This document was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States 

government. Neither the United States government nor Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC, 

nor any of their employees makes any warranty, expressed or implied, or assumes any legal liability or 

responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or 

process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to 

any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise 

does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States 

government or Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC. The views and opinions of authors expressed 

herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States government or Lawrence Livermore 

National Security, LLC, and shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes.

This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore 

National Laboratory in part under Contract W-7405-Eng-48 and in part under Contract DE-AC52-

07NA27344.

LLNL-AR-738608

Scientific Editor

Paul Chrzanowski

Production Editor

Arnie Heller

Pamela MacGregor (first edition)

Graphic Designer

George Kitrinos

Proofreader

Caryn Meissner

About the Cover

Since its inception in 1952, the Laboratory has transformed from a deactivated 

U.S. Naval Air Station to a campus-like setting (top) with outstanding research 

facilities through U.S. government investments in our important missions and the 

efforts of generations of exceptional people dedicated to national service.

 

About the Laboratory

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) was founded in 1952 to enhance 

the security of the United States by advancing nuclear weapons science and 

technology and ensuring a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent. With 

a talented and dedicated workforce and world-class research capabilities, the 

Laboratory strengthens national security with a tradition of science and technology 

innovation—anticipating, developing, and delivering solutions for the nation’s most 

challenging problems.

The Laboratory is managed by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC (LLNS), 

for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a semi-autonomous 

agency within the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). LLNS is a limited liability 

company managed by Bechtel National, Inc.; the University of California; BWXT 

Government Group, Inc.; and the URS Division of AECOM. Battelle Memorial 

Institute also participates in LLNS as a teaming subcontractor. Cutting-edge 

science is enhanced through the expertise of the University of California and its 

10 campuses and LLNS’ affiliation with the Texas A&M University system. 
CONTENTS PREFACE

For 65 years, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has been making history and making 

a difference. The outstanding efforts by a dedicated work force have led to many remarkable 

accomplishments. Creative individuals and interdisciplinary teams at the Laboratory have 

sought breakthrough advances to strengthen national security and to help meet other enduring 

national needs. 

The Laboratory’s rich history includes many interwoven stories—from the first nuclear test failure 

to accomplishments meeting today’s challenges. Many stories are tied to Livermore’s national 

security mission, which has evolved to include ensuring the safety, security, and reliability of the 

nation’s nuclear weapons without conducting nuclear tests and preventing the proliferation and 

use of weapons of mass destruction. Throughout its history and in its wide range of research 

activities, Livermore has achieved breakthroughs in applied and basic science, remarkable feats of 

engineering, and extraordinary advances in experimental and computational capabilities. 

From the many stories to tell, one has been selected for each year of the Laboratory’s history. 

Together, these stories give a sense of the Laboratory—its lasting focus on important missions, 

dedication to scientific and technical excellence, and drive to make the world more secure and a 

better place to live.

The twentieth-century stories are now twice told. A first edition of this collection was issued in 

2002, at the time of the Laboratory’s fiftieth anniversary. Nearly a generation has passed since 

then, and more recent remarkable stories have been added. 

1 Preface 

2 The Fifties 

4 1952 The Lab Opens

6 1953 Ruth

8 1954 The IBM 701 

10 1955 Nuclear Propulsion

12 1956 Polaris

14 1957 Rainier

16 1958 Test Moratorium

18 1959 E. O. Lawrence Awards Created 

20 The Sixties 

22 1960 Linacs for Hydrotesting 

24 1961 Project Sherwood

26 1962 Operation Dominic

28 1963 Biomedical Research 

30 1964 Department of Applied Science 

32 1965 Z Division 

34 1966 Nuclear Effects 

36 1967 Gasbuggy

38 1968 Royston Plan 

40 1969 First CDC 7600

42 The Seventies 

44 1970 First MIRV Warheads

46 1971 Cannikin

48 1972 Ozone Depletion Calculations 

50 1973 U-AVLIS Program Begins

52 1974 Lasers and ICF

54 1975 W79 Development

56 1976 Enhanced Safety

58 1977 Tandem Mirror Experiment 

60 1978 Operation Morning Light

62 1979 Tracking Three Mile Island 

64 The Eighties 

66 1980 Spent Fuel Test–Climax 

68 1981 LODTM Groundbreaking 

70 1982 DYNA3D

72 1983 Laughlin Nobel Work 

74 1984 Nova 

76 1985 Bunker 801

78 1986 W87

80 1987 Human Genome Project

82 1988 Joint Verification Experiment 

84 1989 Computing in Parallel 

86 The Nineties 

88 1990 CAMS

90 1991 Iraq Inspections

92 1992 Setting Model Standards

94 1993 Dynamic Underground Stripping 

96 1994 Clementine

98 1995 Stockpile Stewardship 

100 1996 Laser Guide Star

102 1997 NIF Groundbreaking

104 1998 Multiscale Materials Modeling 

106 1999 R&D 100 Awards 

108 The Aughts

110 2000 Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative

112 2001 Biodetectors Respond

114 2002 Celebrating and Breaking Ground 

116 2003 First Principles Physics Codes 

118 2004 Portable Radiation Detectors

120 2005 Extrasolar Planets 

122 2006 Plutonium Aging

124 2007 Climate Change and Its Impacts

126 2008 RSTT 

128 2009 NIF Dedication 

130 The Tens

132 2010 BLU-129/B

134 2011 LLMDA

136 2012 Livermorium

138 2013 Self-Heating 

140 2014 Additive Manufacturing

142 2015 Neural Implants 

144 2016 W80-4 LEP

146 2017 Sierra

148 Acknowledgments
A “new ideas” laboratory

The Cold War was raging, and on August 29, 1949, 

the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb—

much sooner than expected by Western experts. Less 

than a year later, Communist North Korean forces 

crossed the 38th parallel to invade the Republic of 

Korea. National security was at stake. The urgent 

need to accelerate the nation’s H-bomb program led 

Ernest O. Lawrence and Edward Teller to argue for the 

creation of a second laboratory to augment the efforts 

of Los Alamos. On September 2, 1952, a branch of 

the University of California’s Radiation Laboratory 

opened in Livermore, California. 

Livermore’s first director, Herbert F. York, and a 

remarkable group of young scientists set out to be 

a “new ideas” laboratory. They were committed to 

pursuing innovative solutions to the nation’s pressing 

needs to advance nuclear weapons science and 

technology. The Laboratory’s first nuclear experiments 

were failures. But later in the decade, Livermore 

scientists made a major breakthrough—the design 

of a megaton-class warhead for ballistic missiles that 

could be launched from submarines. 

NewLeadership

LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 2 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 3

Herbert F. York

(1952 • 1958)

Edward Teller

(1958 • 1960)

The Fifties
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY

1952 The Lab Opens

4 5

Two of the Laboratory’s first major 

facilities for nuclear research were 

the 90-inch cyclotron (far left), which 

operated from 1954 to 1971, and the 

Livermore Pool- Type Reactor (left), 

which was used for experiments from 

1957 to 1980. 

Livermore’s first director, Herbert F. York (right), confers with founders Ernest O. Lawrence 

(left) and Edward Teller (center). 

The Livermore branch of the University of 

California Radiation Laboratory (UCRL) 

at Berkeley opened for operation on 

September 2, 1952, at a deactivated 

Naval Air Station. The infirmary at 

the old air station had been used by 

a group of UCRL physicists to help 

Los Alamos with diagnostics for the 

George thermonuclear test fielded at 

Enewetak Atoll (Central Pacific) in May 

1951. The site also was being used by 

California Research and Development, 

a subsidiary of Standard Oil, to build the 

Materials Testing Accelerator (MTA), a 

pilot for a larger accelerator to produce 

tritium and plutonium for weapons. 

Conceived by Ernest O. Lawrence, 

founder of UCRL, the MTA project was 

abandoned in 1954 after the discovery 

of large domestic deposits of uranium ore, 

and the “Rad Lab” took sole possession of 

the square-mile site. 

Working conditions at the Rad Lab were 

primitive. The staff were housed in old 

wooden buildings with poor heating and 

no air conditioning. Initially, they had fewer 

telephones than promised, no post office 

box for mail delivery, and, according to 

the minutes of an early administrative 

meeting, “The desk lamp situation is very 

bad.” The infirmary building was in the 

best shape, so Herbert F. York, the first 

director, and an opening-day staff of 75 

located there. York’s office was in the x-ray 

room—it was lead shielded, and he could 

carry on classified discussions without 

being overheard. 

Establishment of the Laboratory was 

triggered by the detonation of the first 

Russian atom bomb in 1949, which 

alarmed some American scientists 

who feared a quick Soviet advance 

to the next step, the hydrogen bomb. 

Edward Teller and Lawrence, both very 

concerned, met on October 7, 1949, at 

Los Alamos to discuss the crisis. The 

ensuing actions taken by key figures in 

Washington led to the creation of the 

Laboratory at Livermore to more rapidly 

advance nuclear weapons science 

and technology. Activities began with 

a sketchy mission statement and a 

commitment by York and his team to be 

a “new ideas” laboratory. 

York, then 32 years old, was singled out 

by Lawrence to head the new laboratory. 

He had co-led the team that worked on 

diagnostics for the George event. York 

faced two principal challenges: planning 

the Laboratory’s research program and 

recruiting the first employees. His plan 

had four main elements: development 

of diagnostics for weapons experiments 

(for both Los Alamos and Livermore), 

the design of thermonuclear weapons, 

Project Sherwood (a magnetic fusion 

energy program), and a basic physics 

program. Staff recruitment relied heavily 

on connections with Berkeley. By the end 

of 1952, the staff had grown to 300, by 

the end of the first year of operation to 

1,000, and within just five years to 3,100. 

Following the lead of his mentor, York 

established a matrix organization 

for the Laboratory, a distinguishing 

feature of Livermore still in use today. 

In this approach, experts in various 

relevant disciplines assemble as a 

team and work together to understand 

and solve complex problems. This 

way of structuring and organizing 

research and development enables the 

Laboratory to better reach its missiondirected technological goals. And the 

rest is history. 

When the Laboratory 

opened in 1952, the old 

Navy infirmary served as 

the administration building, 

and it housed Livermore’s 

first computer. 

Team Science in the National Interest
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 6 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 7

Banks of 

oscilloscopes are 

used to capture 

data at the Nevada 

Test Site during 

Operation Teapot 

in 1955. 

Shown in position inside a barge, one of the Laboratory’s largest 

designs, the Tewa device, yielded 5 megatons when it was 

detonated near Bikini Atoll in 1956. 

The remains of the Ruth test tower after 

the first device fielded by the Laboratory 

was detonated in 1953. The test failed. 

Ruth, the Laboratory’s first nuclear 

test, explored a new design approach 

and provided information about 

certain thermonuclear reactions. The 

experiment, and the test that followed 

(named Ray), exemplified Livermore’s 

commitment to be a “new ideas” 

laboratory and, in the words of Edward 

Teller, to “plan and explore all kinds 

of new developments in the field of 

bomb physics.” 

The device was mounted on a 

300-foot steel tower, and Ruth was 

fired on March 31, 1953—just six months 

after Livermore opened. The test was a 

fizzle. More than half of the tower 

remained standing afterward. Fired on 

April 11, 1953, Ray produced about the 

same yield as Ruth. Legend has it that 

Ray was mounted on a shorter 100-foot 

tower to ensure its complete destruction. 

In addition to their interest in 

thermonuclear weapons, Livermore 

scientists focused attention on novel 

small fission weapons designs. This 

work would come to fruition in the 

1950s, in part because of Los Alamos’s 

attention to meeting the Air Force’s 

needs for large H-bombs. The Army 

was interested in atomic projectiles 

between 8 and 11 inches in diameter, 

and the Air Force envisioned the need 

for nuclear-tipped antiaircraft missiles. 

Livermore’s main thrust in this area was 

a new design concept that combined 

disparate elements from previous fission 

weapons designs. Ideas matured for 

fission weapons with a smaller diameter, 

requiring less nuclear materials and/or 

an increased yield to weight. 

This research led to some of the 

Laboratory’s early weapons-development 

assignments, including the W45 for the 

Little John and Terrier tactical missile 

systems and the W48 155-millimeter 

howitzer atomic projectile. (Livermore’s 

first assignment was the W27 warhead, 

which was deployed on the U.S. Navy’s 

shipborne Regulus supersonic cruise 

missiles.) A strong continuing interest in 

improved designs for tactical systems 

culminated in the Laboratory’s work on 

the W79 enhanced-radiation artillery 

shell in the 1970s (see Year 1975). 

The role of Livermore as the “new ideas” 

laboratory also guided the decision 

to focus thermonuclear work on the 

design of small H-bombs. As early as 

the Castle test series in 1954, Livermore 

investigated H-bomb designs smaller in 

size and yield than those designed by 

Los Alamos. The first thermonuclear test, 

Koon, also was a fizzle, yielding only 

100 kilotons of an expected 1 megaton. 

Continuing efforts and future successes 

led to Livermore’s development of 

much smaller diameter H-bomb missile 

warheads later in the 1950s, which made 

the Polaris submarine program possible 

(see Year 1956).

Pushing the Frontiers of Nuclear Design

1953 Ruth

An Eyewitness Account of Ruth

Wally Decker, who later headed the Mechanical Engineering 

Department and finished his long career on the Director’s Office staff, 

was a young engineer when he witnessed Ruth. According to Decker, 

“We got everything ready. We stood back with our dark glasses on, 

waiting for the device to go off. When it was fired, all we could see was a 

small speck of light on the horizon—no mushroom cloud, no nothing. 

“But we didn’t give up. We prepared for another event with a slightly 

different design. And when we fired the device, it was dismal, too. 

“After those failures, our fortunes were at low ebb. We always said that 

we got a lot of good information from those failures—and we did—but 

you don’t always get to stay around to play your best game. Fortunately, 

we did, and things got better for the Lab.” 
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 8 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 9

The Univac-1 was a simple computer to program in machine language; 

however, the IBM 701 was more difficult to use—one reason was its 

reliance on punch cards for input and output. Programmers in companies 

and laboratories that owned 701s talked among themselves informally, 

resulting in various “home-brewed” systems. IBM soon began to develop 

a higher level language, FORTRAN (formula translation), and the 

Laboratory sent Robert Hughes to IBM for an extended visit to contribute 

to the effort. The original FORTRAN manual lists four contributors; one of 

them was Robert Hughes. 

The Origin of FORTRAN

The IBM 701 computer was 

delivered to the Laboratory 

in 1954—it was five to 

six times faster than its 

predecessor, the Univac-1. 

Delivered in May 1960, the building-size 

LARC (Livermore Advanced Research 

Computer) was built by Remington Rand 

to specifications provided by 

the Laboratory. 

Delivery of the IBM 701 in 1954 

dramatically improved the Laboratory’s 

capability to perform scientific 

calculations. With 72 cathode-ray 

tubes, 2,048 words of memory, and 

accompanying gadgetry, the machine 

was the first commercially successful 

“scientific” supercomputer because of its 

speed. It was five to six times faster than 

its predecessor, the Univac-1, which 

the Laboratory acquired during its first 

year of operation. The Univac-1 correctly 

predicted the Eisenhower landslide 

victory in the 1952 presidential election 

with only 7 percent of the vote tallied, but 

Livermore’s needs quickly outgrew the 

machine’s capabilities. 

Even before the Laboratory was a reality, 

founders Ernest O. Lawrence, Edward 

Teller, and Herbert York understood 

the need for mammoth amounts of 

computing power. Almost from the 

opening of the doors in 1952, a sizable 

team of Livermore people was learning 

to use the Univac-1 and troubleshoot its 

problems. At election time, the machine 

earmarked for Livermore was loaned 

to a TV network to predict the results. 

Acquisition of the Univac-1, and soon 

after the IBM 701, marked the beginning 

of the Laboratory’s not-so-coincidental 

links to commercial supercomputing—

their nearly identical birth dates, efforts 

to develop the fastest and most powerful 

machines, and use of machines to solve 

large, complex problems. 

The IBM 701 and all of Livermore’s 

subsequent computers have been 

developed in part at the Laboratory’s 

encouragement. The IBM 701 was the 

last vacuum-tube model before magnetic 

core and transistor memory. With the 

change in technology to transistors, 

computer speed and storage capacity 

have rapidly advanced in accordance 

with a phenomenon dubbed “Moore’s 

Law,” formulated in 1965 by Gordon 

Moore, founder of Intel Corporation. 

The law has accurately described the 

trend that every 18 months technology 

advances have doubled the number 

of transistors that could be put on 

a computer chip. Whether the law 

will continue to hold is uncertain; 

one possibility is the use of extreme 

ultraviolet lithography (see Year 1999). 

Through the 1980s, Moore’s Law drove 

processor speed but not fast enough 

to meet the supercomputing needs for 

science-based stockpile stewardship. 

DOE launched the Advanced Simulation 

and Computing Initiative (ASCI) in 

1995. ASCI and its successor, the 

Advanced Simulation and Computing 

Program, pushed the development of 

supercomputers that use thousands 

and now millions of processors 

working in parallel in increasingly 

complex machine architectures. The 

IBM Sierra machine, which is being 

delivered to Livermore in 2017–2018, 

will provide more than 120 petaflops 

(1015 floating-point operations per 

second) peak performance—300 trillion 

times faster than the Univac-1 

(see Year 2017). 

Livermore’s petascale—and planned for 

exascale (1018)—computing capabilities 

keep the Laboratory at the forefront 

of scientific computing in the early 

21st century. They promise to help 

experts maintain the nation’s nuclear 

deterrent and open many new avenues 

of scientific discovery. 

Speed is the Game

1954 The IBM 701
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 10 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 11

In 1955, the Laboratory and Los Alamos 

began work on Rover, a project 

intended to supply nuclear propulsion 

for space travel. The nuclear rocket 

program continued for many years 

at Los Alamos with many technical 

successes, while Livermore’s 

attention shifted in 1957 to a new 

flying reactor effort, Project Pluto, 

for the Atomic Energy Commission 

and the U.S. Air Force. An awesome 

undertaking, Project Pluto entailed 

the design and testing of a nuclear 

ramjet engine for low-flying, supersonic 

cruise missiles that could stay aloft for 

many hours. 

For Project Pluto, Livermore designed 

and built two Tory II-A test reactors to 

demonstrate feasibility, and Tory II-C 

was designed as a flight-engine 

prototype. Laboratory experts in 

chemistry and materials science 

were challenged to devise ceramic 

fuel elements that had the required 

neutronics properties for the reactor yet 

were structurally strong and resistant 

to moisture and oxidation at high 

temperatures. The reactors needed 

hundreds of thousands of the elements, 

which had to be mass producible. 

Testing the reactors required novel 

remote-handling technologies, as well 

as systems capable of ramming about 

a ton of heated air through the reactor 

each second. 

For 45 seconds on May 14, 1961, 

Livermore tested the Tory II-A at the 

Nevada Test Site. After additional 

successful experiments in 1961, Tory II-C 

was designed and built. Generating 

500 megawatts of power (about half the 

power capacity of Hoover Dam), it was 

successfully tested in the spring of 1964. 

All six tests of the two Tory reactors were 

conducted without failure. However, that 

summer, the project was halted for lack 

of a firm military commitment. 

Laboratory expertise in reactors and 

the nuclear fuel cycle continued to 

find many applications. The year 

Project Pluto ended, Super Kukla 

began operation in a shielded bunker 

at the Nevada Test Site. Super Kukla 

was a prompt-burst neutron-pulse 

reactor designed to serve as a neutron 

source for irradiating a variety of test 

specimens, including fissile material 

used in weapon components. 

Experiments using the reactor 

helped to assure that U.S. nuclear 

warheads would function in wartime 

environments. In addition, from 1957 

to 1980, the Livermore Pool-Type 

Reactor (a megawatt-class reactor) 

was operated onsite for neutron 

radiography, fundamental research 

on radiation damage to materials, and 

the detection of trace quantities of 

materials through neutron activation. 

Later efforts applied Livermore’s 

fission-energy science and 

engineering capabilities to protect 

public health and safety and develop 

advanced technologies to close the 

nuclear fuel cycle. Examples include 

work on the Yucca Mountain Project 

(see Year 1980), safety studies in 

the 1990s for the Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission, development of 

methods to immobilize plutonium, 

and recovery of highly enriched 

uranium to enhance security. Today, 

Laboratory expertise in fission energy 

focuses on understanding, detecting 

and monitoring, and closing paths to 

nuclear proliferation.

Construction was required 

to expand the “tank farm” 

that supplied high-pressure 

air to the ramjet reactor, 

which was tested inside 

a special facility (in the 

lower left corner). In one 

experiment, Tory II-C (far 

right photo) required 

hundreds of tons of heated 

air to operate for nearly 

5 minutes. 

Flying and Terrestrial Nuclear Reactors

1955 Nuclear Propulsion
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 12 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 13

The Laboratory’s design for 

the W47 Polaris warhead made 

it practical for U.S. nuclear 

deterrent forces to be 

deployed in highly survivable 

submarines. 

The Polaris flag was presented by the Navy to Livermore scientists and engineers for the 

Laboratory’s outstanding work in the development of the Polaris warhead.

In the summer of 1956, a U.S. Navysponsored study on antisubmarine 

warfare was held at Nobska Point in 

Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Edward 

Teller attended the Project Nobska study. 

His bold input would profoundly affect 

the course of the Navy’s Fleet Ballistic 

Missile Program and the future of the 

Laboratory. At the time, the approved 

program plans called for the deployment 

in 1965 of submarines that would carry 

horizontally four 80-ton Jupiter S ballistic 

missiles, which were large enough to 

carry existing thermonuclear warheads. 

During Project Nobska, Frank E. Bothwell 

from the Naval Ordnance Test Station 

raised the possibility of designing 

ballistic missiles 5 to 10 times lighter 

than the Jupiter S missiles, with a 

range of 1,000 to 1,500 miles; however, 

they would be able to carry only a 

relatively low-yield nuclear weapon. 

Teller discussed the feasibility of a 

1-megaton warhead compact enough 

to fit onto a torpedo—a radical concept. 

