hiroshima anniversary, including one at the remote New Mexico mountain town where the bomb was born in great secrecy all those decades ago: the town of Los Alamos.

At the town museum, tourists now pose with replicas of the bombs: Little Boy that hit Hiroshima and Fat Man that fell on Nagasaki. The devastation they wrought still provoking awe and disbelief:

"All I wrote down was, 'Wow! It really went off. It really did.' And I had no idea what the effect would be on ending the war," says Harold Agnew, a member of the famed Manhattan Project.

Agnew was 22-years-old when he joined the Manhattan Project, the team of scientists recruited to build the bomb back in the 1940's. Later he volunteered to fly on the Hiroshima mission to measure the size of the blast. Agnew and the other scientists didn't fully comprehend what their top secret project might mean.

"At the time, I didn't really appreciate what, what the impact would be and what we were working on," Agnew recalls.

Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was the civilian head of the government project. "Oppy", as he was called, selected Los Alamos, site of an exclusive boys school, as the headquarters for the secret project. So secret that nearby Sante Fe was used as the mailing address for the scientists and their families. The outside world was not to know a thing.

"Oppenheimer argued that what they should do is corral all the scientists in essentially a secret city behind barbed wire, where they couldn't leave and nobody could come in," says author Jenny Conant. "And then all of the information behind those fences would be secure."

Conant, who has written a new book on the Manhattan Project, says it was Oppenheimer's idea that Los Alamos be equal parts university campus and bomb factory, much as it remains today.

"Behind those fences they could discuss openly their ideas," Conant says. "And that freedom, that kind of relaxed atmosphere, most people think contributed to the enormous progress that Los Alamos made in an incredibly short period of time."

In July 1945 the first atom bomb test -- the trinity explosion -- proved to "Oppy" and his team that they had succeeded. Three weeks later, after Hiroshima, the entire world would know.

Yet the work at Los Alamos didn't end there. The secret city soldiered on, designing and maintaining America's nuclear arsenal, far from the public eye. That is, until now.

Today, Los Alamos is at a crossroads. Just as it was at the end of World War II, just as it was at the end of the cold war. But, this is different. For the first time in its 60-year history, management of the sprawling nuclear lab is up for grabs. The company and the company town are dealing with uncertainty.

The safety and maintenance of the lab are being called into question. A series of embarrassing and costly incidents have undermined confidence in the University of California, which has managed the lab for the government since World War II.

Prime example: the Wen Ho Lee case: the scientist accused in 1999 of giving warhead designs to China, dropped, with an apology, for lack of evidence.

And last year, the estimated $360 million cost of shutting down the lab to search for two missing classified computer disks that never really existed. Their so-called disappearance was the result of a sloppy inventory.

Congress was not amused and called for private industry to take over. And indeed, defense contractor Lockheed-Martin, partnered with the University of Texas, and construction giant Bechtel, teamed with the University of California, are competing to run the lab.

But it may not stop there. Just this May, Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., suggested closing the lab.

"Well, let me ask you this then. What is so special at Los Alamos that, we go through this year after year, that what's being done at Los Alamos, why can't it be transferred to other labs? In other words, why do we need Los Alamos?" asks Stupak.

Greg Mello, who organized the weekend protest at Los Alamos, has been asking that same question for the last 15 years.

He runs the Los Alamos study group.

"Los Alamos is not necessary," Mello says bluntly. "We are not destined to live in a continuation of the cold war forever. We are not destined to live, what is basically a continuation of the Manhattan Project forever."

Yet lab supporters argue there is much worth preserving. The part campus, part nuclear weapons laboratory atmosphere. The Manhattan Project's can-do, anything is possible legacy.

Where scientists are never addressed as doctor because everyone has a Ph.D.; instead they're affectionately known as "cones" as in cone heads.

And these days the "cones" and their managers are working to convince skeptics that the more than $2 billion budget and staff of 12,000 are justified -- that the brains behind the barbed wire can adapt to new realities.

For the budding field of homeland security, the lab has developed these biological weapons detectors.

They've adapted high-powered weapons research computers to analyze the human genome and have even used surveillance satellite technology to discover evidence of water on the moon and Mars.

But the main job remains maintaining America's aging stockpile of nuclear weapons: the roughly 10,000 warheads in storage or deployed for possible use.

"Yes, nuclear weapons get old," John Immele of the Los Alamos laboratory says, "and repairing them and replacing them is not an easy task. The United States does not have the old Chevy's of nuclear weapons. We have the Ferraris of nuclear weapons."

Immele is in charge of the stockpile stewardship program, the system which confirms the reliability of America's nuclear arsenal.

Since America has sworn-off actual testing, Los Alamos has tapped its resident brainpower to conceive of virtual alternatives, such as detonating simulated warheads and analyzing the explosion with this $260 million X-ray machine.

According to lab worker Mike Burns, the machine works quickly. "We make X-rays over an extraordinarily brief amount of time: Sixty-billionths of a second," Burns says.

The results are poured into one of the world's most powerful super computers, which runs at 20-trillion computations per second. The data seem solid enough to give Immele confidence.

"It's sort of deterrence by capability," Immele explains. "It says that in the nuclear arena, in the weapons of mass destruction arena, don't challenge the United States because we've got the smarts, this laboratory and others, to respond to any new challenge."

Virtual testing is one challenge, but replacing the ageing, nearly obsolete stockpile is another.

"I am leading the efforts at Los Alamos to design the next generation warhead for the nation's nuclear deterrent," Joe Martz says and adds that "we haven't done the job of designing new warheads to support deterrence or over 20 years in the United States."

Martz represents the future of Los Alamos - and the entire U.S. nuclear weapons program. Funding for new warheads could provide the lab's bread and butter for decades.

But it may come at a price. Whoever takes over may not tolerate the work of veteran scientists who think outside the box, like Bill Feldman.

"I just hope that whatever happens, that that open atmosphere of information exchange is maintained in the future," Feldman says.

Remember the technology used to detect signs of water on Mars and the moon? That came out of Feldman's system to monitor nuclear bomb tests, a pet project with stellar consequences.

"The attitude here has always been, you know, there's nothing that really can't be done if you're just given the freedom to think about it," Feldman says.

But congressional critics say, that attitude is more trouble than it's worth.

"I remain skeptical as to whether the culture at Los Alamos will
really change," Stupak said recently during congressional hearings. "Allowing the status quo culture will only prolong the wasting of taxpayers' money, or worse, jeopardize national security."

It's a deadly serious business at the sprawling Los Alamos lab. Once freed from the bottle all those years ago, the nuclear genie has required constant attention.

In December, the U.S. Energy Department will decide who next will have that responsibility and how much of the spirit of the Manhattan Project survives -- that symbol of cutting through government red tape -- to get the job done.