Los Alamos National Laboratory

The Los Alamos National Laboratory (also known as LANL) is a laboratory of the United States Department of Energy, administered by the University of California, which is located in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The laboratory is one of the largest multidisciplinary institutions in the world. It is the largest institution by number of employees in northern New Mexico with approximately 6,800 University of California workers and nearly 2,800 contractors.

Nearly a third of the laboratory's technical staff are physicists, a quarter are engineers, a sixth are chemists and materials experts, and the rest are in mathematics, computer science, biology, geology, and other disciplines. Some professional and student scientists come to Los Alamos as visitors to participate in scientific projects. The team collaborates with universities and industry on basic and applied research to develop resources for the future. The annual budget is about 1.2 billion dollars.

The laboratory was founded during World War II as a secret, centralized facility to coordinate the scientific development of the Manhattan Project, the Allied project to develop the first nuclear weapons. Los Alamos is one of two laboratories in the United States where classified research on the design of nuclear weapons is carried out. The other laboratory, since 1952, is the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

History

The Manhattan Project

The laboratory was founded during World War II as a secret, centralized facility to coordinate scientific research for the Manhattan Project, the Allied project to develop the first nuclear weapons. In September 1942, the difficulties encountered in carrying out preliminary studies on nuclear weapons at universities scattered throughout the country indicated the need for a laboratory dedicated exclusively to that objective.

General Leslie Groves wanted a central laboratory in an isolated location for his safety and to keep scientists away from the population. It should be at least 200 miles from international borders and west of the Mississippi. Commander John Dudley suggested Oak City, Utah or Jemez Springs, New Mexico, but both were rejected. Jemez Springs was a short distance from the current site. The scientific director of the Manhattan Project, J. Robert Oppenheimer, had spent much time in his youth in the New Mexico area, and he suggested the Rancho Los Alamos School at the table. Dudley had turned down the school for not meeting Groves' criteria, but as soon as Groves saw him, he said in effect, “This is the place.” Oppenheimer became the lab's first director.

During the Manhattan Project, Los Alamos welcomed thousands of employees, including many Nobel Prize-winning scientists. The location was a total secret. His only mailing address was a PO Box, number 1663, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Two other PO Boxes, 180 and 1539, were eventually used also in Santa Fe. Although his contract with the University of California was initially intended to be temporary, the relationship was maintained long after the war. Until the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, University of California President Robert Sproul did not know the purpose of the lab and thought it might be producing a "death ray." The only member of the UC administration who knew its true purpose—indeed, the only one who knew its exact physical location—was Secretary-Treasurer Robert Underhill, who was in charge of wartime contracts and responsibilities.

Laboratory work culminated in the creation of several atomic devices, one of which was used in the first nuclear test near Alamogordo, New Mexico, codenamed "Trinity," on 16 July 1945. The other two were guns, "Little Boy" "and" Fat Man ", which were used in the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Laboratory received the 'E' for Army-Navy Excellence in Production on October 16, 1945.

Post-War

After the war, Oppenheimer retired from management and took over Norris Bradbury, whose initial mission was to make previously handmade "GI proof" so they could be mass produced and used without the help of highly trained scientists. Many of the "luminarias" The originals at Los Alamos chose to leave the laboratory, and some even became opponents of the development of nuclear weapons. The name was officially changed to the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory on January 1, 1947. By this time, Argonne had already been the first national laboratory of the previous year. Los Alamos would not become a National Laboratory in name until 1981.

In the years since the 1940s, Los Alamos was responsible for the development of the hydrogen bomb and many other variants of nuclear weapons. In 1952, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was founded to act as the "competitor" at Los Alamos, hoping that two nuclear weapons design laboratories would spur innovation. Los Alamos and Livermore served as the primary classified laboratories in the US national laboratory system, designing the country's entire nuclear arsenal. Additional work included basic science research, particle accelerator development, health physics, and fusion power research as part of Project Sherwood. Many nuclear tests were carried out in the Marshall Islands and at the Nevada test site. During the late 1950s, a number of scientists, including Dr. J. Robert "Bob" Beyster, left Los Alamos to work for General Atomics (GA) in San Diego.