When asked whether his ideas could 

be applied to the Navy’s ballistic 

missile program, Teller replied with a 

question, “Why use a 1958 warhead in 

a 1965 weapon system?” He opened 

the door to development of Polaris: a 

highly efficient deterrent system in which 

16 compact missiles would be placed 

vertically aboard a submarine for launch 

on demand. 

So began a crash, three-year effort. 

In early 1957, the Navy issued a 

requirement for an underwater-launched 

solid-fuel missile system by 1965. By 

the end of the year, following successful 

tests of Livermore’s warhead design 

at the Nevada Test Site, the Secretary 

of Defense authorized a step-up to 

deploy the system by 1960, which 

was accomplished. 

The summer of 1958 brought genuine 

breakthroughs based on ingenious 

proposals by Carl Haussmann, 

Kenneth Bandtel, Jack Rosengren, 

Peter Moulthrop, and David Hall in 

A Division and by B Division’s John 

Foster (Laboratory Director, 1961–1965), 

Chuck Godfrey, and Wally Birnbaum. 

The significance of the innovations was 

confirmed during tests in the Pacific 

only a few months before the 1958–1961 

nuclear testing moratorium began. Work 

continued at the Livermore and Sandia 

laboratories, and through the efforts 

of weapons designers and engineers, 

computer specialists, and other experts, 

the W47 Polaris warhead was created. 

The program’s remarkable 

achievements were demonstrated in 

spectacular fashion on May 6, 1962. 

The USS Ethan Allen, the sixth-launched 

Polaris submarine, conducted a 

complete operational test of the Polaris 

A-1 missile system, culminating with the 

successful detonation of the Livermoredesigned megaton-class warhead (see 

Year 1962). 

Conceived as a highly survivable 

system able to counterattack in the 

event of a Soviet first strike, Polaris 

has a unique place in American nuclear 

weapons history. 

The Laboratory’s innovative design 

and development of the W47 as part 

of a crash program established 

Livermore’s reputation as a major 

nuclear weapons design facility. The 

work spurred additional innovations and 

provided a model for future strategic 

weapon development. 

“The Navy asked if we could make a nuclear explosive of such and such 

dimensions and such and such a yield. What they wanted was a small, 

light, nuclear warhead in the 1-megaton range. Everyone at the meeting, 

including representatives from Los Alamos, said it could not 

be done—at least in the near future. But I stood up and 

said, ‘We at Livermore can deliver it in five years and it will 

yield 1 megaton.’ On the one hand, the Navy went away 

happy, and the program got approved. On the other 

hand, when I came back to Livermore and told them of 

the work that was in store for them, people’s hair stood 

on end. They said, ‘What have you done? We can’t get a 

megaton out of such a small device, not in five years!’”

Teller Recalling Project Nobska

A Strategic Breakthrough

1956 Polaris
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 14 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 15

On September 19, 1957, the Laboratory 

detonated the first contained underground 

nuclear explosion. Rainier was fired 

beneath a high mesa at the northwest 

corner of the Nevada Test Site, which later 

became known as Rainier Mesa. 

Carrying out such an explosion had 

been proposed early in 1956 by 

Edward Teller and Dave Griggs, a 

geophysicist who greatly contributed 

to Teller’s effort to establish a second 

nuclear laboratory while serving as 

Chief Scientist of the U.S. Air Force in 

the early 1950s. Their interest was in 

the coupling of the explosion energy 

to the surrounding geology and in the 

resulting seismic effects. They also 

noted the environmental advantages 

of such a test at a time when there was 

growing concern about atmospheric 

nuclear testing. Rainier would prove to 

be a pivotal event by giving a boost to 

the nascent Plowshare Program and 

affecting the future of nuclear arms 

control and the conduct of nuclear tests. 

The idea of using nuclear explosions for 

nonmilitary purposes—beating swords 

into plowshares—preceded the Rainier 

event. In the summer of 1956, Harold 

Brown (Laboratory Director 1960–1961) 

proposed a symposium on the subject 

to the Atomic Energy Commission 

(AEC), and it was eventually held at 

Livermore in February 1957. Some 

24 papers were presented covering 

a broad array of ideas. Although the 

discussions were hampered by the lack 

of data on the effects of underground 

explosions, interest was high. In June, 

the AEC established the Plowshare 

Program to explore peaceful nuclear 

uses, such as the building of canals and 

dams, and the stimulation of natural gas 

reservoirs. Subsequently, the Rainier 

test and its data gave a tremendous 

boost in confidence that a variety of 

applications were possible and could be 

implemented safely. 

The Rainier event was announced 

in advance so that seismic stations 

throughout the U.S. and Canada 

could attempt to record a signal. In 

addition, samples were collected for 

radiochemistry analysis by drilling a 

series of holes through the mesa above 

and in the original tunnel. More data 

were collected by mining a tunnel into 

the bottom of the explosion cavity about 

15 months later, when radioactivity had 

decayed to manageable levels. From 

these post-shot investigations, scientists 

developed the understanding of 

underground explosion phenomenology 

that persists essentially unaltered today. 

That information provided a basis 

for subsequent decisions in 1963 to 

agree to the Limited Test Ban Treaty, 

which banned atmospheric nuclear 

weapons tests and led to systems being 

established for monitoring nuclear 

test activities worldwide, including an 

international array of seismic detectors.

Radiation detection 

equipment in the 

foreground monitors the 

environment for a worker in 

a tunnel at the Nevada Test 

Site that was dug for the 

Rainier event in 1957. 

Radiochemical analysis of the isotopes 

created by a nuclear explosion was an 

important diagnostic tool for determining 

the yield and studying the performance 

of tested devices. Major advances in 

radiochemistry were made by Peter 

Stevenson (second from the right), who 

was killed in a plane crash returning from 

the Nevada Test Site in 1979. 

The First Underground Nuclear Test

Rainier

The first Plowshare test, Gnome, created a nearly 70-foot-high, 

165-foot-diameter underground cavity in a dry salt bed near 

Carlsbad, New Mexico. Many potential applications were explored 

until the program ended in 1977, and they drove nuclear design to 

the two extremes—minimum fission or minimum fusion depending 

on the application. The most dramatic relic of Plowshare is a 

350-foot-deep, 1,200-foot-diameter crater (left) at the Nevada Test 

Site created by the Sedan event in 1962. Important legacies of the 

effort include Livermore’s biomedical research program to study 

the effects of fallout and other radioactive hazards on biological 

systems (see Year 1963) and the Laboratory’s Atmospheric 

Release and Advisory Capability (ARAC) program, which grew out 

of the need to predict the potential for atmospheric release from 

cratering shots (see Year 1979). 

The Legacies of Plowshare

1957
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 16 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 17

Soviet Premier Nikita 

Khrushchev delivers 

a speech during the 

reception in the Kremlin’s 

Georgian Hall following 

the formal signing of 

the Limited Test Ban 

Treaty on August 5, 1963. 

Hoping he would not be 

caught taking this picture, 

University of California 

Professor Glenn T. 

Seaborg, who was then 

Chairman of the Atomic 

Energy Commission, 

captured the image. 

Michael May comments at one in a series of workshops held in 2001 on the future of 

deterrence. The meetings were sponsored by Livermore’s Center for Global Security 

Research, which focuses on the nexus between technology and national security policy.

In July and August 1958, Ernest 

O. Lawrence and Harold Brown 

(Laboratory Director, 1960–1961) 

attended the Conference of Experts 

held in Geneva, Switzerland, to 

examine how a comprehensive ban on 

nuclear testing could be verified. Their 

participation signaled the beginning 

of the Laboratory’s long history of 

providing technical support for arms 

control negotiations and implementation. 

Lawrence served as one of the three 

U.S. representatives at the conference, 

and Brown was a member of the 

delegation’s technical advisory group. At 

the conference, Lawrence performed his 

final service to the nation before suffering 

an acute attack of colitis that led to 

his death. Many Livermore scientists 

would follow in Lawrence’s and Brown’s 

footsteps by contributing their expertise 

to the negotiations of nuclear arms 

reduction and nuclear test ban treaties. 

At the conclusion of the Conference of 

Experts, President Dwight D. Eisenhower 

announced U.S. willingness to suspend 

nuclear weapons testing and begin 

negotiations on a comprehensive test 

ban. Concurrent with these negotiations, 

a feasible verification regime was to be 

developed. Research on monitoring 

nuclear explosions ensued at the 

Laboratory as part of the Vela program. 

The seismic detection of underground 

explosions (the Vela Uniform effort) 

proved to be more of a challenge than 

anticipated by the report of the experts. 

A worldwide network of seismic stations 

was built as a part of Vela Uniform, and 

for more than 50 years, this network 

has been the primary source of data 

for the seismic community. In 1961, the 

moratorium was broken when the Soviet 

Union resumed atmospheric testing. 

With the confidence gained through 

Vela in detecting and monitoring nuclear 

explosions, President John F. Kennedy 

signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 

August 1963, which banned nuclear 

weapons testing in the atmosphere, 

under water, and in space. 

Nuclear explosion monitoring remains 

an important research activity at the 

Laboratory. Current efforts focus on 

enhancing monitoring capabilities with 

particular emphasis on detection of 

low-yield nuclear explosions (see Year 

2008). More broadly, technical support 

of arms control negotiations continues 

to be an integral part of Livermore’s 

overall mission. For example, experts 

at the Laboratory provided technical 

assistance to the U.S. government in the 

negotiations of the Joint Comprehensive 

Plan of Actions with Iran. Livermore also 

provides technical input to decision 

makers supporting deliberations about 

the nation’s nuclear weapons posture 

and force structure.

Providing Technical Support 

for Arms Control Negotiations

Test Moratorium

Michael May’s distinguished career included many contributions to 

the evolution of U.S. strategic forces. May, Laboratory Director from 

1965 to 1971, served as Technical Adviser to the Threshold Test 

Ban Treaty negotiations (1974) and as U.S. Delegate to the Strategic 

Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) with the Soviet Union (1974–1976). 

Although never ratified, the SALT II Treaty effectively capped the 

growth of strategic nuclear arsenals during the Cold War. In 1981, 

May participated in a panel chaired by University of California 

at Berkeley Professor Charles Townes that recommended to 

President Ronald Reagan how to base MX (Peacekeeper) missiles, 

and in 1988, he was lead author of “Strategic Arms Reductions” in 

International Security, a seminal paper that provided an intellectual 

basis for the subsequent Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Serving 

as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on 

International Security and Arms Control, May also directed a study 

that resulted in the 1991 report The Future of the U.S.–Soviet Nuclear 

Relationship, which paved the way for later decisions about post-Cold 

War nuclear policy and strategic force reductions. 

The Evolution of Nuclear Force Postures

1958
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 18 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 19

John S. Foster, Jr.

1960

Charles A. McDonald

1974

Richard Fortner

1991

Clair E. Max

2004

George B. Zimmerman

1983

Herbert F. York

1962

William Lokke

1975

John D. Lindl

1994

Omar Hurricane

2009

Robert B. Laughlin

1984

John H. Nuckolls

1969

John L. Emmett

1977

E. Michael Campbell

1994

Thomas P. Guilderson

2011

Peter L. Hagelstein

1984

Michael M. May

1970

B. Grant Logan

1980

Charles R. Alcock

1996

Siegfried H. Glenzer

2013

Thomas A. Weaver

1985

Thomas E. Wainwright

1973

Lowell L. Wood

1981

Benjamin D. Santer

2002

Stephen C. Myers

2013

Joe W. Gray

1986

Seymour Sack

1973

George F. Chapline

1982

Bruce T. Goodwin

2002

Wayne J. Shotts

1990

Established in November 1959, the 

Ernest Orlando Lawrence Memorial 

Award was at first presented to scientists 

and engineers for their exceptional 

contributions to the development, use, 

or control of nuclear energy. The criteria 

have since been expanded to include 

exceptional scientific, technical, and/

or engineering achievements related to 

the broad missions of the 

U.S. Department 

of Energy 

and its programs. Researchers at 

Livermore have won 29 of the more than 

200 awards presented to date. Today, 

the award consists of a medal and a 

$25,000 prize. 

Lawrence was the father of “big science” 

and founder of the nuclear science 

laboratories (or “Rad Labs”) at Berkeley 

and Livermore that were named for 

him. His invention of the cyclotron in the 

1930s started nuclear science on a path 

that has led to inventions ranging from 

advanced accelerators for elementary 

particle physics and the atom bomb to 

cancer therapies. 

After Lawrence’s death in August 1958, 

John A. McCone, Chairman of the 

Atomic Energy Commission, wrote 

to President Dwight D. Eisenhower 

suggesting the establishment of 

a Memorial Award in Lawrence’s 

name. President Eisenhower agreed, 

saying, “Such an award would seem 

to me to be most fitting, both as a 

recognition of what he has given to 

our country and to mankind and as 

a means of helping to carry forward 

his work through inspiring others 

to dedicate their lives and talents to 

scientific effort.” 

Exceptional Contributions to 

U.S. Department of Energy Missions

1959 E. O. Lawrence Awards Created
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 20

Since its establishment, the Laboratory has followed 

Ernest O. Lawrence’s approach of how large-scale 

science should be pursued: through multidisciplinary 

teams dedicated to solving challenging problems and 

responding to national needs. A rapid response was 

called for when the Soviet Union broke the international 

nuclear testing moratorium in August 1961. The following 

year, the United States mounted its most ambitious—

and last—series of nuclear tests in the Central Pacific, 

Operation Dominic. The Laboratory proof-tested nuclear 

designs fielded during the moratorium and laid the 

groundwork for future Livermore designs of compact, 

high-yield ballistic missile warheads. 

Multidisciplinary expertise gained by the Laboratory, 

along with the need to understand the consequences 

of atmospheric nuclear testing, spawned bioscience 

and environmental programs at Livermore. Subsequent 

biotechnology developments contributed to the 

Department of Energy’s bold decision to launch its 

Human Genome Initiative. Environmental programs have 

led to novel groundwater remediation technologies and 

atmospheric modeling capabilities that range from local 

to global scales. A multidisciplinary approach is also 

the hallmark of Livermore’s international assessments 

program, which has supported the U.S. Intelligence 

Community since 1965. 

Multidisciplinary team science

Leadership

Harold Brown

(1960 • 1961)

John S. Foster, Jr.

(1961 • 1965)

Michael M. May

(1965 • 1971)

New

The Sixties

LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 21
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 22

The Laboratory has a long history of 

advancing the technology of electron linear 

accelerators for scientific and national 

security applications. After ASTRON, the 

Electron Test Accelerator (ETA) was built to 

study electron beam propagation in air as a 

possible directed-energy weapon. Completed 

in 1983, the 10-times more energetic 

Advanced Test Accelerator at Site 300 (right) 

furthered the study of beam propagation, 

and the beam was used as a pump for a free 

electron laser (FEL). In the 1990s, Livermore 

collaborated with the Stanford Linear 

Accelerator Center (now SLAC National 

Accelerator Laboratory) and Lawrence 

Berkeley National Laboratory to design and 

build the B-Factory at SLAC. More recently, 

Livermore scientists and collaborators have 

demonstrated capabilities to accelerate 

electrons to extremely high energies over 

very short distances using a tabletop-sized 

ultrashort-pulse laser. 

Accelerator Technology Development

Site 300, the Laboratory’s remote 

experimental test site, was a busy place 

in 1960. In the midst of a nuclear testing 

moratorium, Livermore was enhancing 

its nonnuclear testing capabilities. Two 

test complexes, a chemistry facility, 

a high-explosives preparation facility, 

a remote disassembly complex, and 

three other buildings were completed 

that year. In addition, a new linear 

accelerator (linac) was delivered to 

Site 300. That machine, which was 

installed in Bunker 351 (now 851), 

has undergone numerous upgrades 

and is still used for hydrodynamics 

experiments. The accelerator generates 

the powerful x-ray flashes needed for 

taking images of mock nuclear-weapon 

primaries as they implode. 

The linac for Bunker 351 superseded 

the capabilities of Bunker 312’s XR2 

machine, which had been moved from 

Sugar Bunker at the Nevada Test Site 

to Site 300 in the late 1950s. Charles 

McDonald, who later rose to senior 

management positions at the Laboratory, 

was one of the graduate students 

who helped build the XR2 in 1951 at 

the Radiation Laboratory in Berkeley. 

Starting at the Laboratory in fusion 

science research, McDonald became a 

weapon primary designer and then used 

the machine at Sugar Bunker. 

Meanwhile, in another part of the 

Laboratory, Nicholas Christofilos, one of 

his generation’s most original thinkers in 

physics, was pursuing a magnetic fusion 

concept, ASTRON. Born in Boston, 

Massachusetts, Christofilos grew up in 

Greece, where he received a degree in 

engineering, privately studied physics, 

and first invented and patented the 

concept of alternate gradient (strong) 

focusing for particle accelerators. 

ASTRON required the invention of a new 

kind of electron accelerator, the induction 

linear accelerator (or induction linac), to 

produce an intense circulating electron 

beam to magnetically confine and heat a 

plasma to, it was hoped, thermonuclear 

ignition temperatures. The world’s first 

induction linac was built for the ASTRON 

project in 1963. 

Induction linacs are now the heart 

of the nation’s two most modern 

hydrodynamic testing facilities—the 

Contained Firing Facility at Site 300 

(with the Flash X-Ray (FXR) machine) 

and the Dual Axis Radiographic 

Hydrodynamic Test Facility (DARHT) 

at Los Alamos. Built in 1982 and 

subsequently upgraded, FXR was 

used in the 1990s to perform the 

first experiments in which scientists 

recorded a detailed digital image 

of a highly compressed gas cavity 

inside a weapon (see Year 1985). 

Other successor induction linacs 

include three accelerators built (and 

since retired) at Livermore for beam 

research: the Electron Test Accelerator 

(ETA), ETA-II, and the Advanced Test 

Accelerator at Site 300.

The XR2 machine 

(above and left) was 

located in Sugar 

Bunker (far left) at the 

Nevada Test Site (NTS) 

until it was moved to 

Site 300 near Livermore. 

There, it provided 

the Laboratory’s first 

primitive radiographic 

capability. A new 

linear accelerator was 

delivered to NTS in 1960. 

Improved Nonnuclear Testing 

Capabilities

1960 Linacs for Hydrotesting

LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 23
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 24 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 25

The December 1952 Laboratory phone book listed 

250 employees, including a newly transferred physicist 

named Richard (Dick) Post, who still came to work four 

days each week 63 years later. During his remarkable 

career, which earned him a host of awards and honors, 

Post was a leader in magnetic fusion research and an 

innovator of solutions to energy-related needs, such 

as better flywheels for energy storage and fail-safe 

magnetic levitation for transportation. He received 

34 patents—with 9 issued after he turned 90—and 

some 85 records of invention.

Richard Post—A Lifetime of Service

The Table Top machine 

was used by researchers 

to confine a hot electron 

plasma between magnetic 

mirrors for about a 

millisecond. 

Physicist Fred Coensgen (shown) led 

the development of the Toy Top fusion 

research devices, which created a hot, 

mirror-confined plasma by plasma 

injection and magnetic compression. 

Toy Top experiments produced fusion 

neutrons, a significant early achievement 

in the controlled fusion program. 

In 1961, the International Atomic Energy 

Agency held its first conference on 

controlled nuclear fusion in Salzburg, 

Austria. It was the second international 

gathering of fusion researchers, following 

the 1958 Atoms for Peace Conference 

in Geneva, Switzerland. The Geneva 

conference had attracted 5,000 

scientists, government officials, and 

observers, who witnessed the unveiling 

of fusion research by American, British, 

and Russian scientists. The weekend 

before the conference, the United 

States and Great Britain announced 

the end of secrecy in their controlled 

fusion research efforts. The Russians 

then announced that they had built the 

world’s largest fusion research device, 

a doughnut-shaped machine called a 

tokamak, and declassified their research 

as well. 

Livermore’s Controlled Thermonuclear 

Reactions (CTR) Program, which was 

part of the Atomic Energy Commission’s 

Project Sherwood, began when the 

Laboratory opened in 1952. Herbert 

York’s original written prospectus 

for the Livermore site included the 

establishment of a small CTR group of 

about seven physicists and engineers. 

Richard Post, who wrote many of the 

CTR group’s first monthly reports, was 

recruited by York to help launch the 

program. Early exploration of various 

concepts led the team to focus its 

efforts on the magnetic mirror concept, 

in which a hot fusion plasma (charged 

particles) would be confined in a 

cylindrical region by a uniform magnetic 

field with intensified fields at the ends. 

Researchers explored two experimental 

lines using two series of machines: one 

led by Post (Table Top, Felix, ALICE, and 

Baseball I and II) and the other led by 

Fred Coensgen (Toy Top, Toy Top II, 2X, 

2XII, and 2XIIB). 

At the 1958 Geneva conference, the 

Laboratory’s significant achievements 

in magnetic fusion were reported: the 

creation of a hot, mirror-confined 

plasma in Toy Top; the confinement of 

a hot-electron plasma between mirrors 

for a millisecond using Table Top; 

successful measurement of plasma 

density; and the development of 

ultrahigh vacuum techniques for use 

in Felix. Laboratory researchers also 

formulated the idea of hydromagnetic 

instability of plasma confined in a simple 

mirror machine, developed the theory 

of adiabatic (i.e., slow) confinement of 

charged particles in mirror systems, 

and recognized the need to overcome 

impurity radiation losses from plasmas 

to achieve fusion temperatures. 

After Geneva, fusion energy research 

hit roadblocks—plasma instabilities in 

Livermore’s mirror machines allowed 

the hot plasma to escape. At the 

1961 Salzburg conference, the Soviet 

Union’s chief fusion experimentalist, 

L. A. Artsimovich, was sternly critical of 

Livermore’s fusion research; however, 

the meeting did pave the way for future 

cooperation with Russian scientists 

while the Cold War raged. Artsimovich’s 

colleagues shared how they suppressed 

plasma instabilities by reshaping the 

mirror field. Within months, Livermore 

researchers duplicated this result and 

went on to pioneer new and improved 

mirror field configurations (see Year 

1977). However, overcoming other highfrequency plasma instabilities would 

prove to be a major obstacle. 

Magnetic Fusion and International 

Cooperation

1961 Project Sherwood
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 26 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 27

The mushroom 

cloud from the 

Frigate Bird 

operational test 

of the Polaris 

missile and 

warhead was 

observed through 

the periscope 

of the USS 

Carbonero, which 

was stationed 

some 30 miles 

from ground zero. 

