Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a United States Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory, managed and operated by the University of California, in Livermore, California. Along with Los Alamos National Laboratory, it is one of the USA's two laboratories whose mission has included the design of nuclear weapons.

The laboratory is self-described as "a premier research and development institution for science and technology applied to national security." It is responsible for ensuring that the nation’s nuclear weapons remain safe, secure, and reliable through application of advances in science, engineering, and technology. LLNL also applies its special expertise and multidisciplinary capabilities to prevent the spread and use of weapons of mass destruction and strengthen homeland security. The laboratory's field of research has expanded to include general energy issues, as well as biomedicine and environmental science. It is home to many of the most powerful computer systems in the world according to the TOP500 list, including Blue Gene/L the world's most powerful computer. Also, since 1978 LLNL has received a total 113 of the prestigious R&D 100 Awards, including seven in 2006, the most for any institution. The awards are given annually by the editors of R&D Magazine to the most innovative ideas of the year.

LLNL's main facility is located on a one-square-mile site in Livermore, CA. A larger (10 square miles) remote explosives/experiments testing site (Site 300) is situated 18 miles to the east. Lawrence Livermore has an annual budget of about $1.6 billion and a staff of over 8,000 University of California employees, as well as 1,500 contract employees. Additionally, there are approximately 100 DOE employees stationed at the laboratory to provide federal oversight of LLNL's work for the DOE.

Origins

The main site, at the location of a former World War II Naval Training Station, was originally used to house projects of the University of California Radiation Laboratory which were too large for its location on the hills of Berkeley, California. In 1949, Edward Teller suggested to Ernest Lawrence, head of the Berkeley lab (now known as the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory LBNL), that a second weapons lab be created as "competition" with the lab which sprung up to create the first atomic bomb, Los Alamos. Teller's advocacy for the lab was also in response to his frustrations with the low-priority he felt his idea of a hydrogen bomb was getting at Los Alamos. In 1951, Teller formally appealed to the Atomic Energy Commission for the creation of the laboratory, and in September 1952 the lab was formally founded as the Livermore branch of the University of California Radiation Laboratory (Lawrence's lab in Berkeley). Despite Teller's original motivation, however, the hydrogen bomb was primarily designed at Los Alamos.

32-year old Herbert York was appointed the first director of the lab. York set out to develop the Lab's program and created four main elements: Project Sherwood (the Magnetic Fusion Program), diagnostic weapon experiments (both for Los Alamos and Livermore), the design of thermonuclear weapons, and a basic physics program. The first two facilities were a building to house the latest electronic computer, a UNIVAC I, and a technology building with a large central bay for lifting heavy equipment.

In 1958, after the death of Ernest O. Lawrence, the lab was renamed Lawrence Radiation Laboratory. It would later be renamed to its current name of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1979.

Throughout the Cold War, Lawrence Livermore competed with Los Alamos to design the nation's nuclear arsenal, as well as perform other science and technology related tasks (some classified, some not). In the early 1990s their weapons work shifted into stockpile stewardship.

Historically the two UC national laboratories in Berkeley and Livermore named after Ernest O. Lawrence, have had very close relationships on research projects, business operations, and staff. In fact, LLNL was not officially severed administratively from LBNL until the early 1970s. To this day, in official planning documents and records, LBNL is designated as "Site 100", LLNL as "Site 200", and LLNL's experimental testing area located near Tracy, California as "Site 300."

Non-Weapons Projects

A current project is the "small, sealed, transportable, autonomous reactor" or "SSTAR". It is designed to be a "world" nuclear reactor, that can give countries with smaller or less-well-developed electricity grids a self-contained reactor that would operate for 30 years without refueling and then be retrieved - thus preventing the host nation from accessing any plutonium created as a by-product of the nuclear reaction.

The National Ignition Facility (a large laser for researching inertial confinement fusion) is currently under construction.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a partner in the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) located in Walnut Creek, California. JGI was founded in 1997 to unite the expertise and resources in genome mapping, DNA sequencing, technology development, and information sciences pioneered at the three genome centers at UC's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

Key Facilities at LLNL

National Ignition Facility (NIF): a football stadium-sized 192-beam laser facility currently under construction, providing a unique capability for investigating the physics of special nuclear materials, as well as ultimately achieve a controlled ignition and fusion burn in a laboratory setting. "Early light" was achieved at NIF in 2003, and four laser beams are now operational—meeting performance requirements for component systems and supporting experimental programs.

