Los Alamos, N.M. ? The University of California on Wednesday won its hard-fought battle to keep operating Los Alamos National Laboratory, beating back a rival bid from a Lockheed Martin-University of Texas team, despite a series of security and safety lapses at the nuclear weapons design center in New Mexico.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced that it was awarding the Los Alamos contract for at least seven years to the group headed by UC and its key new partner, Bechtel National, a unit of engineering powerhouse Bechtel Group.

The decision marked a face-saving victory for UC, which has run the lab since the facility began in 1943 as a secret Manhattan Project site to develop the atomic bomb. A loss would have cost UC not only a share of millions in annual management fees but also the prestige it uses to attract world-renowned physicists and scientists interested in nuclear defense research.