For Livermore’s 

Muskegon test in 

Operation Dominic, 

the nuclear device 

was air-dropped 

from a B-52 bomber 

near Christmas 

Island. The yield 

of the weaponsrelated experiment 

was in the range of 

50 kilotons. 

During Operation 

Dominic, diagnostic 

measurements were 

gathered aboard 

ships, and aircraft 

were used to collect 

debris samples. 

On August 30, 1961, Premier Nikita 

Khrushchev announced that the Soviet 

Union would break the three-year 

moratorium and resume nuclear testing. 

Two days later, the Soviets started an 

unprecedented series of atmospheric 

tests, including the detonation of a 

50-megaton device. Subsequently, 

President John F. Kennedy decided that 

the nation must resume atmospheric 

nuclear testing, and he approved 

Operation Dominic—the largest 

U.S. nuclear testing operation 

ever conducted. 

Thirty-six atmospheric tests were 

conducted at the Pacific Proving 

Grounds under Operation Dominic 

between April and November 1962. 

Approximately 28,000 military and 

civilian personnel participated in the 

test series, and more than 200,000 tons 

of supplies, construction materials, and 

diagnostics equipment were shipped 

or airlifted to the test areas. About 500 

of the Laboratory’s 4,700 employees 

participated in Operation Dominic. The 

Laboratory’s Task Unit 8.1.2 was directed 

by Robert Goeckermann of Chemistry 

and Chuck Gilbert of Test Division. 

Operation Dominic experiments 

proof-tested weapons introduced into 

the stockpile during the moratorium. 

The most dramatic experiment was 

Frigate Bird, in which the USS Ethan 

Allen launched a Polaris missile, and 

the Livermore-designed warhead 

successfully detonated over the open 

ocean. Most of the other tests were 

airbursts with the devices dropped by 

B-52 bombers. The data collected from 

these tests laid the groundwork for future 

Livermore designs of the Minuteman 

and Poseidon warheads, which were 

compact enough that numerous 

warheads could be carried by a single 

missile (see Year 1970). 

Experiments were also carried out in 

1962 to gather weapons effects data for 

the Department of Defense (DOD). For 

Operation Fishbowl (part of Operation 

Dominic), five Los Alamos–designed 

devices were lofted by Sandia-designed 

rockets and detonated at high altitude. 

Starfish Prime, for example, was a 

1.4-megaton explosion at 400-kilometers 

altitude. Information was collected about 

the electromagnetic pulse phenomenon 

as well as other data related to ballistic 

missile defense systems (see Year 

1966). Later in the year, additional tests 

for DOD were performed at the Nevada 

Test Site. In Johnnie Boy and Danny Boy, 

Livermore-designed devices were used 

to study cratering effects. The collected 

data also helped to validate later fallout 

models developed at the Laboratory. 

Operation Dominic was the last series 

of atmospheric nuclear weapons tests 

conducted by the United States. Signed 

in Moscow on August 5, 1963, the 

Limited Test Ban Treaty banned weapons 

tests in the atmosphere, under water, 

and in outer space (see Year 1958).

The Largest U.S. Nuclear Testing 

Operation

1962 Operation Dominic
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 28 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 29

Livermore’s high-performance computing will play a major role in the 

National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Moonshot, launched in 2017 as a 

$1.8-billion, seven-year undertaking to accelerate cancer research. LLNL 

is strongly contributing to the DOE’s three pilot projects. Much of this 

effort builds on partnerships that the Laboratory leads. The research 

draws on Livermore’s exceptional capabilities in large-scale simulation 

of biological systems and deep analysis of complex and diverse data. 

Contributing to the Cancer Moonshot

Dr. John Gofman (second 

from left) discusses with 

colleagues an abnormal 

chromosome pattern 

in malignant cells. 

Gofman came to the 

Laboratory in 1963 to set 

up a new biomedical and 

environmental research 

program. 

Early groundbreaking work in flow cytometry, a technique for separating specific cells 

from other cells, led to numerous medical research applications in genomics research 

and national security applications, such as biosensors that detect specific agents used 

in biological weapons. 

The first biomedical and environmental 

research program began at Livermore in 

1963. The Atomic Energy Commission 

recognized a growing need for a 

bioenvironmental presence at the 

Nevada and Pacific test sites, and the 

decision was made for this work to take 

place at Livermore. John Gofman, a 

distinguished professor at the University 

of California at Berkeley, was recruited to 

set up the program, which would study 

the effects of radiation on humans. 

In the early 1970s, the biomedical 

focus of the program shifted toward 

biological measurements that indicated 

the dose to subjects who had been 

exposed to radiation. That work led 

to an examination of the effects of 

radiation and other toxins on the 

building blocks of the human genetic 

apparatus. Increasingly, the focus was 

on DNA—how it is damaged, what 

damages it, how it repairs itself, and 

how these processes may vary with 

the genetic makeup of the individual. 

Technology development at Livermore 

and Los Alamos provided the basis for 

DOE’s decision to launch its Human 

Genome Initiative in 1987 (see Year 

1987). That initiative evolved into the 

international Human Genome Project, 

which took on the task of sequencing 

all 3 billion base pairs of human 

DNA. Livermore was a major player 

among the dozen or so laboratories 

in the world participating in the 

largest biological research project 

ever undertaken. 

Biomedical scientists worked with 

engineers, physicists, laser experts, 

chemists, and materials scientists to 

develop Livermore’s preeminence 

in flow cytometry, a technique for 

measuring and separating cells. 

Other Livermore innovations included 

analyzing and purifying biological 

samples, imaging chromosomes 

and DNA, early sequencing 

procedures, and associated database 

processes. The Laboratory’s strength 

in computation also led to unique 

capabilities in computer simulation 

of biological processes, such as 

predicting the three-dimensional 

structure of proteins directly from DNA 

sequence data. 

This same cooperative approach 

led Livermore’s Center for 

Accelerator Mass Spectrometry 

(CAMS) to concentrate on biological 

measurements (see Year 1990). 

The extraordinary sensitivity of 

AMS means that it can detect the 

interaction of mutagens with DNA in 

the first step in carcinogenesis. Now, 

LLNL is a major participant in DOE’s 

support for the National Cancer 

Institute’s Cancer Moonshot. 

In the 1990s, research efforts began 

to focus on emerging concerns about 

bioterrorism as a threat to international 

security. Laboratory scientists took 

the initiative to develop advanced 

microtechnologies needed to improve 

detection systems for biological and 

chemical agents (see Year 2001). 

The Winter Olympics of 2002 was the 

staging ground for Livermore methods to 

continuously monitor crowd venues for 

the presence of such agents. Given the 

growing concerns about bioterrorism, 

the Olympics were the first of many 

applications of our bioscience research 

to homeland and international security. 

To Understand the Effects of Radiation

1963 Biomedical Research
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 30 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 31

Former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller 

(shown between Edward Teller and a 

student) visited the Laboratory in 1977 

to dedicate the new building (right) for 

the University of California at Davis 

Department of Applied Science. Plans 

are being developed for the facility’s 

use for academic outreach as part of the 

Livermore Valley Open Campus.

In June 2017, the tenth 

annual Institutional 

Postdoctoral Poster 

Symposium showcased 

a total of 183 posters 

presented by Laboratory 

postdoctoral researchers 

and Livermore graduate 

scholars. 

In the early 1960s, Edward Teller 

championed the need for a graduate 

program in applied science. He wanted 

to see a university-level educational 

facility established at Livermore. Teller 

held numerous meetings with University 

of California (UC) administrators at 

Berkeley and Davis before finally 

negotiating an agreement to create 

the UC Davis Department of Applied 

Science. That department, which 

was part of UC Davis’s newly formed 

College of Engineering, has often been 

referred to as “Teller Tech.” 

With a trailer for administrative offices 

and two rooms in an old barracks 

building for classrooms, the UC Davis 

Department of Applied Science was 

officially dedicated on January 16, 

1964. In 1977, a permanent building 

for the department was dedicated just 

outside the Laboratory’s gates, with no 

less than former Vice President Nelson 

Rockefeller on hand for the ceremonies. 

Teller served as the department’s 

first administrator, and his staff 

included one full-time employee as 

well as a half-time vice chairman. 

The Department of Applied Science 

opened with 81 students—12 full-time 

students and 69 Laboratory employees 

working to finish their advanced 

degrees. Altogether, the department 

awarded more than 400 Ph.D.s with 

about 50 percent of its graduates 

taking their first job at the Laboratory. 

In 2011, facing a $100 million budget 

shortfall, UC Davis closed the 

Department of Applied Science. Yet, 

over the same span of years, many 

ties with UC campuses grew stronger 

and outreach extended to more 

university partners.

For example, in 1982, a branch of the 

UC multicampus Institute of Geophysics 

and Planetary Physics (IGPP) opened. 

Other academic outreach centers and 

institutes followed, such as the Center 

for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (see 

Year 1990), the Institute for Scientific 

Computing Research, the Center for 

Bioengineering, the Glenn T. Seaborg 

Institute, the Jupiter Laser Facility, 

and the Center for High Energy 

Density Science. 

Currently, LLNL researchers are 

engaged in more than 500 collaborations 

with faculty world-wide. More than 

250 postdoctoral fellows work at the 

Laboratory—many of whom stay on to 

become full-time employees. More than 

1,000 graduate and undergraduate 

students per year participate in LLNL’s 

Visiting Scholar and Summer Employment 

programs. In addition, Laboratory 

employees engage in a wide range of 

science, technology, engineering, and 

mathematics (STEM) outreach activities 

directed at K–12 students. 

Ties remain very strong with UC. 

In addition to the many LLNL 

researcher–UC professor relationships, 

UC administers a collaborative 

research projects program funded by 

contract management fees received 

as a Lawrence Livermore National 

Security, LLC, partner. Other strategic 

partnerships include those with Texas 

A&M University, Georgetown University, 

the Historically Black Colleges and 

Universities/Minority Serving Institutions, 

the California State University system, 

and local community colleges. 

Bringing Academia to the Laboratory

1964 Department of Applied Science
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 32 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 33

To help develop an 

understanding of the Soviet 

nuclear weapons program 

and nuclear forces, analysts 

studied photographs 

taken by satellites, such 

as this 1966 image of a 

Soviet military airfield with 

bombers visible.

Since the early days of Livermore, 

intelligence agencies have sought 

Laboratory expertise in nuclear weapons 

design to analyze atmospheric nuclear 

tests conducted by the Soviets and to 

develop an understanding of the Soviet 

nuclear program and weapon designs. 

The Soviet Union’s first test of an atomic 

weapon in the late 1940s took the 

West by surprise, and monitoring the 

Soviet effort to rapidly develop nuclear 

weapons became a paramount concern 

of U.S. intelligence agencies. 

In 1965, Laboratory scientists and 

engineers helping intelligence 

agencies understand the significance 

of Soviet nuclear weapons tests were 

consolidated into Z Division, today 

known as the Intelligence Program or 

Z Program. Under Laboratory Director 

John Foster, a formal relationship with 

the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) 

was established in a memorandum 

of understanding signed between 

the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 

and the Atomic Energy Commission, 

a predecessor to the Department 

of Energy. LLNL celebrated the 

50th anniversary of this successful 

relationship in 2015.

Scientists and engineers in Z Division 

analyzed radiological samples from 

Soviet, and later Chinese, nuclear tests. 

They also developed new technologies 

for monitoring tests and collecting data 

that allowed analysts to determine what 

type of weapon was being tested—

atomic or thermonuclear. Anticipating 

that nuclear proliferation could become 

a major problem, Z Division started a 

proliferation monitoring program in the 

mid-1970s. That effort has continued 

to grow together with the IC’s need 

for all-source analyses of the nuclear 

programs in an expanding list of 

countries of concern. Involving both 

regional specialists and technical 

experts, these multidisciplinary 

analyses draw on general technical 

knowledge about nuclear testing, 

specifics about each country’s 

nuclear capabilities, and evaluations 

of nontechnical issues that motivate 

nuclear programs. 

Z Division was a primary building 

block of Livermore’s Nonproliferation, 

Arms Control, and International 

Security Directorate (NAI), established 

by Director John Nuckolls to respond to 

an emerging threat—weapons-of-massdestruction (WMD) proliferation and 

terrorism. NAI has since transformed 

into the Global Security Principal 

Directorate, with Z-Division activities 

relocated after 9/11 into a new facility to 

accommodate growth (see Year 2002). 

The Laboratory’s Intelligence Program 

applies the complete set of LLNL’s 

science and technology capabilities to 

support the IC in overcoming its most 

difficult challenges. Z Program’s strategic 

intelligence mission involves developing 

deep contextual understanding to 

support national decision making 

with a particular focus on analyzing 

foreign nuclear weapons programs, 

identifying and evaluating WMD 

proliferation, and identifying foreign 

threats to U.S. national security posed 

by new technologies. Its anticipatory 

intelligence mission involves working to 

understand and identify emerging threats 

and delivering solutions in time to counter 

those threats. LLNL’s top anticipatory 

initiatives focus on data analytics, 

additive manufacturing, biosecurity, 

and data collection systems. Z Program 

also supports current operations by 

providing timely, actionable solutions to 

achieve national security goals. Three 

primary topical missions include cyber 

intelligence, counterterrorism, and 

counterproliferation.

Assessing the Weapons Capabilities 

of Others

1965 Z Division

Developing Cyber Security Tools

Cyber security specialists at the Laboratory are developing tools 

to enhance the security of complex networks. Network Mapping 

Systems (NeMS) is a computer network mapping tool that is fast and 

unobtrusive to the network being mapped. It can routinely identify 

network connections that were unexpected by the network operator. 

NeMS scans and probes a computer network to characterize its 

operating environment in detail, building a visual representation of 

its current structure and activity profile. The nation depends on many 

critical complex networks. Operators need to understand an entire 

network as it evolves to prevent intrusions and accomplish critical 

tasks when system failures do occur.
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 34 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 35

A transient electromagnetic pulse is only one of a variety of nuclear 

effects that a U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile or submarinelaunched ballistic missile warhead might encounter—and have to 

survive—on the way to its target. Hardening warheads to nuclear 

effects has been an important issue since the Soviets began deploying 

antiballistic missile (ABM) defenses in the 1960s. Missile warheads have 

been designed with special hardening features to improve survivability 

when penetrating an ABM system (see Year 1970). These features were 

developed with the aid of experimental facilities, such as the Super 

Kukla burst reactor, and an extensive series of “exposure” nuclear tests 

conducted in conjunction with the Defense Nuclear Agency. 

Hardening U.S. Nuclear Warheads

A scale model of a 

Grumman A-6 aircraft is 

tested in the EMPEROR 

facility, an anechoic 

chamber still in use at 

the Laboratory. The 

cone-shaped copper 

structure in the chamber 

produced extremely highbandwidth electromagnetic 

fields for EMP and 

high-power microwave 

vulnerability studies. 

The LLNL-developed EMSolve code finds wide-ranging applications: to study 

electromagnetic noise in integrated circuits (left) and to ensure that electromagnetic pulses 

resulting from extremely short but high-energy laser bursts in the National Ignition Facility’s 

target chamber (right) do not lead to data loss or damage to diagnostic equipment.

A consequence of the Starfish Prime 

high-altitude nuclear test in 1962 was 

the failure of 30 strings of streetlights in 

Oahu, Hawaii, 1,300 kilometers away. 

Although only about 1 percent of Oahu’s 

streetlights were affected, their failure 

raised concerns that the electromagnetic 

pulse (EMP) generated by a nuclear 

weapon burst could cause widespread 

damage to the nation’s civilian and 

military infrastructures. The phenomenon 

needed to be understood. 

Modeling and experimentation to study 

transient electromagnetic pulses has 

been a research topic at the Laboratory 

ever since the Starfish Prime test 

(see Year 1962). Researchers have 

provided support to the Defense 

Nuclear Agency—now the Defense 

Threat Reduction Agency—which is 

the Department of Defense agency 

responsible for assessing the hardness 

of military equipment to EMP. In addition, 

for the weapons program, the effects 

of fast electromagnetic pulses had 

to be understood to develop nuclear 

test diagnostics and to ensure the 

hardness of U.S. nuclear warheads to 

electromagnetic effects. 

In 1966, the Institute of Electrical and 

Electronic Engineers published a paper 

by a Livermore researcher, K. S. Yee, that 

greatly advanced the art of modeling 

electromagnetic phenomena. “Numerical 

Solution of Initial Boundary Value 

Problems Involving Maxwell’s Equations 

in Isotropic Media” introduced the Finite 

Difference Time Domain algorithm—a 

stable, efficient computational means 

for solving Maxwell’s equations that has 

been widely used ever since. 

Follow-on leading-edge electromagnetic 

simulation models were developed at the 

Laboratory. An example is Livermore’s 

Numerical Electromagnetic Code (NEC), 

an imported model that was greatly 

improved by Laboratory researchers in 

the 1970s. NEC is still the world’s most 

widely used code for analyzing the 

performance of wire-frame antennas; 

over 3,000 copies have been distributed. 

Expertise in applied electromagnetics 

continues to be critical to the 

Laboratory’s national security missions. 

Today’s premier simulation capability, 

EMSolve, models in detail the electric 

and magnetic fields of complex systems 

ranging in size from integrated circuits to 

entire buildings and over timescales from 

billionths to tens of seconds. 

LLNL computer scientists and 

engineers developed EMSolve to run 

on parallel computer architectures. 

With advances in supercomputing, they 

have increased simulation accuracy 

and speed, added capabilities, and 

coupled EMSolve for use with thermal, 

structural, and hydrodynamic codes. 

The code has been used to address 

pulsed-power issues that arise related 

to nuclear weapons, design and test 

wall-penetrating and ground-penetrating 

radars, analyze the effectiveness of 

radar systems to detect space debris, 

and characterize the electromagnetic 

signatures from conventional explosions. 

Expertise in applied electromagnetics 

includes experimentation. LLNL 

operates facilities for development of 

pulsed-power systems and components 

(including explosive systems), an 

anechoic chamber and laboratory 

space for high-power radio-frequency 

experiments, and particle accelerators 

for radiography and accelerator 

component development. 

Dealing with Transient 

Electromagnetic Pulses

1966 Nuclear Effects
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 36 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 37

In the Gasbuggy experiment, a part of 

Project Plowshare, a nuclear explosive 

was lowered down a 4,000-foot hole 

and detonated in a sandstone formation 

in New Mexico to increase natural 

gas production. 

GEOS, a high-performance computing 

model of detailed geomechanics, is used 

to explore fracture patterns in a 300-meterlong section of a production field. The goal 

is to enhance resource recovery while 

reducing environmental impacts. 

On December 10, 1967, under the 

technical direction of Livermore 

scientists, a 29-kiloton nuclear device 

exploded in a sandstone formation 

at a 4,000-foot depth in the San Juan 

basin of New Mexico. The experiment, 

Gasbuggy, was a joint venture of the 

Atomic Energy Commission, El Paso 

Natural Gas Company, and the Bureau 

of Mines of the U.S. Department of the 

Interior. It was the first of three Project 

Plowshare experiments, each partially 

funded by U.S. industry, to test the 

feasibility of using nuclear explosives 

to stimulate natural gas production in 

rock too impermeable for economical 

production by conventional means. Tight 

sandstone formations, like those in the 

San Juan basin, were projected to hold 

at least 300 trillion cubic feet of natural 

gas in the western United States. 

The detonation produced an 

underground chimney 335 feet high 

with a diameter of almost 165 feet. 

Gas was extracted from the chimney 

in six subsequent major production 

tests (the last in 1973). Results were 

encouraging in that gas production 

was increased six to eight times 

over previous rates. However, the 

“clean” Plowshare device used in 

Gasbuggy, which was designed to 

minimize the post-detonation residual 

radiation, still resulted in undesirably 

high concentrations of tritium in the 

gas. Livermore’s device design was 

acceptably clean for the subsequent 

Rio Blanco experiment; however, it was 

not economically viable to use nuclear 

explosives to stimulate gas production. 

Gasbuggy and two subsequent gasstimulation nuclear tests brought Project 

Plowshare field experiments to a close, 

but they marked the beginning of 

Livermore’s work with U.S. industry to 

enhance subsurface energy production. 

After the 1973 energy crisis, Laboratory 

researchers engaged in a variety of 

energy projects that culminated in 

large-scale demonstrations of technical 

feasibility and commercial viability. 

For example, processes for in situ 

coal gasification—converting coal 

beds to gas without mining—were 

developed. Activities ran from 1974 

through 1988, with the first large-scale 

tests conducted at the Hoe Creek 

Site in Wyoming in 1977. In addition, 

researchers pursued activities that led 

to a technical demonstration of retorting 

oil shale to recover oil from large U.S. 

reserves. A 6-ton-capacity pilot oil-shale 

retort facility operated at the Laboratory 

in the early 1980s. 

Currently, the Laboratory is partnered 

with the oil and gas industry, including 

both large and small companies, in 

efforts to optimize the production of 

unconventional oil and gas. Livermore 

researchers combined expertise in 

subsurface fracture mechanics and 

high-performance computing to 

develop GEOS, a 3D multiphysics 

supercomputer simulation code for 

predicting subsurface behavior when 

shale formations are subjected to 

hydraulic fracturing. Horizontal drilling 

strategies are being designed to 

maximize oil and gas production with 

the least environmental impact, and 

field experiments are being conducted 

at multiple sites, including the Permian 

Basin in Texas.

The Quest for Energy Resources

1967 Gasbuggy
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 38 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 39

In 45 years of service at the Laboratory, Carl Haussmann made major 

contributions in many technical areas, including weapons, high-end 

computing, and lasers. He also had a visionary interest in the strategic 

development of the site and was the driving force behind commissioning 

and implementing the Royston Plan. Known as the “Father of the Trees” 

because of his passion for landscaping, Haussmann arranged for the 

California Conservation Corps to plant some 300 trees throughout 

the site. 

A plaque affixed near the entrance to Building 111 reads: “In gratitude for 

the beauty and function of the Livermore site, landscape, architecture, 

and trees, which Carl planned and patronized over 30 years.” 

The Royston Plan Carl Haussmann

guided the Laboratory’s 

transformation from a 

former military facility to 

a campuslike setting that 

is an attractive place to 

work and a vital part of 

the community. 