Secure and Open Computing Facilities: the ASC White machine, at over 10 trillion operations per second (10 teraops), is supporting stockpile stewardship, and ASC Purple (100-teraops) and BlueGene/L arrived in 2005 and were installed in the Terascale Simulation Facility.

Contained Firing Facility: located at Site 300 it is a versatile hydrodynamic test facility, recently upgraded to environmentally contain explosion debris.

Superblock: the most heavily fortified and guarded set of buildings in California, these modern facilities are used for special nuclear materials research, engineering testing, and storage.

National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC): uses complex 3-D computer modeling to provide atmospheric plume predictions in time for emergency response to the release of radioactive or other hazardous materials.

Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry: the most versatile system in the world for accelerator-based measurements of isotopic abundance.

Forensic Science Center: has exceptional chemical and forensic analysis capabilities and expertise that supports FBI and law enforcement needs in the area of chemical, nuclear, biological, and high-explosives counterterrorism.

Directors

The LLNL Director is appointed by the Regents of the University of California and reports to the President of the University of California. Supporting the LLNL Director are two deputies - one for Science & Technology and one for Operations, a Chief of Staff, and the Laboratory Executive Officer.

Also reporting to the Director are several key functional managers - Safeguards & Security, Audit & Oversight, Chief Financial Officer, and Laboratory Counsel.

Herbert York (1952–1958)
Edward Teller (1958–1960)
Harold Brown (1960–1961)
John S. Foster (1961–1965)
Michael M. May (1965–1971)
Roger E. Batzel (1971–1988)
John H. Nuckolls (1988–1994)
C. Bruce Tarter (1994–2002)
Michael R. Anastasio (2002–2006)
George H. Miller (2006–present director)

LLNL Organization

Director

Deputy Director for Science & Technology

Deputy Director for Operations

Associate Directors for:

Administration & Human Resources
Biosciences
Chemistry & Materials Science
Computation
Defense & Nuclear Technologies
Energy & Environment
Engineering
Laboratory Services
National Ignition Facility Programs
Nonproliferation, Homeland and International Security
Physics & Advanced Technologies
Safety & Environmental Protection

Computers at the lab

The first computer the laboratory possessed was a UNIVAC I, ordered in July through September 1952 and delivered in April 1953. The June 2006 release of the 27th TOP500 list of the 500 most powerful computer systems in the world, has LLNL computers in the #1 (BlueGene/L) and #3 (ASC Purple) spots. A total of 12 LLNL computer systems appeared in the June 2006 TOP500 list, tying the number at Sandia National Laboratories for the most at any one site.

Over the years other computers were installed, including:

On June 22, 2006, University of California researchers at LLNL announced that they had devised the world's most powerful software - a scientific application that sustained 207.3 trillion operations per second. This was the equivalent of an online game capable of handling 300 million simultaneous players. The record performance was made at LLNL on the IBM Corp's BlueGene/L, the world's fastest supercomputer, which has 131,072 processors. The record was a milestone in the evolution of predictive science, a field in which researchers use supercomputers to answer questions about such subjects as; materials science simulations, global warming, and reactions to natural disasters.

Lawrence Livermore Lab and Plutonium

According to published reports the lab has about 880 pounds of plutonium and is allowed to have up to about 3,080 pounds. However, it is not allowed to have actual nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive devices at its sites.

Plutonium at the lab is stored in a fortified research facility guarded by a large force of heavily armed and specially trained University of California security police officers.

In Livermore and at two facilities in Nevada, the lab uses plutonium for nuclear weapons research. It conducts experiments to learn how plutonium performs as it ages; how it behaves under high pressure, such as with the impact of high explosives; and how to dismantle nuclear weapons safely, without causing contamination.

In early 2006 the U.S. Department of Energy announced plans to move all the plutonium from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory by 2014, though transfers of the material could start sooner. By 2022, all U.S. work involving plutonium would be consolidated at a single new facility whose location has not been determined.

The Laboratory in Popular Media

Parts of the laboratory appear in the movie TRON. For example the multi-story ENCOM laser bay was the target area for the SHIVA solid state multi-beamed laser in the lab.

References

Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War by Hugh Gusterson (ISBN 0520213734)

External links and sources

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (official website)
Laboratory History (official website)
University of California Office of Laboratory Management (official website)
Society of Professionals, Scientists and Engineers (Union representing UC Scientists and Engineers at LLNL)
Annotated bibliography for Livermore from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues

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