Three major nuclear accidents occurred at LANL. Criticality accidents occurred in August 1945 and May 1946, and a third accident occurred during an annual physical inventory in December 1958.

Several buildings associated with the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos were declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965.

Scientific mission

The mission of Los Alamos National Laboratory is to solve national security challenges through scientific excellence. The laboratory's strategic plan reflects United States priorities spanning nuclear security, intelligence, defense, emergency response, nonproliferation, counterterrorism, energy security, emerging threats, and environmental stewardship. This strategy is aligned with the priorities established by the Department of Energy (DOE), the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), and national strategy guidance documents, such as the Nuclear Posture, the National and the Plan for a Secure Energy Future

Los Alamos is the primary laboratory in the DOE system and performs work in all DOE mission areas: homeland security, science, energy, and environmental management. The laboratory also performs work for the Department of Defense (DoD), the Intelligence Community (IC), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), among others. The laboratory's multidisciplinary scientific capabilities and activities are organized into four pillars of science:

• The Pilar of Information, Science and Technology takes advantage of the advances in theory, algorithms and exponential growth of high-performance computing to accelerate the capacity of integration and prediction of the scientific method.
• The Pilar Materials for the Future seeks to optimize materials for national security applications by predicting and controlling their performance and functionality through science and discovery engineering.
• The Pillar of Nuclear Futures and Particles apply science and technology to intransigent problems of identification and characterization of systems in areas of global security, nuclear defense, energy and health.
• The Pilar of Firm Science integrates nuclear experiments, theory and simulation to understand and engineer complex nuclear phenomena.

Through alliances between government agencies, laboratories, universities and industry, Los Alamos integrates science, technology, research and development solutions to achieve maximum impact on strategic national security priorities. To further these collaborative efforts, Los Alamos operates three primary user facilities:

The Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies: The Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies is a DOE/Office of Science National User Service, operated jointly by Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories, with facilities at both Laboratories. CINT is dedicated to establishing the scientific principles that govern the design, performance, and integration of nanoscale materials into microscale and macroscale systems and devices.

Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE): The Los Alamos Neutron Science Center is one of the most powerful linear accelerators in the world. LANSCE provides the scientific community with intense neutron sources with the capability to conduct national and civil security research experiments. This facility is sponsored by the Department of Energy, the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Office of Science, and the Office of Nuclear Energy, Science, and Technology.

National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL), Pulsed Field Center: The Pulsed Field Center at Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, is one of three campuses of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL) At Florida State University, Tallahassee and the University of Florida. The pulsed field facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory operates an international user program for research in high intensity magnetic fields.

Institutional statistics

LANL is the largest institution in northern New Mexico and the largest employer with approximately 9,000 direct employees and approximately 650 contract employees. In addition, there are approximately 120 DOE employees stationed at the laboratory to provide federal oversight of the work and operations of LANL. About a third of the lab's technical staff are physicists, a quarter are engineers, a sixth are chemists and materials scientists, and the rest work in math and computer science, biology, geoscience, and other disciplines. Scientific professionals and students also come to Los Alamos as visitors to participate in scientific projects. Staff collaborate with universities and industry on basic and applied research to develop resources for the future. The annual budget is approximately US$2.2 billion.

Directors

• J. Robert Oppenheimer (1943–1945)
• Norris Bradbury (1945-1970)
• Harold Agnew (1970–1979)
• Donald Kerr (1979-1986)
• Siegfried S. Hecker (1986–1997)
• John C. Browne (1997-2003)
• George Peter Nanos (2003–2005)
• Robert W. Kuckuck (2005–2006)
• Michael R. Anastasio (2006-2011)
• Charles F. McMillan (2011–present)