Carl Haussmann 

with a disk 

laser, one of the 

technologies for 

the Cyclops laser. 

In 1968, the Laboratory went for a new 

look, away from the military aspect it 

inherited and toward more of a campus 

environment. At the initiative of Carl 

Haussmann, then Associate Director 

for Plans and in charge of Livermore’s 

nascent Laser Program, the Laboratory 

hired landscape architectural firm 

Royston, Hanamoto, Beck & Abey to 

prepare a long-range development 

master plan for the site. The Royston 

Plan sought to bring order out of the 

chaos created by the haphazard, 

random construction of buildings and 

roadways that characterized the first 

18 years of the Laboratory’s existence. 

At the time, employees worked in 

barracks and facilities crowded into a 

grid pattern in the southwest corner of 

the site. New facilities were built adjacent 

to existing buildings in what seemed the 

most expedient way to grow, but which, 

in fact, led to congestion and loss of 

the flexibility conducive for research. 

By contrast, the northeastern half of the 

Laboratory was underused. 

Royston proposed a flexible 

development plan based on a 

curvilinear pattern of loop roads and 

utilities that would create a wider 

variety of land parcel shapes and large 

developable areas. The Laboratory 

adopted it as the framework for its 

first master development plan, which 

established basic planning principles 

to guide future growth. The Plan, as 

it has come to be called, was termed 

exemplary by the Atomic Energy 

Commission (the Department of Energy’s 

predecessor) and sparked the initiation 

of comprehensive site plans at other 

facilities in the complex. 

The Royston Plan introduced two 

loop-road systems—including northern 

California’s first traffic circle—in the 

undeveloped area of the site, curving 

around a central hub that was zoned 

for general support functions such 

as the business offices, technical 

information facilities and libraries, and 

plant engineering. The loop system not 

only made for more efficient travel and 

utilities distribution around the site but 

also reduced traffic and saved money. 

Another major element of The Plan 

was making the site more attractive 

to employees by incorporating liberal 

landscaping and inviting bicycle and 

walking paths. An aesthetically pleasing 

work environment, it was judged, would 

help attract and retain valuable staff. 

The Laser Program’s facilities were the 

first developed in accordance with The 

Plan. Laser buildings 381 and 391 had 

offices and main entrances on Inner 

Loop Road, which was to be the “front 

door” to future facilities. Outer Loop 

Road was intended to act as the “service 

entrance” to the large laboratories 

behind the office buildings, with smaller 

laboratories forming a transition between 

the two areas. 

Today, the Laboratory has little 

undeveloped acreage remaining, but 

The Plan continues to guide Laboratory 

growth as the Livermore Valley Open 

Campus is developed. The Plan was so 

visionary that it still retains its integrity 

and flexibility after nearly 50 years. 

An Attractive Place to Work 

1968 Royston Plan
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 40 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 41

The arrival of the first CDC 7600 continued a long period of Livermore leadership in 

computing and custom software development for nuclear design and plasma simulations. 

The innovative Livermore Television Monitor Display System, or 

TMDS (left), was a familiar sight in the 1970s, providing visual 

information to users. Data management and storage were 

improved with the first “chip” storage of the IBM Photostore 

system (below). It was designed to store online an astonishing 

Always eager for better computer (at the time) 1 trillion bits of data. 

simulations, Laboratory weapons 

designers enthusiastically greeted 

the arrival of their first CDC 7600 

supercomputer in 1969. Nineteen of the 

first 20 scientific computers purchased 

by the Laboratory had been from IBM. 

That string was broken in 1962 when 

the Lab bought a CDC 1604 mainframe 

from then-upstart Control Data 

Corporation (CDC) of Minnesota. 

A young CDC engineer named 

Seymour Cray was already at work on 

an innovative design for a machine 

50 times faster than the CDC 1604, and 

Livermore happily acquired one of his 

CDC 6600 computers for $8 million in 

August 1964. Cray’s design team then 

further refined this approach, yielding 

the even larger and faster CDC 7600 

in 1969. In the hands of Laboratory 

users, these machines defined scientific 

supercomputing for a decade. Their 

small instruction sets, fast clock 

speeds, extremely dense customsoldered circuit boards, and clever 

use of the machine frame for cooling 

were ideal for nuclear design and 

plasma simulations. 

Laboratory computer scientists 

responded to the availability of the 

CDC 6600 and CDC 7600 with a 

long, fertile period of custom software 

development. The Livermore Time 

Sharing System (LTSS) enabled 

hundreds of users to run application 

codes simultaneously and tune them 

interactively. Large libraries of Fortran 

subroutines evolved, optimized for 

the Laboratory’s mathematical and 

graphical needs. The local job-control 

language, online documentation 

system, and file-storage service set 

the standards in their fields, as did the 

whimsically named Octopus network 

that efficiently connected hundreds of 

remote terminals and printers to the 

central, shared computers. 

This combination of leading-edge 

hardware and innovative support 

software yielded many benefits for the 

two-dimensional modeling projects 

then under way at Livermore. Higher 

resolution simulations clarified important 

aspects of ongoing field tests. New 

experiments could be optimized at 

the desktop. And scientists gained 

increased understanding of the physics 

underlying many Laboratory projects. 

The Laboratory’s collaboration with 

Seymour Cray continued for another 

15 years. In 1972, he started his 

own company (Cray Research) and 

developed his first integrated-circuit 

(chip-based) scientific computer, the 

CRAY-1. As they became available, 

Livermore acquired early serialnumber versions of Cray Research 

machines, refining the Cray Time 

Sharing System (formerly LTSS) to 

make the most of each new generation 

of hardware. 

In 1985, when the Laboratory 

received the world’s first CRAY-2 

supercomputer, it finally retired its 

last CDC 7600. In many ways, the 

hardware–software combination 

pioneered here was the model 

on which the National Science 

Foundation supercomputer centers 

were later created. 

Time Sharing and 

Two-Dimensional Modeling

1969 First CDC 7600
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 42 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 43

Leadership New

Roger Batzel

(1971 • 1988)

In the early 1970s, the Laboratory completed 

development of new warheads for the nation’s 

strategic missile forces and for the Spartan antiballistic 

missile interceptor. Livermore pushed the frontiers of 

what was possible in nuclear weapons design and 

engineering. Designers then turned their attention to 

modernizing NATO’s nuclear forces with novel weapon 

designs and to exploring the use of insensitive high 

explosives for improved nuclear weapons safety. 

Capitalizing on an emerging technology, Livermore 

also began a laser program and has been at the 

forefront of laser science and technology ever since. 

In 1974, Janus was built, the first in a sequence of 

ever-larger lasers to explore inertial confinement 

fusion (ICF) for national security and civilian 

applications. Design, engineering development, and 

use of the Laboratory’s ICF lasers have contributed 

to thermonuclear weapons science, enabled new 

scientific discoveries, and stimulated the development 

of new products and processes in U.S. industry. The 

1970s’ energy crisis helped to invigorate long-term 

research efforts in both ICF and magnetic fusion as 

well as other energy research programs at 

the Laboratory. 

The Seventies On the frontiers of science and technology
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 44 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 45

In the 1970s, Minuteman III 

missiles with Livermoredesigned W62 warheads 

were deployed in 550 silos 

at U.S. Air Force bases in 

three states. 

The Poseidon C-3 

missile launched 

from a submerged 

submarine. 

In 1970, the United States introduced 

a new capability that dramatically 

increased the effectiveness of its 

land- and sea-based strategic 

missile forces. Both the Minuteman III 

intercontinental ballistic missile and 

the Poseidon C-3 submarine-launched 

ballistic missile were deployed with 

multiple independently targeted reentry 

vehicles (MIRVs), a technology that 

allowed each missile to attack multiple 

targets within a large “footprint.” This 

provided considerable flexibility in 

targeting. MIRVs also were more 

cost-effective because they leveraged 

the large costs of missile silos and 

submarines. The warheads for each of 

these missile systems were designed 

by Livermore. The W62 warhead for 

Minuteman III (deployed in April 1970) 

and the W68 warhead for C-3 (deployed 

in June 1970) pushed the envelope of 

yield-to-weight ratio, a key to the MIRV 

concept. They were also the first designs 

to include a comprehensive set of 

hardening features for protection against 

antiballistic missile (ABM) defenses. 

The warheads were the product of an 

extremely fruitful period in weapons 

development at the Laboratory during 

the 1960s. 

The MIRV concept resulted from the 

convergence of missile technology 

improvements, concerns about Soviet 

work on ABM systems, and the desire 

for improved accuracy. Early in the 

development of Minuteman III, it 

became clear that a liquid-fueled fourth 

stage was needed for higher delivery 

accuracy. Further consideration led 

to the concept of using additional fuel 

in the fourth stage to independently 

target multiple RVs and penetration 

aids. Meanwhile, the ability of missile 

systems to deploy individual satellites 

through use of a post-boost control 

system had been demonstrated in the 

U.S. space program in October 1963. 

In December 1964, Secretary of 

Defense Robert McNamara approved 

development of a MIRV system for 

Minuteman III. By early 1965, the Navy’s 

Strategic Systems Project Office had 

developed baseline design requirements 

for the C-3 missile that would include 

MIRV capability. 

Livermore received the assignment 

for both systems, and each program 

faced significant design challenges. The 

requirement to put 14 vehicles on the 

relatively small C-3 platform was very 

stressing. The W68 (in the Mk3 reentry 

body) was the smallest strategic warhead 

ever deployed by the U.S. The yield of 

the W62 had to be sufficient for attacking 

hardened missile silos, and the design of 

the Mk12 reentry vehicle placed stringent 

volume limitations on the warhead 

to achieve the required accuracy. In 

addition, both warheads included 

special hardening features intended to 

improve survivability when penetrating a 

threat antiballistic missile system. These 

features were developed with the aid of 

an extensive series of “exposure” nuclear 

tests conducted in conjunction with the 

Defense Nuclear Agency.

When the first MIRV systems were 

deployed more than 30 years ago, they 

marked the end to a chapter in which 

Livermore and the military redefined the 

strategic missile posture of the United 

States. The W62 and W68 represented 

such a dramatic advance in the state of 

nuclear design that all subsequent missile 

system warheads have incorporated 

many of their key elements. Their 

extensive development programs, 

conducted in close coordination with 

the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy 

and their contractors, were a model for 

all subsequent generations of deliverysystem design teams.

Multiple Warheads Increase 

Missile Effectiveness

1970 First MIRV Warheads
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 46 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 47

A Spartan missile body with the nuclear device is lowered downhole for the Cannikin event. The test was successfully 

conducted on November 6, 1971, on Amchitka Island, Alaska. 

During preparation for the Cannikin event, workers—including Test Director Phil Coyle 

sitting on the right—ate their meals near the rigging. 

The morning before the Cannikin 

event at Amchitka Island, Alaska, the 

test site was subjected to rain and 

wind gusts up to 124 miles per hour. 

The test crew and visiting dignitaries, 

including Atomic Energy Commission 

Chairman James Schlesinger and his 

family, anxiously waited. Meanwhile, the 

Supreme Court ruled by a 4–3 margin 

that the test could take place. At 

6:30 am on November 6, 1971, in 

Amchitka, the go-ahead came from the 

White House on a telephone hotline. 

Cannikin was successfully detonated at 

11:00 a.m., and the nearly 5-megaton 

blast generated the ground motion of a 

7.0 Richter-scale-magnitude earthquake. 

Cannikin was a massive undertaking 

involving hundreds of Laboratory 

employees and nearly five years of 

effort. Test operations overcame myriad 

logistics hurdles, and experimenters 

achieved many technical firsts. Two 

years of drilling produced a recordbreaking emplacement hole that was 

6,150 feet deep and 90 inches in 

diameter with a 52-foot-wide cavity 

mined at its bottom. The diagnostics 

canister was 264 feet long, and 

altogether 400 tons of cables and 

equipment were lowered downhole. 

Cannikin was the first test in which a 

laser successfully aligned diagnostics 

downhole and a computer system 

assisted field operations. A recordsetting number of recording trailers, 

2,000 feet from ground zero and 

shock-mounted to withstand a ground 

upheaval of 15 feet at shot time, were 

instrumented with 250 oscilloscopes. 

One hundred percent of the test data 

was successfully retrieved. 

The experiment tested the design of the 

warhead for Spartan, the interceptor 

used in the upper tier of the U.S. 

Safeguard anti-ballistic missile (ABM) 

system. Spartan missiles were to 

engage clouds of reentry vehicles and 

decoys above the atmosphere and 

destroy incoming warheads with a burst 

of high-energy x rays. The Laboratory 

stepped up to the difficult challenge 

of designing the appropriate warhead. 

The Spartan warhead had high yield, 

produced copious amounts of x rays, 

and minimized fission output and debris 

to prevent blackout of ABM radar 

systems. Livermore also developed 

and tested the warhead technology for 

the second-tier interceptor, the Sprint 

missile. Subsequently, Los Alamos was 

assigned responsibility to develop the 

nuclear warhead for Sprint. 

The Safeguard ABM system was a 

scaled-down version of the Sentinel 

system for defense of U.S. cities. 

Rapid evolution of offensive missile 

technologies (see Year 1970) made 

national defense impractical, and in 

1972, the United States and the Soviet 

Union signed the ABM Treaty. However, 

protection against ballistic missile 

attack remained a noble goal and 

technological challenge for Laboratory 

researchers and was pursued with 

renewed vigor after President Ronald 

Reagan launched the Strategic 

Defense Initiative. Nuclear directedenergy weapons were pursued at 

Livermore, including experimental 

demonstration of x-ray lasing at 

the Nevada Test Site. Laboratory 

researchers also devised the concept 

of Brilliant Pebbles for nonnuclear 

defense against missiles in boost 

phase, which led to the Clementine 

experiment to map the Moon (see 

Year 1994).

At the Frontier of Missile Defense 

Technology

1971 Cannikin
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 48 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 49

In the late 1960s, the Laboratory responded to a growing interest in the 

quality of our environment by applying its capabilities to help understand 

human-induced effects on the atmosphere. The rising number of 

excess ozone days in the Livermore Valley prompted Mike MacCracken 

and colleagues to adapt a new modeling technique developed at the 

University of Illinois for use as the core of a San Francisco Bay Area airquality model. Results from this model and later versions served as the 

basis for preparing the Bay Area’s Air Quality Maintenance Plan, which, 

with later revisions, has lowered the number of days of excess ozone 

from about 50 per year to just 1 or 2 days per year. 

Less Bay Area Ozone

Depletion of stratospheric ozone was one of the concerns raised when development began of commercial supersonic 

transport aircraft. Later, use of chlorofluorocarbons was prohibited because of similar concerns about ozone depletion. 

A massively parallel aerosol chemistry and atmospheric chemical transport 

code developed at Livermore in the early 2000s provided estimates of regional 

concentrations of aerosols and the fractions of those concentrations from 

anthropogenic sources.

In 1972, the Laboratory applied newly 

developed modeling capabilities to 

investigate whether human activities 

might degrade the stratospheric 

ozone layer, which screens out most 

of the radiation that causes sunburns 

and skin cancer. U.S. decision 

makers needed information on the 

potential effects of a proposed fleet of 

supersonic transports (SSTs)—fasterthan-sound commercial jet aircraft—

that would fly in the stratosphere. 

Concerns were raised that exhaust 

emissions might chemically react in 

ways that would thin the stratospheric 

ozone layer. Livermore’s onedimensional (altitude) model of 

stratospheric ozone, developed under 

Julius Chang, was one of the first 

simulation tools in the world used to 

examine ozone interactions with the 

SST’s nitrogen oxide emissions. 

An important early test of the model 

was its ability to explain the observed 

decrease in stratospheric ozone 

concentrations following atmospheric 

nuclear testing by the United States 

and the Soviet Union in the early 1960s 

(see Year 1962). These simulations 

clearly indicated that use of a large 

number of megaton-size nuclear 

weapons in a nuclear war would 

seriously deplete stratospheric ozone—

in addition to the extensive destruction 

caused at the surface. This finding later 

played a central role in a 1974 National 

Academy of Sciences study on 

the potential long-term worldwide 

effects of multiple nuclear weapons 

detonations, adding impetus for the two 

superpowers to reduce weapon yield 

and the size of their nuclear arsenals. 

In 1974, the effect of chlorofluorocarbon 

(CFC) emissions on stratospheric ozone 

also became an issue. In response, 

Don Wuebbles and colleagues at 

the Laboratory developed a twodimensional (latitude and altitude) 

model that predicted increasingly 

severe ozone depletion from continued 

use of CFCs in aerosol spray cans, 

refrigerators, and air conditioners. 

These results provided important input 

to the first international assessment 

of stratospheric ozone. International 

negotiations to limit CFCs ensued, 

and the U.S. prohibited their use as 

propellants in spray cans. Later, the 

research team developed a technique 

for calculating the Ozone Depletion 

Potential (ODP) of other compounds, 

a formulation that was included in the 

Montreal Protocol. Adopted in 1987, the 

protocol set goals for globally phasing 

out the use of halocarbons that have 

high ODP. 

As computers became more powerful in 

the late 1990s, Laboratory researchers 

focused attention on improved modeling 

of the effects of anthropogenic 

aerosols on Earth’s climate. In general, 

atmospheric aerosols have a cooling 

effect by directly reflecting solar 

radiation and seeding the formation 

of clouds, which also reflect radiation. 

Improved modeling of clouds remains 

a key objective of climate research at 

the Laboratory.

Preventing Planetary Sunburn

1972 Ozone Depletion Calculations

Photo credit: The Boeing Company.
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 50 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 51

A clean, efficient process for producing the fuel for nuclear power plants was made possible by the Laboratory’s precisely 

tuned, high-power lasers used for the U-AVLIS Program.

Livermore’s plant-scale 

uranium separator 

system was one of 

the largest technology 

transfer projects in the 

Laboratory’s history. 

A technician works with 

the diode-pumped solidstate (DPSS) green laser 

developed for U-AVLIS. 

The technology won 

LLNL an R&D 100 Award 

(see Year 1999), and 

DPSS lasers are used for 

precision machining and 

many other applications.

In the early 1970s, many analysts were 

projecting a shortage of electricity 

starting in the next decade. One option 

was expanded use of fission energy, 

for which an inexpensive source of 

enriched uranium fuel was needed. At 

the same time, the inherent properties 

of lasers were recognized as having 

the potential of leading to a low-cost 

method for producing such fuel by 

selectively ionizing uranium-235 and 

electrostatically separating it from 

uranium-238. The Uranium Atomic 

Vapor Laser Isotope Separation 

(U-AVLIS) Program began at Livermore 

in 1973 to help maintain the U.S. market 

share of enriched uranium fuel for the 

host of nuclear power plants that would 

be constructed to meet the world’s 

energy needs. 

The U-AVLIS process for separating 

isotopes of uranium presents numerous 

advantages. It achieves separation in 

one or two passes through the laser 

beam, rather than the hundreds of 

passes required in other processes. 

It needs only 1/20th the electrical 

power required by diffusion plants, 

producing significant cost savings. 

Because U-AVLIS uses uranium metal 

as the source material rather than 

uranium hexafluoride, the process is 

less expensive and less hazardous and 

produces less low-level nuclear waste. 

In the early years of the program, the 

U-AVLIS process used copper vapor 

lasers to pump liquid dye lasers to effect 

the separation process, while in later 

years, more efficient solid-state lasers 

were developed as the pump lasers. Dye 

lasers were used because they could 

produce a broad and almost continuous 

range of colors. An optical system in the 

laser is able to “tune,” or select, the laser 

to the precise color needed to separate 

the desired isotope. 

Through its 25-year history, the 

U-AVLIS Program progressed from the 

Morehouse experiment that produced 

the first milligram quantities of enriched 

uranium in 1974 through the REGULIS 

separator in 1980, the MARS Facility in 

1984, and the Uranium Demonstration 

System and the Laser Demonstration 

Facility in the 1990s. In the process, 

tunable laser technology was 

dramatically advanced, and significant 

scientific progress was made in the 

physics of laser–atom interactions. 

In addition, the Laboratory staff 

gained valuable experience in laserbased industrial production, which 

contributed not only to the U-AVLIS 

Program but also to other projects 

such as the Laser Guide Star (see 

Year 1996), the Laser and Materials 

Processing program, and the National 

Ignition Facility (see Year 1997). 

Congress created the United States 

Enrichment Corporation (USEC) in 1992, 

Industrial-Scale Applications 

for Lasers

1973 U-AVLIS Program Begins

which was a government corporation 

until privatized in 1998, to move the 

U-AVLIS program into the private sector. 

By the late 1990s, however, the energy 

economies of the world and the supply 

versus demand for enriched uranium 

had changed. USEC suspended the 

U-AVLIS program in 1999, retaining 

the rights to U-AVLIS technology for 

commercial applications.
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 52 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 53

In a fusion reaction, two nuclei—deuterium and tritium—collide and fuse 

together, forming a heavier atom and releasing about a million times 

more energy than in a chemical reaction such as fossil fuel burning. 

The nuclei must travel toward each other fast enough to overcome 

electrostatic forces. Thus, the fuel’s temperature must be over 10 million 

kelvin, and the fuel must be compressed to a density 20 times greater 

than that of lead. Laser beam 

light heats the surface of the 

fuel pellet and rapidly vaporizes 

its outer shell, which implodes 

the inner part of the fuel pellet 

and reduces it in size by a factor 

of 30 or more—equivalent to 

compressing a basketball to the 

size of a pea. 

Inertial Confinement Fusion

The first Livermore laser for 

ICF research, Janus, had 

two beams and produced 

10 joules of energy. 

With the 20-beam 

Shiva laser in 1977, the 

Laboratory established 

its preeminence in laser 

science and technology. 

A typical hohlraum for the Nova 

laser is shown next to a human hair. 

Hohlraums for the National Ignition 

Facility have linear dimensions about 

five times greater than those for Nova. 

With the goal of achieving energy gain 

through inertial confinement fusion 

(ICF) as its mission, the Laser Program 

constructed its first laser for ICF 

experiments in 1974. Named Janus, 

the two-beam laser was built with about 

100 pounds of laser glass. 

