Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

File:LLNL Aerial View.jpg

Aerial view of the lab and surrounding area.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a United States Department of Energy 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 several of the most powerful computer systems in the world according to the TOP500 list. 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.

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), 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.

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.

Directors

• 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)

The LLNL Director is supported by two deputies - one for Science & Technology and one for Operations - and by the Laboratory Executive Officer. Also reporting to the Director are several key functional managers - Safeguards & Security, Audit & Oversight, Chief Financial Officer, and Laboratory Counsel - and the Lab's associate directors who lead its directorates;

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

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 November 2005 release of the 26th TOP500 list of the 500 most powerful computer systems in the world, has LLNL computers in the #1 (BlueGene/L) and #3 (ASCI Purple) spots. A total of 12 LLNL computer systems appeared in the November 2005 TOP500 list, tying the number at Sandia National Laboratories for the most at any one site.

Over the years other computers were installed, including:

• 2 IBM 701s
• 4 IBM 704s
• 4 IBM 709s
• 4 IBM 7090s
• 1 UNIVAC LARC
• 5 IBM 7094s
• 1 IBM 7030 (Stretch)
• 1 CDC 1604
• 2 CDC 3600s
• 4 CDC 6600s
• 5 CDC 7600s
• 2 CDC STAR 100s
• 4 Cray-1s
• 5 Cray X-MPs
• 3 Cray-2s
• 2 Cray Y-MP8s
• 1 BBN Butterfly
• 1 Cray C90
• 1 Meiko
• 1 Cray T3D
• IBM ASCI Blue Pacific
• IBM ASCI White
• ASC Purple
• IBM Blue Gene/L.

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.

• Recently the U.S. Department of Energy announced plans to move 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 consolidate at a single new facility whose location has not been determined.

Trivia

• 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)