Lawrence Livermore Labs

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory, based in Livermore, California and run by the University of California. The laboratory is one of two in the nation which is designated to design nuclear weapons. Its research, however, has been expanded to include general energy and environmental issues, as well as issues dealing with bioscience. The laboratory's mission statement is currently "to promote innovation in the design of our nation's nuclear stockpile through creative science and engineering".

The lab was suggested by Edward Teller, in 1949, to Ernest Lawrence, the head of the University of California's Radiation Lab in Berkeley, California. He suggested that a lab be created to compete with Los Alamos, the site which created the first atom bomb, as Teller was disappointed with the low priority the Los Alamos Laboratory was giving to the development of the hydrogen bomb. The new lab was developed, in 1952, on the site of a former WWII Naval Training Station.

The lab functioned throughout the Cold War, competing with the Los Alamos Laboratory to develop the nation's nuclear arsenal. It consisted of four main programs. These projects included a magnetic fusion program labeled Project Sherwood, a thermonuclear weapons program, diagnostic weapon experiments, and a general physics program.

Currently, the laboratory is designing a small, sealed, transportable, autonomous reactor (SSTAR), which would allow smaller, less developed countries to produce electricity for up to 30 years in a self-contained reactor, without refueling. This reactor is sealed, and would later be recovered from the host nation to prevent the host nation from acquiring its plutonium by-product.