<div>CHEMIST QUITS IN PROTEST OF LAB'S NUKE WORK </div>
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<div>San Francisco Examiner</div>
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<div>By Keay Davidson </div>
<div>EXAMINER SCIENCE WRITER</div>
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<div>Wednesday, February 16, 2000 </div>
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<div>Says act of "conscience' comes after shedding illusion about nature of Livermore job </div>
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<div><x-tab> </x-tab>A Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory chemist has quit his job to protest its nuclear weapons work. </div>
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<div><x-tab> </x-tab>"My conscience simply does not allow me to work for the development or maintenance of nuclear weapons," says the chemist, Andreas Toupadakis, 45, who resigned effective Jan. 31. He was employed in the study of aging processes in nuclear weapons components. </div>
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<div><x-tab> </x-tab>Toupadakis said he originally came to Livermore in August 1998 under the assumption that his work would involve research on nonmilitary technology, specifically ways to clean up radioactive waste. </div>
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<div><x-tab> </x-tab>After arriving, he quickly "realized it was an illusion. All the jobs are related to nuclear weapons." </div>
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<div><x-tab> </x-tab>Toupadakis' decision won praise from a prominent Bay Area antinuclear activist. </div>
<div>"It is highly unusual for a scientist working in (the) nuclear weapons program at a government lab to forsake a highpaying permanent job in the prime of his career and to wholeheartedly endorse the peace movement," said Jackie Cabasso of Western States Legal Foundation in Oakland. </div>
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<div><x-tab> </x-tab>Toupadakis was scheduled to describe his decision to quit the lab at a press conference Wednesday at the San Francisco Press Club. </div>
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<div><x-tab> </x-tab>On Tuesday afternoon, lab spokesman Steve Wampler responded: "Everyone has a right to their own opinion. Dr. Toupadakis has a right to work here or not to work here as he chooses. . . . The people who work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory believe that they are contributing to our nation's defense by maintaining a nuclear deterrent." </div>
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<div><x-tab> </x-tab>A native of Crete, Toupadakis has a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Michigan. Earlier in the 1990s, he worked for an independent contractor at the nation's other major nuclear weapons laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. </div>
<div><x-tab> </x-tab>Toupadakis was unhappy at Los Alamos, too: He said he faced radiation dangers that "I just couldn't believe. . . . We were working right next to cans full of radioactive waste our (lab) windows were right next to them. . . . These big radioactive cans (were) rusting outside." </div>
<div>At that time, he didn't complain about the Los Alamos pollution because "if I spoke out, over night I would lose my job." </div>
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<div><x-tab> </x-tab>Finally he decided to quit and work at Livermore, where, he assumed, he would do similar work under safer conditions. But he soon discovered his work involved studying aging processes in nuclear weapons components that include plutonium, uranium, high explosives, organic materials and polymers. </div>
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<div><x-tab> </x-tab>Again, he didn't speak out for fear of losing his job. </div>
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<div><x-tab> </x-tab>Such "aging" research is a major part of the nuclear weapons establishment's socalled Stockpile Stewardship Program. Its purpose is to determine how to keep nuclear weapons from rusting and becoming unreliable in the postCold War era, when no new nuclear weapons are being built not officially, anyway. </div>
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<div><x-tab> </x-tab>Some antinuclear activists claim that the weaponeers are refining old bombs in ways that transform them into what are, for all effective purposes, new bombs. </div>
<div>For Toupadakis, the last straws were: </div>
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<div> The U.S. Department of Energy decided to begin polygraph testing of employees after recent congressional investigations into alleged spying at Los Alamos. </div>
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<div> Livermore's development of a superlaser, the National Ignition Facility, was accused by a federal investigation of DOE to have undergone cost overruns of, in his words, "hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money." </div>
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<div><x-tab> </x-tab>The laser's mission is to simulate the extreme heat and other conditions in nuclear bombs when they detonate. That's a vital task, Livermore officials maintain, because an international treaty now forbids them from detonating real nukes. </div>
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<div><x-tab> </x-tab>On Jan. 15 Toupadakis wrote a letter of resignation, effective Jan. 31, to lab director Bruce Tarter. In the letter, Toupadakis said he decided to quit based on "past and recent events at my workplace," but the letter gave no further details. He says Livermore officials expressed no interest in his decision to resign. Toupadakis is now teaching chemistry at Ohlone College in Fremont and Mission College in Santa Clara.</div>