Under the leadership of John Emmett, 

who headed the Laser Program from 

1972 to 1988, researchers used Janus 

to gain a better understanding of laser 

plasma physics and thermonuclear 

physics and to demonstrate 

laser-induced compression and 

thermonuclear burn of deuterium–tritium. 

It was also used to improve the LASNEX 

computer code developed for laser 

fusion predictions. Janus was just the 

beginning of the development, in quick 

succession, of a series of lasers, each 

building on the knowledge gained from 

the last, leading to the National Ignition 

Facility (NIF), currently performing 

experiments. The pace of laser 

construction matched the growth 

in ICF diagnostics capabilities, 

computer simulation tools, and 

theoretical understanding. 

In 1975, the one-beam Cyclops laser 

began operation, performing important 

target experiments and testing optical 

designs for future lasers. The next year, 

the two-beam Argus was built. Use of 

Argus increased knowledge about laser–

target interactions and laser propagation 

limits, and it helped the ICF program 

develop technologies needed for the 

next generation of laser fusion systems. 

The $25-million 20-beam Shiva became 

the world’s most powerful laser in 1977. 

Almost the size of a football field, it 

delivered 10.2 kilojoules of energy in 

less than a billionth of a second in its 

first full-power firing. Two years later, 

Shiva compressed fusion fuel to a 

density 50 to 100 times greater than 

its liquid density. Shiva provided more 

power, better control over conditions, 

higher temperatures, and greater fuel 

compression than any previous laser. 

The Novette laser came on line in 1983 

as a test bed for the Nova laser design 

and an interim target experiment facility. 

It was used to demonstrate the efficient 

coupling of higher-harmonic laser light 

to fusion targets and to create the first 

soft-x-ray laser. The Nova laser (see 

Year 1984), 10 times more powerful than 

Shiva, was built the following year. 

Altogether, six large fusion laser 

systems were engineered and built 

in 10 years. The next decade of ICF 

research was devoted to studying and 

demonstrating the physics required for 

fusion ignition and gain (fusion output 

greater than energy input). The work 

prepared the Laboratory to take the 

next major step, construction of the 

192-beam NIF (see Year 1997), where 

scientists are striving to achieve fusion 

ignition and energy gain. 

Lasers Join the Quest 

for Fusion Energy

1974 Lasers and ICF
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 54 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 55

To understand the role of tactical nuclear weapons, analysts have had to take into account many factors that are 

not amenable to analytical models—the so-called “fog of war.” In the mid-1970s, under the leadership of Don 

Blumenthal, the Laboratory began building high-resolution combat simulation models. A major advance occurred 

in 1978, when George Smith developed Mini-J, the first two-sided, player-interactive combat simulation model. 

The players observed their own units 

in real time, interactively acquired 

enemy units on a computer screen, 

and gave orders. Mini-J evolved into 

a model called Janus, which was 

successively improved at Livermore’s 

Conflict Simulation Laboratory. The 

culmination of this work is the Joint 

Conflict and Tactical Simulation 

(JCATS) model, which is widely used 

by the Department of Defense, Secret 

Service, and other agencies for 

training and planning. 

Conflict Simulation Laboratory

Nuclear artillery shells for the U.S. Army’s 8-inch howitzers included an “enhanced radiation” capability developed at Livermore. 

Computer models that could accommodate larger numbers and types of military units 

and were applicable to a wider range of scenarios, such as urban combat, were developed 

at the Conflict Simulation Laboratory in the 1980s. Player-interactive simulations are used 

by the U.S. military for training, analysis of tactics, and mission planning. 

In January 1975, Livermore was 

assigned the task of developing a new 

nuclear artillery shell warhead, the W79, 

for the U.S. Army’s 8-inch howitzers. 

Nuclear artillery shells were part of the 

U.S. arsenal from the mid-1950s until 

1992. They were deployed for both 

U.S. Army and U.S. Navy systems and 

provided a highly accurate, short-range 

(typically about 10 miles), all-weather 

capability using delivery systems already 

deployed with conventional shells. 

The W79 and the W70-3 were to be 

the first battlefield nuclear weapons to 

include an “enhanced radiation” (ER) 

capability. ER provided a relatively 

high fraction of the prompt weapon 

output in the form of neutrons (hence 

the nickname “neutron bomb”). ER 

technology began to be developed 

at Livermore in the early 1960s and 

entered the stockpile in 1974 with the 

deployment of the W66 warhead for the 

Sprint antiballistic missile interceptor 

(see Year 1971). 

ER weapons were also developed for 

NATO forces. They were designed to 

be far more effective than previously 

deployed battlefield nuclear weapons 

for blunting a Soviet armored invasion 

of Western Europe and hence 

strengthened deterrence. A lethal 

radiation dose to enemy troops—likely 

protected in armored vehicles—could 

be achieved with the much smaller yield 

of an ER weapon than with a standard 

nuclear weapon. ER weapons could be 

employed to strike enemy units much 

closer to urban areas while avoiding 

collateral damage to towns and civilians. 

The W79 weapon development program 

led to deployment in 1981. In 1976, the 

Laboratory received a second related 

assignment—to provide an enhanced 

radiation modification to the Livermoredesigned W70 warhead for the Army’s 

short-range Lance missile system. 

This warhead, the W70-3, was also 

deployed in 1981. The W82, a weapon 

for the 155-millimeter howitzer, was 

also assigned to Livermore, but the 

development program was canceled in 

the mid-1980s prior to deployment. 

By the time the W70-3 and the W79 were 

part of NATO forces, they had become 

the center of an international controversy. 

A principal concern expressed by 

opponents was that by virtue of the lower 

yield and greater utility of ER weapons, 

their deployment would serve to lower 

the threshold for nuclear war. This 

controversy led to a 1985 Congressional 

order that future W79s be built without 

the ER capability, and existing units 

were modified to remove this capability. 

Eventually, all U.S. battlefield nuclear 

weapons were retired in accordance 

with President George H. W. Bush’s 

September 1991 address to the nation. 

Special-Effect Weapons for the Tactical 

Battlefield

1975 W79 Development
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 56 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 57

Research on energetic 

materials at the 

Laboratory has led to 

the formulation, detailed 

characterization, and 

development for weapons 

use of extremely safe 

high-explosive materials 

for weapons. 

Crystals of 

TATB (triaminotrinitrobenzene), 

which are shown 

magnified in the 

background, are 

examined under a 

microscope.

A mock W87 warhead 

with IHE in a Mk21 

reentry vehicle is 

mounted on simulated 

upper stages of the 

Peacekeeper missile (in 

a canister) in preparation 

for an explosive test 

to determine accident 

environments and 

warhead response.

In 1975, Laboratory researchers 

published their first report on 

investigations of an insensitive high 

explosive (IHE), TATB (triaminotrinitrobenzene). Further work to 

characterize the material and find 

improved ways of producing it has led 

to widespread use of IHE in nuclear 

weapons. Use of IHEs is one of the 

many important advances made over 

the past five decades to improve the 

safety and security of nuclear weapons. 

Its development is a demonstration of 

the expertise in energetic materials 

that resides at the nation’s nuclear 

weapons laboratories. 

First synthesized in the 19th century, 

TATB qualifies as an IHE because 

of its inherent insensitivity to shock. 

The material is virtually invulnerable 

to significant energy release in plane 

crashes, fires, or explosions, or from 

deliberate attack with small arms fire. In 

fact, TATB is so stable that researchers 

had to discover how to reliably initiate 

an explosion of the material. They also 

had to find a ready and affordable way 

to produce the material. Building on 

advances made at both nuclear design 

laboratories, Los Alamos researchers 

made a key improvement in 1967 by 

finding a way to prepare TATB as a 

molded, plastic-bonded explosive at 

close to theoretically maximum density. 

Subsequent experiments at Livermore 

by Richard Weingart and his colleagues 

included shock-initiation, heat, and 

fracture tests to define the safety 

characteristics of plastic-bonded TATB. 

Other experiments helped researchers 

to understand how to initiate TATB 

reliably even in the extreme conditions 

that a nuclear weapon might face. A 

team led by physicist Seymour Sack 

made design advances that enabled 

TATB’s reliable use in nuclear weapons. 

The first nuclear weapon systems to 

include TATB were a variant of the 

B61 bomb and B83 strategic bomb. 

The W87 ICBM warhead (see Year 

1986) was the first design to use TATB 

for the explosive detonators as well as 

for the main explosive charge, further 

enhancing safety. 

Use of TATB has been largely limited to 

nuclear weapons because it is costly 

to manufacture. For nuclear weapon 

applications, the legacy stock of 

this material will be depleted before 

production begins for the W80-4 lifeextension program (LEP). Engineering 

development (Phase 3) of the W80-4 

warhead for the U.S. Air Force’s LongRange Standoff missile is scheduled 

to begin in 2018. Requalification 

and remanufacture of the IHE to 

be used as the warhead’s main 

charge is critical for program 

success (see Year 2016). This major 

undertaking is a collaborative effort 

involving involving Livermore, 

Los Alamos, the Pantex Plant, the 

Holston Army Ammunition Plant, 

the 3M Company, and the Department 

of Defense.

TATB requalification and 

remanufacture will draw heavily 

on the outstanding experimental 

capabilities at Livermore to 

synthesize, formulate, process, test, 

and evaluate newly manufactured 

explosive materials. The Laboratory 

has also greatly advanced the fidelity 

of simulations of high-explosive 

performance and is exploring the 

feasibility of additively manufacturing 

high-explosive materials.

TATB Makes Nuclear Weapons Safer

1976 Enhanced Safety
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 58 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 59

Great success in the Tandem 

Mirror Experiment (TMX, above) 

led to TMX-Upgrade (far left and 

left). The vacuum vessel was 

enlarged, and new end coils 

were installed in an attempt 

to demonstrate the thermal 

barrier concept and improve 

performance over TMX. 

One of the yin-yang 

magnets for MFTF-B 

being moved into 

Building 431. The 

magnet system for 

MFTF-B was the largest 

superconducting system 

ever built.

In 1977, Laboratory researchers 

were making enormous strides both 

in the quality of their insights into 

plasma physics and in the size of their 

experimental equipment. In the spring, 

the Energy Research and Development 

Administration approved $11 million for 

the Tandem Mirror Experiment (TMX), 

which promised major performance 

improvements. That summer, 

researchers used an intense beam of 

energetic neutral atoms to generate and 

sustain a high-density (1014 particles 

per cubic centimeter), high-temperature 

(160 million kelvin) plasma in the 2XIIB 

machine, which was the single-cell 

mirror experiment that set the stage 

for TMX. And in autumn, construction 

began on the Mirror Fusion Test Facility 

(MFTF), an advanced experimental 

fusion device designed to be an 

intermediate step between the existing 

mirror machines and an experimental 

fusion reactor. The goal was to increase 

plasma confinement to nearly 100 times 

that of 2XIIB and to increase plasma 

temperature to more than 

500 million kelvin. 

Success with TMX experiments over the 

next several years led the Laboratory to 

attempt to improve plasma confinement 

by heating the electrons at the ends 

of the machine to create a thermal 

barrier—a change that turned out to 

add to instabilities. At the same time, 

the MFTF design was substantially 

modified into a large tandem mirror 

configuration called MFTF-B. With a 

58-meter-long vacuum vessel and 

the largest set of superconducting 

magnets in the world, MFTF-B was the 

Laboratory’s largest construction project 

($372 million) when completed in 1986. 

However, what could have been learned 

with MFTF-B will never be known 

because it was officially mothballed 

later that year. A scientific tool that had 

pushed the limits of engineering was 

turned off before it was ever turned on. 

The decision was a major setback for 

fusion energy research at Livermore, 

but scientists continued work on 

other approaches to magnetic 

fusion. Laboratory researchers are 

collaborating in experimental studies 

of tokamak performance using the 

DIII-D tokamak at General Atomics and 

the NSTX-U spherical tokamak at the 

Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. 

One key innovation devised by a 

Livermore-led team is the “snowflake” 

power divertor, a successfully tested 

approach for managing safe dissipation 

of the power exhaust from the hot 

plasma in a future commercial fusion 

reactor. Laboratory researchers are also 

providing leadership in the development 

and use of large-scale simulation of 

plasmas to carry out fusion research. 

As one of its significant legacies, the 

large magnetic mirror fusion effort at 

the Laboratory led to the establishment 

of the nation’s first unclassified national 

supercomputing center to provide 

magnetic fusion researchers nationwide 

with the computing horsepower that 

was then available only to nuclear 

weapons designers. When it opened at 

Livermore in 1974, the computer center 

pioneered many practices: remote 

access by thousands of users; highperformance data storage and retrieval; 

online documentation; and around-theclock support for users. In the 1980s, 

the center became the National Energy 

Research Scientific Computing Center 

(NERSC). It is now located at Lawrence 

Berkeley National Laboratory.

Enormous Strides in Magnetic Fusion

1977 Tandem Mirror Experiment
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 60 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 61

During Operation Morning Light, Livermore’s 

Tom Crites was at the Baker Lake site, where the 

temperature hovered around –40°F, or around 

–120°F with the wind-chill factor. The Canadians 

had outfitted every team member with the latest 

survival gear. Crites needed it all. The hydraulically 

powered helicopter failed one day, requiring the 

stranded team to build snow igloos and keep fires 

going. They endured a subzero night before a 

plane rescued them. A few people lost fingers and 

toes to frostbite. Crites has put his experience to 

good use leading Boy Scout camping trips in the 

Sierras. “Besides,” he says, “where else can you 

look south to see the Northern Lights?” 

Not Exactly California Weather NEST members from Livermore join 

the search for Cosmos 954, a fallen 

Soviet satellite. They found small 

pieces of the satellite and its nuclear 

reactor on frozen Baker Lake in the 

Northwest Territories of Canada. 

Cosmos 954 started losing orbital 

altitude in December 1977. The 

North American Aerospace Defense 

Command (NORAD) thought it would 

burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere 

on reentry, but not much was known 

about the Soviet satellite—its size, 

its weight, and most important, the 

amount of nuclear material in its reactor. 

A month later, the Laboratory was 

quietly notified to get ready. NEST—the 

Nuclear Emergency Search Team—was 

prepared to find the satellite, wherever 

it landed. 

After the first meeting at the Laboratory 

on January 18, 1978, two Livermore 

computer scientists were provided 

the exclusive use of a CDC-7600 

computer, and they spent the next few 

sleepless days refining calculations of 

the trajectory and figuring out how wide 

an area—called the footprint—would 

result from the impact of variously sized 

pieces of Cosmos, including perhaps 

100 pounds of nuclear fuel. The exact 

time and place of reentry would not be 

known until the final orbit. 

Meanwhile, the Laboratory’s NEST 

contingent—a group of health 

physicists, chemists, nuclear physicists, 

and engineers—left for the Las Vegas 

NEST office to wait. They had packed 

every type of clothing because they had 

no idea where they would ultimately end 

up. Radiation detectors, liquid nitrogen, 

sample containers, power generators, 

what passed for portable computers 

then, and even a helicopter were 

loaded into a C-141 aircraft—all to look 

for anything that survived reentry. 

The final orbit occurred on January 24. 

Cosmos fragments scattered across a 

30-mile-wide, 500-mile-long swath of 

the Northwest Territories of Canada, 

a desolate area populated by caribou 

and a few Inuit hunters. Within six 

hours, the official request for help 

came from Canada, and Operation 

Morning Light began. The Canadians 

were depending on the Laboratory 

team to help find Cosmos pieces, 

identify the reactor fuel, and estimate 

the fission product inventory. 

Soon, planes with radiation detectors 

were surveying the frozen landscape. 

The first radioactive pieces were 

found on January 26. Radioactivity 

ranged from a few milliroentgen to 100 

roentgens per hour. No single piece 

was much larger than a small trash 

can, and tiny bits of radioactive fuel 

dotted the landscape. Hotspots were 

concentrated in a few places in the 

snow-packed forest and in the middle 

of frozen lakes. Because of the intense 

cold, team members could work only 

for short periods. 

Operation Morning Light officially 

ended on April 18. At the peak of its 

operation—the first two weeks—

120 U.S. personnel worked alongside 

the Canadians. Of that number, 

39 were from the Laboratory with 

an additional 80 people back at 

Livermore supporting the team. 

Today, Laboratory personnel are still 

part of NNSA’s Nuclear Emergency 

Support Team (a revised name for 

the restructured NEST organization), 

ready to deploy at a moment’s notice 

anywhere in the world. 

When Satellites Go Bad

1978 Operation Morning Light
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 62 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 63

NARAC was activated on March 11, 2011, after a massive tsunami hit the east coast of Japan and knocked out 

power to the Da-ichi Nuclear Power Plant’s reactor cooling systems, resulting in damage to reactor cores and the 

release of radioactivity. NARAC personnel provided critical support to agencies in the United States and Japan 

responding to the disaster. The team generated a steady stream of up-to-date atmospheric dispersion predictions, 

plume projections, and radiation dose estimates. During the height of the crisis, the center operated around the 

clock for 22 days. By the time active operations ended in mid-May, NARAC had logged more than 5,000 personhours and produced more than 300 projections and analyses. 

Response to the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant Disaster

ARAC scientist Marv Dickerson keeps members of the media informed about the status of radioactive releases from the 

Chernobyl nuclear power plant meltdown in 1986.

On March 29, 1979, Marv Dickerson 

and Tom Sullivan were at a meeting 

to secure an agreement with the 

U.S. Air Force Global Weather Center to 

supply information to the Atmospheric 

Release Advisory Capability (ARAC) at 

Livermore. ARAC, which had recently 

begun pilot operations under the 

sponsorship of DOE, would use that 

information as part of its integrated 

system. The two scientists received a 

call: “There’s been an accident at the 

Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. 

Could ARAC help, and how soon?” 

Over the course of the next 10 days, 

ARAC scientists worked 24 hours a day, 

7 days a week to predict possible levels 

and areas of radioactive fallout. Working 

with a private contractor that was taking 

aerial radioactivity measurements 

during flyovers of the area, Livermore 

scientists used meteorological and 

topographical information to determine 

where the plume of radioactive 

materials was located and where it 

would travel. 

When it started in 1973, ARAC was 

a research and development project 

with a goal to track any radioactive 

accident that happened at a DOE 

facility and assess its effect on the 

surrounding community. But with the 

meltdown at Three Mile Island, ARAC 

became a household name within the 

group of federal agencies responsible 

for responding to nuclear accidents. 

The group included the Environmental 

Protection Agency, DOE, the Department 

of Defense, the Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission, and even the Federal 

Emergency Management Agency. 

ARAC has since changed its name 

to the National Atmospheric Release 

Advisory Center (NARAC) because 

of its expanded role to respond to 

nuclear, radiological, chemical, or 

natural hazardous material releases. 

The center’s central system, now in 

its third generation, uses automated 

software to build 3D models of the 

area under scrutiny using worldwide 

meteorological and geographical 

databases. With information added 

about the characteristics of the 

hazardous materials in question, 

NARAC scientists and engineers—

often within 15 minutes—generate 

dispersion and fallout models’ 

predictions of dose, air, and ground 

contamination, blast damage zones, 

and health risks.

The center has responded to 

hundreds of alerts and incidents 

since operations began. Key events 

include the 1980 Titan II missile 

explosion in Damascus, Arkansas; 

the Chernobyl nuclear power plant 

meltdown in 1986; the Kuwaiti oil fires 

during and after the Persian Gulf War 

in 1991; the 1991 Mount Pinatubo 

eruption; an industrial cesium-137 

release in Algeciras, Spain, in 1998; 

and the Fukushima disaster in 2011 

(see box). 

Responding to Nuclear Emergencies 

Worldwide

1979 Tracking Three Mile Island
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 64

Leadership New

John H. Nuckolls

(1988 • 1994)

LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 65

All major programs at the Laboratory have relied 

on the interplay between computer simulations and 

experiments to increase scientific understanding 

and make dramatic engineering improvements. 

In the 1980s, the combination of testing and 

simulations greatly contributed to the development 

of new strategic weapons, such as a nuclear bomb 

that could be delivered at low altitude, to help win 

the Cold War. The combination was also critically 

important to scientific exploration of x-ray lasers and 

the complexities of intense laser light interacting 

with matter. Major new experimental facilities were 

constructed, such as the Bunker 801 complex at 

Site 300 for hydrodynamic testing, the Nova laser, and 

the High Explosives Applications Facility; and the first 

three-dimensional simulation codes were developed. 

In the late 1980s, Laboratory researchers began 

to explore the feasibility of using multiple parallel 

processors for scientific computing—now a key 

component of efforts to maintain the nation’s nuclear 

weapons stockpile. Since Livermore opened, the 

need for ever more powerful simulations for nuclear 

weapons design has guided industry’s development 

of supercomputers, and the Laboratory has helped 

industry make prototype machines ready for a wider 

range of users.

The Eighties Simulations and experiments
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 66 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 67

At the Nevada Test Site, each spent-fuel canister was moved over paved 

roads from the hot-cell facility to the mined test facility in a specially 

designed surface cask mounted on a low-boy trailer. The cask was upright 

for loading and almost horizontal for travel. 

Cannisters of spent nuclear fuel were entombed 1,400 feet below 

the surface as part of the DOE National Waste Terminal Storage 

Program. They were placed in holes drilled in the Climax granite 

formation and retrieved three years later. 

Scientists perform an instrumentation checkout in the tunnel at the 

Nevada Test Site. The purpose of Spent Fuel Test–Climax was to 

determine the issues involved with storing and retrieving nuclear 

wastes underground. 

In 1980, the Laboratory placed spent 

nuclear fuel 420 meters underground 

at the Nevada Test Site beneath the 

floor of a tunnel in Climax granite. In 

this experiment, Spent Fuel Test–Climax 

(SFT–C), researchers measured thermal 

loads from 11 canisters of spent fuel, 

6 electrical heaters designed to mimic 

fuel canisters, and 20 electrical heaters 

in adjacent tunnels. The combined 

measurements of the three-year-long 

test simulated the thermal behavior of 

part of a large geologic repository for 

nuclear fuel. 

SFT–C was a significant large-scale 

field test for demonstrating essential 

technologies and revealing unexpected 

effects of high-level nuclear waste 

disposal in geologic repositories. 

Nuclear waste issues were looming 

on the horizon long before 1980, but 

Congress did not pass the Nuclear 

Waste Policy Act to deal with the 

problem until 1982. 

