U-M’s proposed computing center draws concerns over role in nuclear weapons modernization

The University of Michigan and Los Alamos National Laboratory are moving ahead with a proposed $1.2 billion, nearly 300,000-square-foot computing facility in Ypsilanti Township, with the overwhelming majority of the space going to Los Alamos and a fraction reserved for the university's own unclassified research. The facility would extend Los Alamos's decades-old Stockpile Stewardship Program, which uses simulations rather than live detonations to study how the roughly 3,700 weapons in the U.S. arsenal behave.

Project lead Steve Ceccio confirmed the site's primary purpose is advancing Los Alamos's classified national security mission, even as the university frames the project as comparable to ordinary scientific computing. Nonproliferation experts, including Union of Concerned Scientists senior scientist Dylan Spaulding, note the unusual scale of classified work involved and warn the research could extend beyond simple maintenance into new weapons development.

Neither institution would answer specific questions about how much of the facility's capacity is devoted to weapons research versus general science, each referring reporters to the other. Local residents, township officials, and a graduate student union have organized opposition, arguing the project entrenches U.S. military escalation and was approved with minimal public input.

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