Los Alamos National Laboratory
Established | 1943 |
---|---|
Affiliations | |
Budget | $3.92 billion[1] |
Staff | 14,150 |
Students | 1800 |
Website | https://www.lanl.gov/ |
Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE). It is located near the northwest area of Santa Fe, New Mexico. It is best known for its key role in helping develop the first atomic bomb. LANL is one of the world's largest and most advanced scientific institutions.[5]
Los Alamos was created in 1943 as Project Y, a top-secret site for designing nuclear weapons under the Manhattan Project during World War II.[6] J. Robert Oppenheimer helped convince General Leslie Groves to pick Los Alamos, New Mexico as the site of the lab because of a ranch school in the nearby mesa and Oppenheimer spent his youth in New Mexico.[6] The lab brought together some of the world's most famous scientists, among them numerous Nobel Prize winners.[7][8] The town of Los Alamos, directly north of the lab, grew during this period.
After World War II ended in 1945, Project Y was made public, and it became known as Los Alamos. In 1952, the Atomic Energy Commission formed a second design lab under the direction of the University of California, Berkeley.[9] The two labs competed on creating bomb designs during the Cold War.
Los Alamos currently focuses on research in fields such as national security, space exploration, nuclear fusion, renewable energy,[10] medicine, nanotechnology, and supercomputing.
The laboratory is almost forty square miles and has almost 900 individual facilities, thirteen nuclear facilities, 8.4 million square feet in buildings, and a $39.1 billion replacement plant value.[11]
Several buildings that had connections to the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos were declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965.[12]
References
[change | change source]- ↑ "Facts, Figures". Retrieved September 16, 2022.
- ↑ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
- ↑ "LANL Location and Infrastructure". Retrieved Oct 20, 2019.
- ↑ "National Historic Landmarks Survey, New Mexico" (PDF). National Park Service. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09. Retrieved December 29, 2016.
- ↑ "Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) | UCOP". ucop.edu. Retrieved 2022-12-01.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 "50th Anniversary Article: Oppenheimer's Better Idea: Ranch School Becomes Arsenal of Democracy". Los Alamos National Laboratory. Archived from the original on 20 April 2011.
- ↑ Energy, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, for the U. S. Department of. "Our History". lanl.gov. Retrieved 2019-08-02.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ↑ "Los Alamos, NM". Atomic Heritage Foundation. Retrieved 2019-08-02.
- ↑ "History". Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. 2013-10-09. Retrieved 2019-08-02.
- ↑ "The Drive Toward Hydrogen Vehicles Just Got Shorter". Chem.info. March 21, 2011. Archived from the original on March 21, 2012. Retrieved December 18, 2012.
- ↑ "About the lab". LANL. Retrieved October 14, 2024.
- ↑ Greenwood, Richard (January 14, 1974). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination Form / Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory" (pdf). National Park Service. Retrieved June 21, 2009.
"Accompanying photos". National Park Service. Retrieved December 18, 2012.