Opportunities for testing at full scale 

were very limited this early in the 

U.S. nuclear waste management 

program. Livermore undertook SFT–C 

to demonstrate the feasibility of spentfuel handling and retrieval from an 

underground repository and to address 

technical concerns about geologic 

repository operations and performance. 

The test was part of the Nevada Nuclear 

Waste Storage Investigations (NNWSI) 

project for the Department of Energy. 

Operational objectives included 

packaging, transporting, storing, 

and retrieving highly radioactive fuel 

assemblies in a safe and reliable 

manner. In addition to emplacement and 

retrieval operations, three exchanges 

of spent-fuel assemblies between the 

SFT–C tunnel and a surface storage 

facility were part of this demonstration. 

SFT–C technical objectives required 

a measurements program with nearly 

1,000 field instruments and a computerbased data acquisition system. The 

system had to be robust enough to 

withstand the vagaries of the Nevada 

Test Site’s power grid, shaking from 

nuclear weapons tests, and high 

temperatures caused by the thermal 

load—a major challenge for 1980s 

technology. When the Laboratory 

requested bids for a computer for 

logging the test data, only one company 

(Hewlett-Packard) answered the call. 

Undaunted, Livermore scientists 

and engineers designed most of the 

instruments, installed the system, and 

recorded geotechnical, seismological, 

and test status data on a continuing 

basis for the three-year storage phase 

and six months of monitored cool-down. 

The SFT–C experiment demonstrated 

the feasibility of deep geologic storage 

of spent nuclear fuel from commercial 

nuclear power reactors. SFT–C also 

showed the Laboratory’s strong 

capabilities in materials science, 

nuclear science, earth science, 

advanced simulations, and engineered 

systems. The test’s success provided 

a foundation for subsequent 

collaborations with nuclear waste 

disposal programs in other countries. 

More directly, as NNWSI evolved into 

the Yucca Mountain Project (YMP), 

SFT–C helped prepare Livermore 

researchers for their role as experts 

in addressing YMP waste form, waste 

package, near-field environment, and 

repository performance issues. 

Addressing the Challenges 

of Nuclear Waste

1980 Spent Fuel Test–Climax
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 68 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 69

Literally billions of dollars worth of machine tools have been tested with a 

small measuring device invented by Jim Bryan, who made wide-ranging 

contributions to metrology and precision machining in 32 years of service 

at the Laboratory. In the 1980s, Bryan reworked an old British invention 

called a fixed ball bar by adding a telescoping arm to the instrument. Today, 

versions of Bryan’s ball bar are used around the world to test machine tool 

performance quickly. For this invention and other achievements, which 

include leading the design and construction of record-breaking diamond 

turning machines in the 1970s, Bryan was recognized in 2000 by Fortune 

magazine as one of six “Heroes of U.S. Manufacturing.” 

A Hero of U.S. Manufacturing

The Large Optics Diamond 

Turning Machine was 

the first machine able to 

produce an aspherical 

mirror. 

Machining metal up to 1.65 meters in diameter and at a precision of 2 micrometers was 

possible with LODTM. 

It has been called the world’s most 

accurate lathe, the world’s most 

precise large machine tool. With the 

groundbreaking for the Large Optical 

Diamond Turning Machine (LODTM) in 

1981, the Laboratory solidified its place 

at the top of state-of-the-art precision 

machining. LODTM opened in 1983, 

two years after its groundbreaking, and 

remained in service for two decades.

The machine’s precision was such 

that LODTM (pronounced “load-em”) 

outperformed the measurers—the 

National Institute of Standards and 

Technology could not corroborate the 

accuracy of its work. LODTM machined 

metal to a mirror-smooth accuracy 

within one-millionth of an inch—1,000 

times more accurate than conventional 

machine tools. It handled a workpiece 

with a diameter up to 1.65 meters, a 

height up to 0.5 meters, and a weight 

up to as much as 1,360 kilograms. 

Like a lathe, LODTM spun a workpiece 

as a tool cut the revolving surface. But 

the similarity ended there, because 

LODTM left behind a gleaming 

reflective surface that often needed 

no further polishing. During its service 

life, LODTM was the tool of choice for 

contractors making lenses for heatseeking missiles and other weaponry, 

exotically shaped optics for lasers, and 

mirrors for powerful telescopes such 

as Keck in Hawaii and NASA’s spacebased lidar-system, SPARCLE. When 

the Shoemaker–Levy comet collided 

with Jupiter in 1994, it was witnessed 

in real time, thanks to mirrors turned on 

LODTM and then installed at Keck. 

Almost since its inception, the 

Laboratory has been among the leaders 

in the development of advanced 

techniques for precision measurement 

and manufacture to meet the demands 

of programmatic work. Livermore’s first 

diamond turning machine was built in 

the late 1960s, and by the early 1970s, 

one-millionth of an inch precision was 

achieved. The idea of the LODTM arose 

later in the decade when researchers 

began considering the development of 

powerful lasers as an element of missile 

defense. The laser system’s optics 

had to be extremely large, exotically 

shaped, and fabricated with a precision 

that corresponded to a small fraction of 

the wavelength of light. No machine had 

those needed capabilities. 

Livermore’s Precision Engineering 

Program, under the guidance of Jim 

Bryan, Jim Hamilton, Jeff Klingmann, 

Dennis Atkinson, and others, designed 

LODTM. The culmination of previous 

Laboratory research in machine 

tool accuracy, LODTM incorporated 

exhaustive analysis and elimination of 

factors that caused errors in machine 

tools—from the heat of the human body 

to the vibration from a heavy truck 

passing by. 

Precision engineering continues to 

be an exceptional strength of the 

Laboratory and an essential feature of 

many programmatic activities ranging 

from targets and optics for the National 

Ignition Facility to biocompatible 

neural-interface microelectronics for 

biomedical research. 

The Art of Precision Machining

1981 LODTM Groundbreaking
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 70 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 71

Soldiers could reduce the severity of traumatic brain injury by wearing 

one-size-larger military helmets fitted with thicker pads. In a study 

conducted for the U.S. Army and the Joint IED Defeat Organization, 

Livermore researchers used experiments and ParaDyn simulations 

to examine the response of various helmet pad systems to battlefieldrelevant blunt and ballistic impacts. Increasing current pad thickness 

by a quarter inch can make a large difference in reducing head 

accelerations. How this difference influences brain response and 

possible injury is a complex issue and still being studied.

Mitigating Traumatic Brain Injury

A DYNA3D calculation shows the crush-up of a B83 strategic bomb’s nose cone upon impact. Simulations were in excellent 

agreement with the results of experiments, such as this drop test with a B83 test unit landing on a rigid steel plate. Use 

of DYNA3D accelerated the B83 development program and lowered costs by reducing the number of actual crash-test 

experiments needed. 

The automotive industry has used LS-DYNA to make great leaps in safety research. 

This crashed car was simulated with more than 1.5 million points. (Image courtesy of 

computerhistory.org)

In 1982, a growing list of users 

benefited from the publication of the 

first User’s Manual for DYNA3D. This 

three-dimensional computer code was 

developed by Laboratory mechanical 

engineers to meet the needs of the 

nuclear weapons program, and it grew 

to become a remarkable “swords to 

plowshares” story. Interest in DYNA3D 

rapidly expanded from a manual to an 

international conference on the code’s 

applicability to a wide range of structural 

analysis problems. The computer code 

has been used by industry for making 

everything from safer planes, trains, and 

automobiles to better beer cans. 

Much of the early incentive to develop 

DYNA3D, short for dynamics in three 

dimensions, arose from challenges 

presented by the B83 program. The 

B83 nuclear bomb was to be released 

from a low-flying aircraft, and even 

though it was to be slowed by a 

parachute, the bomb would have to 

survive an impact with the ground or 

whatever irregular structure it hit at up to 

75 miles per hour. Lawrence Livermore 

and Sandia national laboratories 

needed an affordable program of tests 

and simulations to design the B83 and 

certify its crashworthiness. DYNA3D 

was used to model the structural 

performance of the B83, a complex 

design using a wide variety of materials, 

and it saved millions of dollars and 

years of time. 

An unclassified code, DYNA3D soon 

began spreading to private industry in 

one of the Laboratory’s best examples 

of software technology transfer. The 

list of early industrial users of DYNA3D 

reads like a “Who’s Who” of major 

firms—General Motors, DaimlerChrysler, Alcoa, General Electric, 

Lockheed Missiles and Space, General 

Dynamics, Boeing Commercial 

Airplane Group, Adolph Coors Co., 

Rockwell International, and FMC Corp. 

DYNA3D’s developer, John Hallquist, 

founded Livermore Software Technology 

Corporation in 1987 and moved 

DYNA3D “off campus” as LS-DYNA. 

Altogether, more than 2,500 companies 

worldwide have reaped benefits in 

cost savings and safety advancements 

with LS-DYNA’s stress and deformation 

prediction capabilities. 

In particular, use of LS-DYNA has been 

nothing short of revolutionary for the 

automotive industry. Crash simulations 

to predict vehicle behavior in collisions 

reduce the need for expensive tests 

with real cars. Seatbelts, airbags, and 

other specialized vehicle components 

are also designed with the help of 

LS-DYNA. The industry has seen 

multi- billion-dollar savings over the 

last three decades.

Since work started on it in 1976, DYNA3D 

has blossomed from a small 5,000-

line computer code into a 150,000-line 

package. In the late 1990s, Livermore 

researchers developed a version for 

parallel computers, called ParaDyn, 

which has undergone continuous 

improvement since 2000. Among its many 

applications, ParaDyn has been used 

to estimate debris fields from satellite 

collisions in space and to improve the 

design of helmets for U.S. military forces 

to reduce traumatic brain injury.

Technology Transfer with DYNA3D

1982 DYNA3D
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 72 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 73

Robert Laughlin (left) received the Nobel Prize for physics from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf at the ceremonies in Stockholm, 

Sweden, on December 10, 1998.

The road to the Laboratory’s Nobel Prize 

in physics was a 15-year journey, one 

that winner Robert B. Laughlin credits to 

Livermore’s strength in team science. 

Laughlin earned his Nobel in 1998, 

but it was in 1983 that Physical 

Review Letters published 

his elegant theoretical work 

explaining the so-called 

fractional quantum Hall 

effect. The effect had been 

experimentally discovered 

in 1982 by Horst Stormer 

of Columbia University and 

Daniel Tsui of Princeton 

University, who shared 

the Nobel with Laughlin. Its 

key surprise is that collective 

motions of electrons can behave 

like a fraction of the electrical charge 

for one electron. Previously, the only 

example of fractional charges in nature 

had been quarks. 

By the time Laughlin’s research was 

lauded in ceremonies held in Stockholm, 

Sweden, on December 10, 1998, 

Laughlin had become a professor 

of physics at Stanford University. But 

the work that led to that Nobel Prize 

was born in the Laboratory’s condensed 

matter physics division. It was there 

that Laughlin, a solid-state postdoctoral 

physicist, benefited from Livermore’s 

multidisciplinary approach to science— 

first championed by Laboratory 

cofounder and Nobel winner 

Ernest O. Lawrence. 

Laughlin learned the ins and outs of 

plasma physics and the mathematics 

of classical hot liquids from physicists 

such as Hugh DeWitt, David Young, 

Marvin Ross, and Forrest Rogers. While 

waiting for his security clearance, he 

passed time by learning Monte Carlo 

simulation methods, studying the 

experimental literature of fluids, and 

making computer models of fluids. 

While thinking of the possibilities 

for the quantum Hall wave function, 

Laughlin realized “it was a fluid 

problem.” He believes that he would 

not have seen that if he had not been 

interacting with fellow H-Division 

physicists, who understood fluids. 

Although some experts think the 

fractional quantum Hall effect research 

could lead to advances in computers 

or power generation, Laughlin 

sees the main value of his work as 

revealing fundamental insights into 

quantum mechanics. 

Laughlin has the distinction of being 

the first national laboratory employee 

ever to win the Nobel Prize. He is the 

71st winner who worked or conducted 

research at a DOE institution or whose 

work was funded by DOE, and he is the 

11th University of California employee to 

receive a Nobel Prize in physics. 

As a professor at Stanford University, 

Laughlin continued his association with 

the Laboratory. His work stands as the 

hallmark of the world-renowned science 

conducted at Livermore, work that has 

earned hundreds of other scientists, like 

Laughlin, Ernest O. Lawrence awards, 

Teller medals, distinctions from every 

worldwide scientific society, and even 

the Nobel Prize.

Award-Winning Science and Technology

1983 Laughlin Nobel Work

(AP photo/Jonas Ekstromer)
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 74 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 75

LLNL researchers reconfigured one arm of the Nova laser to achieve a 

highly significant advance in laser technology: a petawatt laser. In 1996, 

the petawatt laser set a power record of 1.25 quadrillion (a million billion) 

watts—more than 1,200 times the U.S. power generating capacity—

for a duration less than a trillionth of a second. The laser’s ultrashort 

pulses and extremely high irradiance opened up entirely new physical 

regimes to study. Experiments have split atoms, created antimatter, and 

generated a well-focused, intense proton beam—all firsts for a laser. 

In 2016, the Laboratory set new records with the High-RepetitionRate Advanced Petawatt Laser (HAPLS) system, which is designed 

to generate 10 pulses per second, each 30 quadrillionths of second 

long with greater than one petawatt peak power. The system includes 

many breakthrough technologies, including the use of laser diodes as 

flashlamps, which reduces system size and power requirements. HAPLS 

has been delivered to the Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) Beamlines 

facility in the Czech Republic, where it will provide experimenters with 

unique opportunities to advance their understanding of the fundamental 

nature of energy and matter.

Pioneering the Petawatt Laser

In 1984, when it began 

operation, Nova was the 

world’s most powerful laser. 

Laser pulses were produced 

with 10 beams (right), which 

were directed to a 5-meterdiameter target chamber 

(below left). Inside the 

chamber (below right), the 

laser light was focused on 

BB-sized targets. 

In the early 1980s, researchers were 

exploring how to produce x-ray laser 

beams initiated by nuclear explosives 

at the Nevada Test Site. At the same 

time, success was achieved creating a 

a soft x ray (with a wavelength of about 

200 angstroms) laser in a laboratory 

setting using the Novette laser, 

which was a test bed for the design 

of Nova. In December 1984, Nova 

became operational, enabling further 

groundbreaking research in x-ray lasers 

and many other areas of laser science 

and technology. 

Ten times more powerful than Shiva, 

its predecessor, Nova was the world’s 

most powerful laser. Its 10 beams 

produced laser pulses that delivered 

up to 100 trillion watts of infrared laser 

power for a billionth of a second. 

For that brief instant, its power 

was 25 times greater than the total 

produced by all U.S. power plants. 

Unlike Shiva, Nova included crystal 

plates to convert the infrared light to 

ultraviolet light—needed for inertial 

confinement fusion (ICF) experiments. 

In 1986, Nova ICF experiments 

produced a record-breaking laser 

fusion yield of 11 trillion fusion 

neutrons. The following year, Nova 

compressed a fusion fuel pellet to 

about 1/30th its original diameter, 

very close to that needed for high 

gain (fusion output greater than 

energy input). The laser exceeded its 

maximum performance specifications 

in 1989 when Nova generated more 

than 120 kilojoules of laser energy at 

its fundamental infrared wavelength 

in a 2.5-nanosecond pulse. In 

addition, in 1996, one arm of Nova 

was reconfigured as the world’s first 

petawatt laser (see the box).

About 30 percent of Nova’s shots 

were used by the nuclear weapons 

program. When the United States 

ceased nuclear testing, laser facilities 

became even more important for 

defense research, and the portion of 

Nova shots dedicated to the weapons 

program increased considerably. 

Researchers using Nova continued 

obtaining high-temperature data 

necessary to validate the computer 

codes used to model nuclear 

weapons physics. 

Livermore also developed increasingly 

sophisticated diagnostic instruments 

to measure and observe what was 

happening with the laser beam, in 

the target, in the interaction between 

the laser light and the plasma, and 

in the fusion process. Some of the 

technologies provided spin-off 

advances, such as improved medical 

technologies, femtosecond laser 

machining, and techniques for using 

extreme ultraviolet light for lithography 

to produce smaller, faster computer 

chips (see Year 1999). 

Breakthrough Laser Science and 

Technology

1984 Nova

Nova served as the proving ground for 

the 192-beam National Ignition Facility 

(NIF). Achievements on Nova helped 

scientists to convince the Department 

of Energy of the viability and probable 

ultimate success of achieving 

thermonuclear ignition on NIF (see Year 

1997). In May 1999, Nova fired its last 

shot after 14 years of operation and 

more than 14,000 experiments.
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 76 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 77

Before completion of the Contained Firing Facility in 2001, tests at 

the Bunker 801 complex were conducted outdoors (top). Now the 

complex (middle left) includes an indoor firing chamber (middle 

right), which contains debris and minimizes the environmental 

consequences of tests that use up to 60 kilograms of high 

explosives. The facility is equipped with the latest diagnostics, 

including electronic image-converter framing cameras (bottom). 

In 1985, Livermore completed the 

Bunker 801 project to upgrade 

what was the very first facility (then 

called Bunker 301) at Site 300, 

the Laboratory’s remote test site. 

The newly refurbished bunker—a 

complex of protected enclosures, 

largely underground—became a 

fully modernized hydrodynamic test 

facility to gather data crucial for 

assessing the operation of a nuclear 

weapon’s primary stage. Until project 

completion, weapon designers relied 

largely on technologies from the 1960s 

for much of their hydrodynamics 

experimentation. 

After the upgrade, Bunker 801 

contained the most modern 

diagnostics available. They included a 

Fabry–Perot interferometer to measure 

the velocity of explosion-driven 

surfaces, 10 high-speed cameras to 

capture the progressive movement of 

a pit’s outer surface, and an electricalprobe diagnostics system for recording 

data from hundreds of shorting pins 

that time the arrival of the interior 

surface. Additionally, an important 

diagnostic tool was the Flash X-Ray 

(FXR) machine, a 16-megaelectronvolt 

linear-induction accelerator (see Year 

1960). Electrons from the FXR strike a 

target to produce an intense burst of 

x rays, which are used to image a mock 

nuclear weapon primary as it implodes. 

Built between 1978 and 1982, FXR 

produced five times the x-ray dose of 

previous machines in one-third the pulse 

length. Much denser objects could be 

radiographed and with less blur because 

of the shorter pulse. 

Continual upgrades to Bunker 801 

since 1985 have kept the facility 

equipped with the most modern 

capabilities. For example, in the 1990s, 

Laboratory scientists and engineers 

improved the beam quality of the FXR 

so that a higher overall x-ray dose is 

produced. In addition, the Laboratory 

developed a gamma-ray camera 

to record the radiographic images. 

With these upgrades, scientists in 

1998 were able to carry out the first 

“core punch” experiments on mock 

pits for two stockpiled weapons—the 

W76 submarine-launched ballistic 

missile warhead and the B83 strategic 

bomb. In core punches, images are 

obtained of the detailed shape of the 

gas cavity inside a highly compressed 

pit. In 2017, FXR carried out its first 

double-pulse imaging experiment, 

enabling researchers to follow the time 

evolution of the implosion process. 

This added capability was the result 

of a multilaboratory collaboration that 

entailed numerous upgrades to FXR 

and its diagnostic systems.

In 2001, Bunker 801 became the 

Contained Firing Facility through a 

major upgrade, the addition of a firing 

chamber to the complex. This addition 

allows debris from test explosions to 

be contained in a more environmentally 

benign manner than ever—dramatically 

reducing particle emissions and 

minimizing the generation of hazardous 

waste, noise, and blast pressures. With 

walls up to 2 meters thick and protected 

by steel plating, the firing chamber is 

designed to withstand repetitive tests that 

use up to 60 kilograms of high explosives.

Improving Implosion Images

1985 Bunker 801
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 78 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 79

In 1982, President Reagan set up a commission led by Professor Charles M. Townes (University of California at 

Berkeley) to evaluate basing options for the MX missile. The commission sought input from a variety of sources, 

including weapon systems analysts from Livermore’s D Division. 

Upon conclusion of the study, Townes wrote to University President David Saxon: “It was clear that most of the 

industrial organizations were quite cautious about giving information or making conclusions which would be 

contrary to Pentagon policy. I was personally impressed that the many persons who helped us from Livermore 

seemed completely objective in examining the technical facts, in investigating what needed to be looked into, and 

in being willing to state plainly, though diplomatically, where they did not agree... I make the above point because 

I think, contrary to some opinions, Laboratory personnel are often important in giving helpful perspective and 

ameliorating U.S. nuclear policy, and that this is partly because they are protected by the management structure 

from the obvious pressures to which commercial or governmental laboratories are subjected.” 

Studies of MX Basing

Engineering tests supported 

the development of the W87 

warhead for the Peacekeeper 

missile, which carried 10 

Mk21 reentry vehicles with 

W87s. Through a stockpile 

life extension program 

completed in 2004, W87 

warheads were refurbished 

to extend their long-term use 

on Minuteman III ICBMs. 

In March 1986, the first production 

unit of the W87 warhead for the 

Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic 

missile (ICBM) was completed at the 

Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas. This 

event culminated a four-year advanced 

development program executed by 

the Laboratory in close coordination 

with Sandia National Laboratories 

and the U.S. Air Force and its 

contractors, particularly AVCO, which 

was responsible for the Mk21 reentry 

vehicle. Peacekeeper was designed to 

carry 10 independently targetable Mk21 

reentry vehicles with W87 warheads. 

The W87 design is unique for strategic 

ballistic missile systems in its use of 

an insensitive high explosive (see Year 

1976) and a fire-resistant pit design. 

Both features help to minimize the 

possibility of plutonium dispersal in the 

event of an accident. First incorporated 

in Livermore’s W84 warhead design for 

the ground-launched cruise missile, a 

fire-resistant pit includes in the weapon 

primary a metal shell that is able to 

keep molten plutonium contained. 

Both the W84 and W87 also include 

detonator strong links that provide 

additional safety assurance. 

