Sometimes, divorce is a better solution than an ill-advised marriage, said C. Paul Robinson, former director of Sandia National Laboratories.

For years as lab director, Robinson supported the idea of keeping the nation's nuclear weapons labs and programs under the umbrella of the Department of Energy. But after he retired in early 2006, he began to re-evaluate the situation, he said.

As he told members of the House Armed Services Committee's Strategic Forces Subcommittee last summer, he thinks it's time for Sandia, Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories, along with all other nuclear weapons facilities and programs, to be transferred to the Department of Defense.

And a new memo from the Office of Management and Budget directing the departments of Energy and Defense and the National Nuclear Security Administration to look into the idea is certainly a step in the right direction, Robinson said.

"After years of resisting any suggestion to put the weapons program under Pentagon control, I now think the Department of Defense should take the whole nuclear weapons program," Robinson told The New Mexican on Wednesday.

The memo, obtained by The New Mexican, instructs the two departments and NNSA to "assess the costs and benefits of transferring budget and management of NNSA or its components to DOD and elsewhere, as appropriate, beginning in FY 2011."

It also requests a final report be submitted to the Office of Management and Budget by Sept. 30, 2009.

To Robinson, the idea makes a lot of sense, because the weapons program was sort of shoe-horned into the Department of Energy when the agency was created in the 1970s, he said.

Since then, the program hasn't aligned very well into DOE, and perhaps it's time for a change, he said.

"The combination hasn't worked well for either one (nuclear weapons programs or the DOE)," Robinson said. "It hasn't been a good marriage."

Talk of switching nuclear weapons programs from various agencies has been debated since 1946, said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat.

In his mind, the last place nuclear weapons programs belong is under the control of the Defense Department, Bingaman said. "I think it's a bad suggestion and one I strongly oppose," he said. "The initial concern is that we should have a separate system for nuclear weapons than we do for conventional weapons, because nuclear weapons are different and much more deadly."

Also, under the Department of Energy, national labs have been able to recruit scientific and technical talent that would be much harder to get if the labs were under military control, he said.

"We have been able, through the management of these weapons in a civilian agency, to attract high-caliber scientists and engineers," Bingaman said. "I think it's harder to do that in a defense agency."

The shift could also hurt New Mexico's economy, because the labs' missions would likely become less broadly focused, Bingaman said. "I think there'd be a lot less technology spin-off because there'd be a lot less nonweapons work," he said.

Still, Robinson said, the move would make a lot of sense from a structural standpoint. With the Obama administration's push toward alternative energy development, and the nation's energy problems as a whole, the Department of Energy has more than enough work to keep itself busy, he said.

"There's far too much work to be done even if you concentrate your energies just on energy," Robinson said.

Nuclear weapons programs, on the other hand, seem to have been a bit of a distraction at DOE, and they haven't been handled very well by NNSA, he said.

"NNSA has focused on optimizing security and safety, and they think that's enough," Robinson said. "There is a wonderful postulate that it's impossible to optimize a total system by concentrating on optimizing its sub-systems. I believe the right answer is to align the whole mission."

Other issues, like communications between agencies on how nuclear weapons are transported and on how weapons are managed, haven't taken priority at DOE, he said.

"The missions do need to be aligned, because nuclear weapons have been so far outside of DOD, and there's been so much distance between the two that they've become disconnected," Robinson said.

Greg Mello, executive director of the Los Alamos Study Group, a watchdog organization, agrees with Bingaman that nuclear weapons should be handled differently from other weapons. He said he's concerned that a switch from Energy to Defense would lead to less scrutiny overall on nuclear weapons management and development.

"With the present level of militarization in our society and the enormous secrecy and lack of oversight at the Pentagon, we would have great reservations about putting the nuclear weapons program there," Mello said.

Officials at the labs declined to comment on a possible switch, since the decision would be made at a higher government level.

"This is a communication between OMB and DOE," said Kevin Roark, a Los Alamos spokesman.

But some inside the lab have anonymously voiced support for the idea.

Most of those who made comments at the Web site lanl-the-rest-of-the-story.blogspot.com have made positive remarks about switching control of the labs to the Defense Department, said Frank Young, who runs the popular site focused on issues at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"I think it's a great idea," said Young, who served in the military and worked at Los Alamos. "Compared to the way I was treated in DOD, DOE was just horrible. There's a culture in the military — you take care of your people, or your career is over."

If the labs were to switch from Energy to Defense, it's possible that those with health claims from working with nuclear and other materials could get care at Veterans Affairs hospitals, rather than spending their time fighting with the Department of Energy, Young added.

And concerns that a switch would hurt New Mexico's economy also might not be well-founded, Robinson said.

As DOE labs, LANL, Sandia and Livermore all work on projects from other agencies such as Defense and Homeland Security. If control were transferred to Defense, the labs would still be able to work on projects for the Department of Energy or other agencies, Robinson said.

"You can still have multi-agency labs," Robinson said. "There may be some belt-tightening, but that's happening now."

If a switch were made, some language in the contracts to operate nuclear weapons labs and facilities would probably have to change, but Robinson thinks the government-owned, contractor-operated model should remain, Robinson added.

"I think doing this would give the (nuclear weapons) mission the right emphasis," Robinson said.

Contact Sue Vorenberg at svorenberg@sfnewmexican.com.

LANL TIMELINE

1943-1947: Manhattan Engineering District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers creates and oversees Los Alamos Laboratory.

1947-1975: Atomic Energy Commission oversees Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory.

1975-1977: Energy Research and Development Administration oversees Los Alamos National Laboratory.

1977-present: Department of Energy oversees LANL.

Source: Los Alamos National Laboratory