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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 until September 30 , 2007 . As of October 1 , 2007 the lab will be managed by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC (LLNS), a consortium comprised of the University Of California , Bechtel National , BWX Technologies , Washington Group International , and Battelle Memorial Institute . Along with Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico , it is one of the two United States laboratories whose founding mission was the Design Of Nuclear Weapons . LLNL is self-described as "a premier and use of Weapons Of Mass Destruction , and to bolstering Homeland Security . Those capabilities are also utilized in programs in non-defense areas such as basic science, energy, Environmental Science , and Biosciences . LLNL 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 fastest computer as of 2005. Since 1978 the laboratory has received a total of 113 prestigious R&D 100 Awards, including seven in 2006, the most for any institution.As noted in the Official LLNL Press Release of 10 Jul 2006 R&D 100 at LLNL 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 (2.6 Km2 ) site at the eastern outskirts of Livermore, California. Site 300, a 7 000- Acre (28.3 km2) remote explosive/experiment testing site, is situated about 15 miles (24 Km ) to the southeast. 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 Nuclear Weapon , Los Alamos National Laboratory . 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 invented and designed at Los Alamos. Thirty-two-year-old (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. It its early years, Livermore attempted to distinguish itself by investigating radical weapons designs that had not been proven; as a result, its first three nuclear tests were unsuccessful Fizzle s, much to the amusement of their new "rivals" at Los Alamos. In 1958, after the death of . In March 2007, a Livermore weapons design was chosen for the Reliable Replacement Warhead . Bush administration picks Lawrence Livermore warhead design Historically the two University of California 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 . 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 Science s pioneered at the three genome centers at UC's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has worked out several energy technologies in the field of Coal Gasification , Oil Shale Retorting , Geothermal Energy , Advanced Battery Research , Solar Energy , and Fusion Energy . Main Oil Shale processing technologies worked out by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are LLNL HRS (hot-recycled-solid), LLNL RISE and LLNL radiofrequency technologies. LLNL has been the leader in licensing and royalty income among the Department of Energy's national laboratories. During FY 2006 the Lab's Industrial Partnerships & Commercialization Office (IPAC) reported that LLNL received $6.4 million in licensing revenue, of which $6.1 million was from royalties. This was the highest among the DOE funded national laboratories. Also, during FY 2006, LLNL had 158 invention disclosures, filed 72 patent applications and received 72 patents. Most licensing income comes from the sale of products based on Lab technologies and licensed by IPAC. LLNL's cumulative licensing revenue for 1996 to 2006 was $40 million - the most in the DOE sponsored national laboratory system. The bulk of the net proceeds were distributed back to the Lab's directorates, with most of the remainder going to the inventors and a smaller amount going to the institution covering some administrative costs, technology maturation and other technology transfer-related activities. IPAC licenses LLNL technology to industry to enhance U.S. economic competitiveness in world markets, promote economic development both locally and throughout the United States, and to help improve the quality of life for all Americans. KEY FACILITIES
SPONSORS LLNL's funding comes from the DOE Office of Defense Programs for Nuclear Weapons Stockpile Stewardship activities. Funds to support LLNL's national security and homeland security work also comes from the DOE Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation, the Department Of Homeland Security , various Department Of Defense sponsors, and other federal agencies. LLNL also receives funding to perform work for other DOE programs, principally the Offices of Science, Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, and Nuclear Energy. Non-DOE sponsors include NASA , Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), National Institutes Of Health , and United States Environmental Protection Agency , State Of California agencies, and private industry. COMPUTERS 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. 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 Supercomputer s to answer questions about such subjects as; Materials Science simulations, Global Warming , and reactions to Natural Disaster s. Over the years other computers were installed, including:
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