The enhanced safety design features of 

the W87 were incorporated at an early 

stage of the development program when 

Air Force plans called for Peacekeeper, 

at that time known as MX, to be based in 

the Multiple Protective Shelter mode. To 

improve missile survivability in an attack, 

many moderately hardened shelters 

would be built, and the ICBMs would 

be clandestinely shuttled among them, 

forcing an attacker to target all shelters 

or to guess which held a missile. This 

plan was later abandoned in favor of 

basing the missile in Minuteman silos. 

With the signing of the START II 

treaty, the U.S. chose to retire 

Peacekeeper ICBMs and to deploy 

a large fraction of its W87 warheads 

on Minuteman III missiles. 

To prepare for long-term continuing 

deployment of the W87, a life extension 

program (LEP) for the W87 was initiated 

in 1995 to make some mechanical 

modifications. The first refurbished 

warhead under this program was 

produced in 1999. Extensive ground 

and flight testing together with detailed 

calculations using the newly available 

Blue Pacific supercomputer preceded 

formal certification of the refurbished 

W87s in April 2001. Certification without 

nuclear testing was an important early 

demonstration of new capabilities 

developed under the Stockpile 

Stewardship Program. Work finished on 

the final unit in November 2004, marking 

the Stockpile Stewardship Program’s first 

successful conclusion of an LEP.

ICBM Warheads with Modern 

Safety Features 

1986 W87
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 80 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 81

In their investigations in the early 1980s, Livermore researchers 

chose chromosome 19 to study because evidence suggested that it 

had a relatively high concentration of genes. That hunch proved to 

be correct. The gene density is more than twice the genome-wide 

average. Chromosome 19 codes for more than 1,400 genes, most of 

which are important for general human health. Many of these genes 

are associated with diseases such as insulin-dependent diabetes, 

myotonic dystrophy, migraine, Alzheimer’s, elevated blood cholesterol, 

and prostate-specific antigen (PSA). In work spanning two decades, 

LLNL completed the difficult task of mapping and began the enormous 

task of sequencing chromosome 19—work that was completed at JGI. 

Important ensuing studies focused on understanding the function, 

regulation, and evolution of the genes. 

LLNL’s Long History with Chromosome 19

In the late 1990s, the 

sequencing process at the 

Joint Genome Institute (JGI) 

had numerous steps, four 

of which are shown here: 

Colonies of cells containing 

human DNA are selected 

from a cell culture plate 

(right). The CRS robot system 

(upper right) places a DNA 

sample plate onto a plate 

washer for purification of 

the DNA. A JGI researcher 

(lower right) removes 

a plate of purified DNA 

from a plate washer. A JGI 

research technician (far right) 

reviews the sequencing data 

produced by one of JGI’s 

84 DNA capillary sequencers. 

In 1987, Livermore biomedical 

researchers joined a DOE initiative that 

would determine the entire sequence 

of DNA that makes up the human 

genome. Chromosome 19 became 

the focus of a new Human Genome 

center at Livermore. At the same 

time, Los Alamos began work on 

chromosome 16 and Lawrence Berkeley 

chose chromosome 5. The intensive 

work of decoding had begun and grew 

to be an international industry. 

Livermore’s involvement in genetic 

research stretches back almost to its first 

biological program, chartered in 1963 to 

study the human health consequences 

of environmental radiation exposure 

(see Year 1963). A natural extension 

was to explore how radiation and 

chemicals interact with human genetic 

material, mutating DNA and leading to 

cancers and other adverse effects. The 

Laboratory’s experiments to study repair 

of DNA damaged by radiation focused on 

chromosome 19 (see the box). By 1984, 

Livermore and Los Alamos were working 

together to build human chromosomespecific gene libraries. Advanced 

chromosome-sorting capabilities, 

essential to the genome initiative, had 

been developed at both laboratories. 

In 1984, DOE’s Office of Health and 

Environmental Research (OHER) 

cosponsored a meeting in Alta, Utah, 

that highlighted the value of acquiring 

a reference sequence of the human 

genome. Leading scientists were invited 

by OHER to a subsequent international 

conference, held in March 1986 in 

Santa Fe, New Mexico. Participants at 

this landmark meeting concluded that 

mapping and then sequencing the 

human genome were desirable and 

feasible goals, and DOE became the 

first federal agency to commit to these 

goals by launching its Human Genome 

Initiative. This decision was endorsed in 

an April 1987 report by a DOE Biological 

and Environmental Research Advisory 

Committee, which noted that DOE was 

particularly well-suited for the task 

because of its demonstrated expertise 

in managing complex, long-term 

multidisciplinary projects. 

In 1990, DOE joined with the National 

Institutes of Health and other laboratories 

around the world to kick off the Human 

Genome Project, the largest biological 

research project ever undertaken. Thanks 

to the commercial development of 

automated, high-throughput sequencing 

machines, a rough-draft sequence of 

the entire 3 billion base pairs of human 

DNA—all 23 chromosomes—was 

completed in 2001, several years ahead 

of schedule. DOE’s Joint Genome 

Institute (JGI), a sequencing production 

facility in Walnut Creek, California, 

sequenced chromosomes 5, 16, and 19. 

JGI combined the efforts of Lawrence 

Livermore, Lawrence Berkeley, and Los 

Alamos national laboratories. The institute 

is now operated by Lawrence Berkeley 

with participation by LLNL.

Shortly after JGI had completed the 

human genome, microbial genome 

sequencing became the next exciting 

area for research in both medical 

and environmental areas. Because of 

improvements in sequencing technology 

and the small size of microbial 

genomes, microbiology experienced a 

renaissance. The research provided 

a step toward the Laboratory’s current 

focus on applied genomics in support 

of important national problems in public 

health, biosecurity, and energy security 

(see Year 2011).

Deciphering the Human Genetic Code

1987 Human Genome Project
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 82 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 83

Heralding an emerging 

period of cooperation, U.S. 

and Soviet flags fly side by 

side atop the experiment 

tower at the Nevada Test Site 

during the first of two Joint 

Verification Experiments. 

Associate Director J. I. Davis leads a tour of the Nova laser for senior managers from 

Arzamas and Chelyabinsk (the Russian counterparts to Los Alamos and Livermore) as 

part of a groundbreaking series of U.S.–Russian laboratory visits in 1992.

In 1988, a landmark event in U.S.–Soviet 

relations occurred when Soviet and 

U.S. teams for the first time conducted 

measurements of nuclear detonations 

at each other’s nuclear testing sites. 

The event, called the Joint Verification 

Experiment (JVE), allowed Soviet and 

U.S. scientists to become more familiar 

with characteristics of the verification 

technologies that were proposed to 

monitor compliance with the Threshold 

Test Ban Treaty and the Peaceful Nuclear 

Explosions Treaty. The intent of both 

treaties was to limit the yield of nuclear 

explosions to no more than 150 kilotons. 

Planning for the JVE took place in 

Geneva, Switzerland, and at the two 

nations’ nuclear test sites. A U.S. 

delegation made a familiarization 

visit to the Semipalatinsk Test Site 

early in January 1988, and a Soviet 

delegation visited the Department of 

Energy’s Nevada Test Site (NTS) a 

short while later. 

Russian scientists were on hand to 

witness the Kearsarge event that 

was detonated August 17, 1988, on 

Pahute Mesa at NTS. As a symbol of 

international good faith and cooperation, 

the Soviet Union flag was raised to the 

top of the emplacement tower next to 

the U.S. flag. Nearly 150 people from the 

U.S. traveled to the Semipalatinsk test 

site to participate in the preparation of 

the Shagan test on September 14, 1988. 

Forty-five U.S. personnel witnessed the 

event, standing just 4 kilometers from the 

test ground zero. Both nuclear tests were 

in the yield range of 100 to 150 kilotons 

of explosive power. Livermore personnel 

were heavily involved in fielding the 

two explosions, with the Laboratory 

contributing equipment, instrumentation, 

and technical advice. 

For each of the two tests, both sides 

made hydrodynamic yield measurements 

in the emplacement hole and in a satellite 

hole located about 11 meters from 

the emplacement hole. U.S. scientists 

measured nuclear yield based on close-in 

observations of the velocity of the shock 

wave generated by the nuclear explosion 

using a technology called CORRTEX 

(continuous reflectometry radius versus 

time experiment). The Soviets also made 

CORRTEX-like measurements as well 

as a hydrodynamic measurement using 

switches. The satellite holes at the test 

sites were drilled by U.S. personnel with 

U.S. equipment because of a professed 

Soviet lack of such capability. 

Many American–Russian friendships 

were forged during the JVE, which was 

a turning point in Soviet relations with 

the West. The more open atmosphere 

preceded the collapse of the Soviet 

Union and prevailed for nearly two 

decades. When diplomatic conditions 

permitted, Laboratory scientists were 

frequent travelers to Russia and the newly 

independent states. They monitored and 

assisted the progress of arms reductions; 

pursued cooperative efforts to better 

protect, control, and account for nuclear 

materials; and collaborated with scientists 

on nonweapons-related projects.

Reducing the Nuclear Threat

1988 Joint Verification Experiment

In 2013, after 20 years of operation, the U.S.–Russia Highly Enriched 

Uranium (HEU) Purchase Agreement achieved its goal of converting 

more than 500 metric tons of HEU to safer low-enriched uranium for 

use in American nuclear power plants (shipping containers are shown). 

Livermore researchers supported the HEU Transparency Program by 

serving on and coordinating the U.S. monitoring team. They provided 

advanced equipment 

such as an LLNLdeveloped portable 

nondestructive 

assay system 

and maintained 

a repository of 

the collected 

monitoring data. 

HEU Transparency Program 

Photo credit: U.S. Enrichment Corporation.
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 84 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 85

On February 1, 1989, DOE formed the Computer Incident Advisory 

Capability (CIAC) at Livermore. A continuous stream of security 

incidents had begun the previous year, affecting computer systems 

and networks throughout the world. Crackers and intruders made 

bold headlines with their stealthful entry into government computers, 

commercial equipment, and telephone systems. The world of computers 

was proving to be a dangerous one and clearly something needed to 

be done. CIAC’s primary mission has been to help protect the DOE 

computer community, currently by providing crucial support to 

the DOE Joint Cybersecurity Coordination Center. 

CIAC: Keeping Cyber Space Safe

Eugene D. Brooks III, leader 

of early Laboratory efforts to 

explore potential benefits of 

parallel computing, displays 

a cluster of processors used 

in the BBN-ACI TC-2000.

First available from Bolt, Beranek and Newman Advanced Computers, Inc., in 1989, the 

BBN-ACI TC-2000 had a multiprocessing architecture that allowed individual processors 

to be partitioned into clusters and dynamically reallocated. Because data could be shared 

within and between clusters, the computer was able to integrate distinct segments of a 

complex calculation.

In October 1989, the Laboratory 

Directed Research and Development 

office funded the ambitious Massively 

Parallel Computing Initiative (MPCI), 

which cut across directorates at the 

Laboratory and helped redefine highperformance computing as massively 

parallel computing. The exploratory 

work performed as part of the initiative—

and comparable efforts at Los Alamos 

and Sandia national laboratories—

paved the way for the Accelerated 

Strategic Computing Initiative (or ASCI, 

now the Advanced Simulation and 

Computing (ASC) Program), which is 

a vitally important part of the Stockpile 

Stewardship Program. 

Led by Eugene D. Brooks III, the threeyear initiative explored the relevance 

to Laboratory computer applications of 

then-accelerating trends in commercial 

microprocessors. Advances in very-largescale integration had increased both 

computer chip speed and reliability so 

much that massive, coordinated clusters 

of microprocessors were sometimes 

rivaling the performance of customdesigned supercomputers. For example, 

early tests here with radiation transport 

codes (used in weapons simulations) 

suggested a factor of 20 advantage for 

the massively parallel approach. 

In 1990, the MPCI project acquired 

Livermore’s first substantial, onsite 

massively parallel resource, a 64-

node BBN-ACI TC-2000 machine 

that was upgraded to a full 128-node 

configuration a year later. Scientists 

from across the Laboratory’s technical 

directorates probed the software 

development challenges of effectively 

using this new architecture by running 

a variety of computer problems on 

the MPCI machine. By 1992, early 

results were already available in such 

diverse areas as particle-physics event 

simulation, multidimensional numerical 

analysis, parallel graphics rendering 

algorithms, and sedimentation modeling. 

Each MPCI annual report not only 

encouraged use of this new approach 

to scientific computing but also 

summarized the latest trial programming 

techniques and output evaluations for 

Laboratory researchers. 

One rewarding long-term effect of the 

early MPCI work was a heightened 

desire to widely share centrally managed 

massively parallel computing resources 

among many unclassified projects 

at the Laboratory. In 1996, a formal 

Multiprogrammatic and Institutional 

Computing (M&IC) initiative began 

providing fast, high-capacity parallel 

computers to researchers throughout 

the Laboratory and their collaborators. 

Supported by institutional funding and 

managed by the Livermore Computing 

program, M&IC procures the computing 

hardware and covers operational costs—

leveraging ASCI/ASC investments in 

high-performance computing. 

The Laboratory’s continued investment 

in M&IC has repeatedly enabled 

groundbreaking unclassified simulations 

that have advanced scientific discovery 

and Laboratory missions. Software 

innovations at Livermore developed 

for use on parallel computational 

resources have made possible quantum 

molecular dynamics simulations based 

on first-principles physics (see Year 

2003), greatly improved modeling of 

laser–plasma interactions in fusion 

ignition experiments and enhanced 

studies to quantify the key uncertainties 

that influence the predictions of global 

climate simulations.

Exploring the Future of Scientific 

Computing

1989 Computing in Parallel
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 86 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 87

The Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the Cold War ended, 

and significant reductions were being made in strategic 

arsenals. Both the Soviet Union and the United States 

entered a nuclear testing moratorium in 1993 while 

recognizing an important continuing role for nuclear 

weapons in the post–Cold War world. The United States 

formally began its Stockpile Stewardship Program to 

maintain a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear deterrent 

in 1995. As a National Nuclear Security Administration 

laboratory, Livermore is a principal contributor to 

the program. 

In the post–Cold War world, the Laboratory broadly 

contributes to the nation’s science and technology base, 

but its defining mission remains national security. That 

mission is broader than stockpile stewardship. The 

invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the subsequent discovery 

of aggressive Iraqi programs to develop weapons of 

mass destruction made clear that the world remained a 

dangerous place—complicated by the uncertain status of 

nuclear weapons and materials in a fragmented Soviet 

Union. Livermore responded by quickly expanding its 

analysis and technology-development program to prevent 

proliferation at its source, detect and reverse proliferant 

activities, and respond to the threat or use of weapons of 

mass destruction.

Focus on national security

Leadership New

C. Bruce Tarter

(1994 • 2002)

The Nineties
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 88 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 89

Standing next to the Center 

for Accelerator Mass 

Spectrometry’s tandem 

electrostatic Van de Graaff 

accelerator, physicist 

Jay Davis explains the 

center’s operations and the 

many applications of AMS. 

CAMS began operation in 1989 and now processes about 25,000 samples per year for 

its users (above). With support from the National Institutes of Health, the Laboratory has 

added a smaller AMS capability (not shown) dedicated to biomedical analyses. 

In 1990, soon after the Center for 

Accelerator Mass Spectrometry 

(CAMS) started operations, the first 

biomedical experiment using AMS was 

performed at Livermore. It measured 

the effects on rat DNA of a suspected 

carcinogen that results from cooking 

meat. From the beginning, CAMS has 

proved to be a highly versatile research 

facility, contributing to the success of 

a wide range of Laboratory programs 

and the research projects of many 

external users. 

AMS is a sensitive technique for 

measuring concentrations of specific 

isotopes in very small samples—

able to seek out, for example, one 

carbon-14 isotope out of a quadrillion 

(a million billion) other carbon atoms. 

The technique enables Laboratory 

researchers to diagnose the fission 

products of atomic tests and monitor 

the spread of nuclear weapons by 

detecting radioisotopes in air, water, 

and soil samples. In addition, AMS 

supports studies in environmental 

quality, climate change, seismology, 

archaeology, biomedical science, and 

many other areas of scientific research. 

The opportunity for a multiuser AMS 

capability was recognized by Jay Davis, 

at the time a division leader, who lined 

up support for the new accelerator 

facility from programs throughout the 

Laboratory. Research efforts benefited 

from one of Livermore’s first large-scale 

initiatives in its Laboratory Directed 

Research and Development program. 

In addition, funding from the University 

of California (UC) helped to support 

construction and continuing use of 

CAMS by UC faculty. To help lower 

costs, the designers used as many 

spare components as they could 

find. The accelerator came from the 

University of Washington, and a couple 

of the largest magnets had previous 

lives in an electron beam accelerator at 

Stanford University. 

Established in 1988, CAMS was 

unique from the start because of 

the use of high-quality beam optics 

and a computer-control system 

that allows large numbers of highprecision measurements to be taken. 

The capabilities exceeded those of 

other AMS facilities because of the 

programmatic need to measure a 

diverse array of isotopes. An initial 

optimistic projection was that someday 

5,000 to 10,000 measurements could 

be handled each year. CAMS quickly 

exceeded that goal. As the the world’s 

most versatile and productive AMS 

facility, CAMS performs more than 

25,000 analyses per year. 

In 1999, the National Institutes of 

Health (NIH) awarded Livermore a 

Biotechnology Center grant to make 

AMS available to the biosciences 

community. CAMS became the first 

National Resource for Biomedical 

AMS. The facility provides biomedical 

researchers—currently from more 

than 60 institutions—the ability to 

accurately measure very low levels 

of carbon-14 and other radioisotopes 

used in tracer studies. Numerous 

technology upgrades have enhanced 

the Laboratory’s biomedical AMS 

capabilities, including the installation 

of a $3-million, NIH-funded, dedicated 

bioAMS system and the development 

of much-simplified and faster 

processes for sample preparation. 

LLNL researchers are also working to 

develop and validate a totally new type 

of spectrometer that will be smaller, 

less expensive, and simpler to operate 

and could be more widely deployed in 

biomedical research laboratories.

Detecting One in a Quadrillion

1990 CAMS
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 90 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 91

Laboratory physicist Jay Davis, twice a member of UNSCOM/IAEA 

inspection teams, found the Iraqi isotope separation technology 

was similar to that developed at the University of California (UC) at 

Berkeley in the late 1940s to enrich uranium for the first atom bomb. 

Called the calutron because of its UC origin, the technology was 

abandoned by the United States because of cost. However, it was 

an excellent choice for Iraq in that calutrons required few outside 

resources. Davis estimated the Iraqi Manhattan Project–style effort 

at between $6 and $8 billion and noted that the quality of work was 

“every bit as good as we could do today.” 

Laboratory engineer Iraqi Calutrons

Bill Nelson inspects the 

bombed-out reactor 

and nuclear research 

facilities at Tuwaitha (just 

outside Baghdad) during 

the first inspection after 

Desert Storm. 

At the end of Operation Desert Storm, 

the world was full of rumors about 

Iraq’s nuclear capabilities and how 

much of them remained following an 

intense bombing campaign. In May 

1991, a specially selected team, under 

the auspices of the United Nations 

Special Commission (UNSCOM) 

and the International Atomic Energy 

Agency (IAEA), was assembled for 

the first inspection of Iraqi nuclear 

facilities under UN Security Council 

Resolution 687. Laboratory engineer 

Bill Nelson was a member of that team. 

The first and subsequent UNSCOM/

IAEA inspections uncovered evidence 

of an advanced Iraqi nuclear program, 

code-named Petro-Chemical Project 3. 

At Tarmiya, inspectors uncovered 

Project 946, a uranium enrichment 

production facility that the Iraqis 

attempted to hide by removing railings 

from the floor of the building, pouring a 

new layer of concrete, and putting rubble 

on top. They had developed a first-class 

electromagnetic isotope separation 

capability with supporting research and 

industrial infrastructure. Production of 

10 to 30 kilograms of highly enriched 

uranium, a key component of nuclear 

weapons, might have occurred within 

two years. 

Perhaps the defining moment came in 

September 1991, when UNSCOM/IAEA 

Team 6 discovered a large cache of 

documents. Two Laboratory scientists 

were on the team; another was at the UN 

supporting the operation. For five days, 

a standoff occurred in Baghdad between 

the team of inspectors, which wanted to 

remove the documents from where they 

were found, and hundreds of heavily 

armed Iraqi soldiers. Sleeping on pieces 

of cardboard in the building’s parking lot 

and sometimes without even water, the 

group refused to leave without the papers 

they considered to be the smoking gun. 

The documents indeed proved critical in 

establishing a knowledge baseline of the 

Iraqi program. 

Iraqi facilities were inspected for 

any evidence of weapons of mass 

destruction—not just nuclear, but also 

chemical and biological weapons and 

ballistic missiles. The teams seized, had 

destroyed, or subjected to monitoring 

impermissible equipment. In all, more 

than a dozen Laboratory researchers 

took part in various inspections until 

the UN removed all personnel in 1998 

because of an increasingly hostile 

atmosphere. Livermore scientists also 

developed, installed, and maintained 

sophisticated inspection and monitoring 

equipment in Iraq, such as automated 

Inspecting for Weapons of 

Mass Destruction

1991 Iraq Inspections

cameras and microwave 

communication links for remote 

surveillance of facilities that could 

be used in missile production. 

Livermore continues to provide 

technology, analysis, and 

expertise to help prevent the 

spread or use of weapons of mass 

destruction. Soon after the Iraq 

inspections began, Laboratory 

Director John Nuckolls formed the 

Nonproliferation, Arms Control, 

and International Security (NAI) 

Directorate. The new directorate 

merged into a comprehensive 

program of research activities 

pertaining to nonproliferation, 

including proliferation prevention, 

detection, and reversal, and 

response to potential proliferant 

states and terrorists. NAI evolved 

into the Global Security Principal 

Directorate.
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 92 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 93

In July 1989, a Laboratory press release announced: “Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has 

begun a program to improve the quality of models for predicting potential climate change due to the 

so-called ‘greenhouse effect.’”

“The new effort—a collaborative one involving research groups across the nation—is called the 

Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison. ...The Chief Scientist of the new 

program, Lawrence Gates, said that the major task for the program in its first few years of operation 

will be to work with the various national and international modeling groups to diagnose and compare 

a series of increasingly stringent numerical ‘experiments’ with the models.” 

