Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory - Unique Facilities

Unique Facilities

• Biosecurity and Nanoscience Laboratory. Researchers apply advances in nanoscience to develop novel technologies for the detection, identification, and characterization of harmful biological pathogens (viruses, spores, and bacteria) and chemical toxins.
• Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry: LLNL’s Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (CAMS) develops and applies a wide range of isotopic and ion-beam analytical tools used in basic research and technology development, addressing a spectrum of scientific needs important to the Laboratory, the university community, and the nation. CAMS is the world’s most versatile and productive accelerator mass spectrometry facility, performing more than 25,000 AMS measurement operations per year.
• High Explosives Applications Facility and Energetic Materials Center: At HEAF, teams of scientists, engineers, and technicians address nearly all aspects of high explosives: research, development and testing, material characterization, and performance and safety tests. HEAF activities support the Laboratory’s Energetic Materials Center, a national resource for research and development of explosives, pyrotechnics, and propellants.

• National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center: NARAC is a national support and resource center for planning, real-time assessment, emergency response, and detailed studies of incidents involving a wide variety of hazards, including nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological, and natural atmospheric emissions.

• National Ignition Facility: This 192-beam, stadium-size laser system will be used to compress fusion targets to conditions required for thermonuclear burn. Experiments at NIF will study physical processes at conditions that exist only in the interior of stars and in exploding nuclear weapons (see National Ignition Facility and photon science).

• Superblock: This unique high-security facility houses modern equipment for research and engineering testing of nuclear materials and is the place where plutonium expertise is developed, nurtured, and applied. Research on highly enriched uranium also is performed here.
• Terascale Simulation Facility: LLNL’s Terascale Simulation Facility houses one of the world’s most powerful computers, Blue Gene/L. Blue Gene/L occupied the No. 1 position on the Top500 list in June 2007; the current system achieves a Linpack benchmark performance of 478.2 TFlop/s (teraflops, or trillions of calculations per second). A 20 PFlop/s (petaflops, or quadrillions of calculations per second) system named Sequoia is scheduled to be sited in the TSF machine room in late 2011 and be fully operational in 2012. Another Blue Gene class machine, Dawn, has already been installed to act as a developmental testbed for multi-petaflop computing.

• Titan Laser: Titan is a combined nanosecond-long pulse and ultrashort-pulse (subpicosecond) laser, with hundreds of joules of energy in each beam. This petawatt-class laser is used for a range of high-energy density physics experiments, including the science of fast ignition for inertial confinement fusion energy.