The Founding of PCMDI

W. Lawrence Gates, an 

internationally known 

climate scientist from 

Oregon State University, 

became the Chief Scientist 

and first leader of PCMDI. 

He set as the goal of the 

program’s first studies 

“to identify the model 

improvements needed to 

enable more reliable regional 

climate predictions to be 

made over the next decade.”

Studies conducted in the 1990s used ocean circulation models to study northerly 

movement of the carbon dioxide soaked up by cold water in the Southern Ocean. Efforts 

are under way to develop an integrated climate and carbon-cycle model. 

In the late 1950s, Laboratory 

physicist Cecil “Chuck” Leith 

and his group applied numerical 

methods used for weapons 

physics to develop the first global 

general circulation model, which 

was able to simulate the behavior 

of large weather systems. Results 

were displayed in a movie (left) 

of the model’s weather on a map 

centered at the North Pole. 

In 1992, Laboratory atmospheric 

scientist Larry Gates issued The 

Validation of Atmospheric Models, the 

first of a continuing series of reports 

that would radically alter global 

climate change research and the way 

models characterize climate. The 

report came five years after Gates, 

an atmospheric science professor at 

Oregon State University, had come 

to the Laboratory on a sabbatical. 

One year later, Gates and fellow 

atmospheric scientists formed a new 

group at the Laboratory called the 

Program for Climate Model Diagnosis 

and Intercomparison (PCMDI). 

Livermore quickly became an 

internationally recognized institution 

for climate model analysis. PCMDI’s 

earliest joint studies were conducted 

with scientists from the Department 

of Commerce’s Geophysical Fluid 

Dynamics Laboratory, the National 

Science Foundation’s National Center 

for Atmospheric Research, Oregon 

State University, and the State University 

of New York at Stony Brook. Research 

groups from Canada, China, Germany, 

Japan, and the United Kingdom 

also participated. A selected set of 

climate models was transferred to a 

supercomputing facility at Livermore. 

PCMDI researchers worked to devise 

a common format and processing 

protocol for output, assemble 

databases for model evaluation, 

and develop diagnostic methods 

to illuminate the effects of model 

assumptions and approximations. 

At the time, the need for standards 

in both modeling and analysis were 

becoming increasingly apparent as 

more complex models were developed. 

The disagreements among models 

and between models and observations 

were significant and poorly understood. 

A persistent need exists to account 

for, in a systematic fashion, the nature 

and causes of differences among 

models and between simulations and 

observations to continually improve 

climate prediction studies in support of 

global climate change research. 

PCMDI integrates the talents of physical 

(atmospheric) scientists and computer 

scientists, following the approach of 

other interdisciplinary programs at 

Livermore. The program’s mission is 

not to make new models but rather 

to set a standard by which all climate 

models adhere so as to lend validity 

to to modeling efforts. The major goals 

are to develop improved methods and 

tools for the diagnosis, validation, 

and intercomparison of global climate 

models and to conduct research on a 

variety of problems in climate modeling 

and analysis. PCMDI’s software system 

is recognized around the world for its 

efficiency and flexibility. 

Atmospheric scientists at PCMDI 

have also been key participants in 

international efforts examining the 

evidence for climate change due to 

human activities. Ben Santer, who 

received the prestigious MacArthur 

Foundation “genius award” in 1998, 

served as lead author for Chapter 8 

(“Detection of Climate Change, and 

Attribution of Causes”) of the 1995 

Second Assessment Report of the 

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate 

Change. The report concluded that 

“the balance of evidence suggests a 

discernible human influence on global 

climate.” PCMDI’s work continues 

and contributed to the selection of the 

winners of a Nobel Peace Prize (see 

Year 2007).

Better Global Climate Models 

and Analysis

1992 Setting Model Standards
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 94 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 95

Dynamic underground 

stripping cleans up 

underground hydrocarbon 

spills. The method is used 

in combination with other 

Livermore-developed 

monitoring and remediation 

technologies to rapidly 

remove contaminants from 

groundwater or destroy 

them in place. 

Two complementary technologies 

pioneered at Livermore have successfully 

cleaned up contaminated groundwater 

and soil at facilities in several states. 

Hydrous pyrolysis/oxidation combined 

with dynamic underground stripping 

destroys contaminants in situ and brings 

them to the surface at 5,000 times the rate 

of conventional technologies. 

If the Laboratory had used conventional 

methods in 1993 to clean major leaks 

from its underground gasoline tanks, 

the project would still be under way. 

Estimates had pegged the time at 

30 to 60 years to remove thousands 

of gallons of gasoline that had leaked 

into the soil beneath the shipping and 

receiving area north of East Avenue. 

But instead of decades or even years, 

the 7,600 gallons of gasoline were 

mopped up in about four months using 

remediation technologies developed 

by Laboratory scientists Roger Aines, 

Robin Newmark, and John Ziagos 

in collaboration with a University of 

California at Berkeley researcher. 

The technique, called dynamic 

underground stripping, involves 

injecting steam to heat the ground. 

Contaminants are vaporized and driven 

to extraction wells, where they are easily 

removed from soil and water. The heat 

and forced air chemically break down 

many contaminants in place, leaving 

harmless compounds. Electric currents 

heat soils that are too impermeable for 

steam to penetrate. The treatment of 

contaminants is even more effective 

when dynamic underground stripping is 

combined with two related remediation 

technologies subsequently pioneered 

by Livermore researchers: electrical 

resistance tomography, for monitoring 

an underground clean up in real time; 

and hydrous pyrolysis/oxidation, which 

destroys pollutants where they are 

found underground. 

The technology achieved remarkable 

success cleaning a Superfund site in 

Visalia, California, between May 1997 

and June 2000. For nearly 60 years 

up to 1980, Southern California Edison 

had treated utility power poles with 

carcinogenic wood preservatives such 

as creosote and pentachlorophenol, 

some of which leaked into the ground. 

Using older cleanup methods at Visalia, 

about 275 pounds of contaminants 

had been removed in one nine-month 

period. However, with the use of 

the Livermore technology, Southern 

California Edison, working with the 

Laboratory and a licensee, was able in 

a similar nine-month period to extract 

about 540,000 pounds of pollutants—

almost 2,000 times more. 

During the entire three-year Visalia 

cleanup, about 1.2 million pounds 

of contaminants were removed from 

the four-acre site using the dynamic 

underground stripping technology, and 

the residual contaminants continued 

to degrade after operations ceased. 

Further cleanup was augmented by 

installation of a system to enhance 

natural biological degradation 

processes. After the Environmental 

Protection Agency issued a Final Close 

Out Report in May 2009, the Visalia 

site was removed from the National 

Priorities List.

In addition to the Visalia cleanup 

project, dynamic underground stripping 

technologies were successfully used 

at DOE’s Savannah River Site, Pinellas 

Plant, and Portsmouth facility. For 

example, in 2000–2001 more than 

65,000 pounds of contaminant were 

removed from an area at Savannah 

River where chlorinated solvents were 

stored (with considerable spillage and 

leakage). The technology was applied 

again in 2006 for groundwater cleanup 

in an adjacent area.

Hot Technology 

Removes Contamination

Dynamic Underground 

Stripping 1993
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 96 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 97

Under the leadership of physicist Lowell Wood, O Group pursued 

a variety of imaginative research projects in the late 1970s and the 

1980s. O Group included many extremely talented young scientists, 

some of whom came to the Laboratory as Hertz Foundation 

fellows. An exceedingly ambitious early project was the design of 

the S-1 supercomputer, an effort which led to the development 

of computerized design methods, including Structured Computer-Aided 

Logic Design (SCALD), which successfully spun-off from the Laboratory. 

O Group pioneered the development of x-ray lasers and gave birth to 

the concept of Brilliant Pebbles. 

O Group

A mosaic of 1,500 images taken by Clementine reveals for the first time a 300-kilometerwide depression near the Moon’s lunar south pole.

Using six on-board cameras designed and built at the 

Laboratory, the Clementine satellite mapped the entire surface 

of the Moon in 1994 at resolutions never before attained. 

Lowell Wood 

presented President 

George H. W. Bush 

with a conceptual 

model of Brilliant 

Pebbles when the 

president visited the 

Laboratory in 1990. 

The Clementine Deep Space 

Experiment, sponsored by the Ballistic 

Missile Defense Organization, was 

launched on January 25, 1994—

22 months after the effort began. At a 

mission cost of less than $100 million, 

it was the first U.S. spacecraft to visit 

the moon in over two decades. The 

Clementine mission collected over 

1.7 million images during its two 

months in lunar polar orbit. The data 

has enabled global mapping of lunarcrust rock types and the first detailed 

investigation of the geology of the lunar 

polar regions and the lunar far side. 

The Clementine spacecraft included 

new advanced technology sensors 

and space component technologies 

that provide the basis for a next 

generation of lightweight satellites for 

civilian and military missions. It had 

a dry mass of only 500 pounds and 

incorporated 23 advanced subsystem 

technologies. The spacecraft’s payload 

consisted of an advanced sensor suite 

weighing less than 16 pounds that was 

designed, fabricated, integrated, and 

calibrated by Laboratory scientists and 

engineers with the support of industrial 

contractors. The Naval Research 

Laboratory designed, integrated, 

and operated the spacecraft. 

NASA provided mission design and 

operational support. 

Clementine carried an ultraviolet-visible 

camera, a shortwave infrared sensor, a 

longwave infrared sensor, an imaging 

lidar (light detection and ranging) 

instrument, and two Star Tracker 

cameras. These instruments successfully 

mapped the entire lunar surface in 

11 spectral bands. By laser ranging, 

the lidar system also generated a global 

topographical data set. The topography 

of the moon’s many ancient impact 

basins was measured, and a global 

map of the thickness of the lunar crust 

was derived. In addition, bistatic radar 

measurements made over the Deep 

South polar depression indicated the 

presence of frozen water on the moon. 

Clementine’s sensor system 

technologies were derived from 

Livermore’s space-based interceptor 

development program. The Strategic 

Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) 

funded related research beginning 

in 1985, and in November 1987, 

the Brilliant Pebbles effort formally 

commenced. The concept was to 

deploy a constellation of sophisticated, 

inexpensive, lightweight spacecraft 

in low Earth orbit—Brilliant Pebbles—

that could detect and hunt down 

missiles over distances of thousands of 

kilometers without external aid. In the 

summer of 1989, Brilliant Pebbles was 

adopted by SDIO as the new baseline 

for the space-based segment of a 

national missile defense system. 

A wide variety of projects to develop 

state-of-the-art sensor technologies 

at the Laboratory have built upon 

the success of the Clementine 

program. An immediate follow-on was 

the development of a large-format 

digital camera system that uses 

charge-coupled device detectors. 

Astronomers used the 16-million-pixel 

cameras in the search for massive 

compact halo objects (MACHOs), a 

form of dark matter.

Advanced Sensors Map the Moon

1994 Clementine
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 98 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 99

Established in 1989, Livermore’s High Explosives 

Applications Facility (HEAF) is an NNSA Center 

of Excellence supporting stockpile stewardship. 

Researchers at HEAF develop, characterize, and 

test high explosives and other energetic materials. 

Specially designed containment vessels (above 

and left, arriving in August 1988) are used to safety 

detonate explosives in quantities as large as 10 

kilograms of TNT-equivalent. Larger scale tests are 

staged at the Contained Firing Facility at Site 300.

Vic Reis, DOE Assistant Secretary 

for Defense Programs, provided 

exceptional leadership in defining the 

“science-based” Stockpile Stewardship 

Program, working with program 

leaders from Livermore, Los Alamos, 

and Sandia national laboratories. Reis 

formulated and clearly articulated to 

government decision makers a key 

major premise: the core of any longterm stewardship program was a set 

of world-class scientific and technical 

laboratories with expertise in all 

aspects of nuclear weapons. 

In 1995, the Stockpile Stewardship 

Program formally began when President 

Bill Clinton reached two critical 

decisions that established the course 

for future nuclear weapons activities in 

the United States. At the time, both the 

U.S. and Russia were reducing the size 

of their nuclear arsenals, both nations 

had been observing a moratorium on 

nuclear testing for three years, and the 

U.S. had halted its programs to develop 

new nuclear weapons. 

First, on August 11, 1995, the president 

announced that the U.S. would pursue 

a Comprehensive Nuclear-TestBan Treaty. In making that decision, 

he also reaffirmed the importance 

of maintaining a safe and reliable 

nuclear weapons stockpile. Then, on 

September 25, 1995, the president 

directed necessary programmatic 

activities to ensure continued stockpile 

performance. Under the leadership 

of Vic Reis, Assistant Secretary for 

Defense Programs, the DOE national 

security laboratories and the weapons 

production facilities worked with DOE 

Defense Programs and the Department 

of Defense to formulate the Stockpile 

Stewardship Program. 

The program was launched as an 

ambitious effort—not without risks—to 

significantly improve the science and 

technology base for making informed 

decisions about an aging nuclear 

weapons stockpile without relying on 

nuclear testing. All aspects of weapons 

must be understood in sufficient detail 

so that weapons experts can assess 

the performance of the nation’s nuclear 

weapons with confidence and make 

informed decisions about refurbishment, 

remanufacture, or replacement of 

weapons as needs arise. 

To succeed, the three DOE national 

security laboratories, now part 

of the National Nuclear Security 

Administration, needed much 

more advanced experimental 

and computational capabilities. 

At Livermore, construction of the 

National Ignition Facility soon began 

(see Year 1997), and the Advanced 

Simulation and Computing Initiative 

(ASCI) prodded the development of 

next-generation supercomputers (see 

Year 2000). As new capabilities have 

come online, they have contributed 

to surveillance of stockpiled weapons 

to determine their condition, 

assessment of weapon safety and 

reliability, activities to extend the 

lifetime of weapons, and certification 

of refurbished warhead systems. The 

new experimental and computational 

capabilities also serve to train and 

evaluate the skills of next-generation 

stockpile stewards, who must recognize 

and deal with issues as they arise to 

sustain the nuclear stockpile. 

The Stockpile Stewardship Program 

made excellent technical progress 

in its first decade. For example, 

researchers made dramatic 

improvements in their understanding of 

the properties and aging of materials 

in weapons, and the sophistication 

and resolution of 3D simulations 

of weapons performance rapidly 

increased. In addition, Livermore 

successfully completed engineering 

development work on its first stockpile 

life-extension program (see Year 

1986). However, then as now, tougher 

challenges likely lie ahead as weapons 

continue to age. The long-term 

success of stockpile stewardship 

depends on a continuing strong 

national support for the program and 

on the skills and capabilities of future 

generations of weapons experts at the 

nuclear weapons laboratories. 

Understanding the Details of Nuclear 

Weapons Performance

1995 Stockpile Stewardship
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 100 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 101

Because astrophysics and nuclear weapons physics have many 

similarities, it is not surprising that the Laboratory has a long history 

of contributing to the advancement of scientific understanding about 

our universe and developing instrumentation used by astronomers. 

Pioneering work in the 1960s includes seminal papers on gravitational 

collapse and supernova explosions by Laboratory researchers 

including Stirling Colgate, Montgomery Johnson, Michael May, Richard 

White, and James Wilson. Current interests range from development 

of instrumentation for planetary imaging (see Year 2005) and x-ray 

astronomy to observation and experiments of high-energy-density 

astrophysical phenomena (see Year 2009). 

Astrophysics at Livermore

The Shane telescope’s Livermoredeveloped adaptive optics subsystem 

(below and bottom) was the first such 

laser system on a major astronomical 

telescope. Adaptive optics were 

installed on the Keck II telescope (left) 

in 1998, and in 2001, a laser guide star 

system was added. 

In September 1996, observers at 

the University of California’s Lick 

Observatory, atop Mount Hamilton near 

San Jose, California, obtained their first 

image that was significantly improved 

through use of a laser guide star and 

adaptive optics. The event heralded 

a new era in astronomy. Atmospheric 

distortions, which cause stars to twinkle 

and have haunted astronomers since 

Galileo, no longer greatly limit the 

performance of Earth-based telescopes. 

Two years earlier, a Livermore-designed 

adaptive optics system was installed 

on Lick’s 3-meter Shane telescope. To 

correct for atmospheric turbulence, an 

adaptive optics system uses a large 

number of computer-controlled actuators 

to precisely adjust the shape of a 

deformable mirror up to several hundred 

times per second. The technology 

has benefited from the efforts of many 

researchers, including the team at LLNL, 

which developed adaptive optics for 

use as part of the Atomic Vapor Laser 

Isotope Separation (U-AVLIS) Program 

(see Year 1973). Adaptive optics are also 

central to the design of the lasers for the 

National Ignition Facility (see Year 1997) 

and the search for extrasolar planets 

(see Year 2005). 

The adaptive optics system alone 

benefits astronomers only if the object 

being studied has a sufficiently bright 

nearby star that can be used to 

determine the atmospheric distortions 

that must be corrected. In most cases, 

no such star exists, and one has to 

be created—a “laser guide star.” The 

team of Laboratory and University of 

California (UC) researchers working 

on the Lick project, led by Livermore’s 

Claire Max, installed a laser guide star 

system at Lick in 1996. A 15-watt dye 

laser system, a technology developed 

as part of the U-AVLIS Program, was 

retrofitted onto the Shane telescope. 

Light from the laser reflects off a layer of 

sodium atoms in the upper atmosphere 

(about 100 kilometers altitude), creating 

the needed artificial star.

Subsequently, a team from Livermore, 

UC, and the California Institute of 

Technology installed adaptive optics 

and a laser guide star system on the 

telescopes at Keck Observatory in 

Hawaii. Since the first observations 

in 1998, the adaptive optics have 

enabled astronomers to obtain 

infrared-light images of unprecedented 

resolution—four times better resolution 

than the Hubble Space Telescope. 

Early successes included detailed 

studies of Uranus and its rings and the 

observation of hundreds of young stars 

in very fast orbit around an unseen, 

incredibly massive object—a black 

hole—at the center of our galaxy. 

In December 2001, “first light” was 

achieved with a newly installed 

laser guide star system on the 

10-meter Keck II telescope. Science 

observations using the system began 

in late 2004. The first images of a 

distant planet were taken at Keck, 

and a picture of Eris and its moon 

contributed to Pluto’s demotion from 

planetary status.

Heralding a New Era in Astronomy

1996 Laser Guide Star

Photo credit: John McDonald/Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Corp.
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 102 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 103

The 10-meter-diameter target chamber was assembled from 18 fourinch-thick aluminum sections fabricated by Pitt-Des Moines, Inc., 

of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in a special-purpose building adjacent 

to the National Ignition Facility. After verifying that the vessel was 

leak-free in June 1999, the 132-ton vessel was hoisted by one of the 

largest cranes in the world and carefully installed onto its support 

pedestal in the target building. Surprisingly, this breathtaking event 

took only about 30 minutes. The seven-story walls and roof of the 

target bay were then completed, and the target chamber was coated 

with a special 16-inch-thick neutron shielding concrete shell. Now 

weighing about 1 million pounds, the complete target chamber was 

precision aligned to better than 1-millimeter accuracy. 

Target Chamber Construction

In 2001, construction of the conventional facility was completed (top). The 

10-meter-diameter target chamber (above and right) had been moved into 

the facility in 1999.

Groundbreaking for the stadium-sized 

192-beam National Ignition Facility 

(NIF) took place in May 1997. An 

extremely ambitious and technically 

challenging project, NIF construction 

was the culmination of a series of 

increasingly larger lasers built over 

the prior 30 years. Dedicated in 2009 

(see Year 2009), NIF is the world’s most 

energetic laser. With NIF, scientists 

perform vitally needed high-energydensity (HED) physics experiments. 

The facility is a cornerstone in the U.S. 

nuclear weapons Stockpile Stewardship 

Program to ensure the safety, security, 

and effectiveness of the nuclear 

deterrent. NIF serves as a national and 

international user facility for studying 

the physics of matter under conditions 

of extreme temperature, energy density, 

and pressure and pursuing inertial 

confinement fusion (ICF). 

NIF is designed to deliver 192 laser 

beams with a total energy of 1.8 million 

joules of ultraviolet light to the center of 

a 10-meter-diameter target chamber. 

This energy, when focused into a 

volume less than a cubic millimeter, 

provides unprecedented energy 

densities in a laboratory setting. 

Scientists use NIF to obtain valuable 

data for stockpile stewardship and other 

national security applications, and they 

re-create astrophysical phenomena 

and extreme conditions that exist 

inside planets. In ICF experiments, 

NIF’s laser beams converge on a target 

containing a peppercorn-sized capsule 

of deuterium–tritium fuel, causing the 

capsule to implode and create fusion 

reactions. The goal is to achieve ignition 

and sustained thermonuclear burn (see 

Year 2013). 

In June 1999, after two years of 

construction, the 132-ton aluminum 

target chamber was transported from 

its assembly building to the target 

bay where it is now aligned to better 

than a millimeter accuracy. While 

excellent progress was being made 

on all technical fronts and construction 

continued on the $270-million 

conventional facility, the NIF project was 

rebaselined to enhance the planned 

method for assembling the lasers 

and to ensure that strict cleanliness 

requirements would be met. 

In September 2001, conventional facility 

construction was completed on schedule 

and on budget. Inside the building, 

the beampath infrastructure for the 

first 48 beams was completed the next 

month. This significant milestone was 

accomplished through the successful 

partnership of the installation contractor, 

Jacobs Facilities, Inc., Laboratory staff, 

and the local building trades. 

Another key milestone, NIF Early 

Light, occurred in December 2002 

with activation of the first “quad”—the 

first four laser beams. Early Light 

demonstrated that the integrated 

laser system worked and that the 

laser beams met all performance 

criteria. Using the first quad, 

researchers conducted NIF’s first 

physics experiment in August 2003. 

The ensuing experimental campaign 

engaged scientists from Livermore and 

Los Alamos national laboratories 

and the United Kingdom’s Atomic 

Weapons Establishment. 

Thermonuclear Physics and Matter 

at Extreme Conditions

1997 NIF Groundbreaking
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 104 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 105

Inherently a multiscale phenomenon, radiation damage can occur 

over a scale of 100 nanometers and in a small fraction of a second, 

but the effects build up over decades. Radiation damage can produce 

unacceptable changes in the plutonium used in nuclear weapons, 

shorten the lifetime of pressure vessels in nuclear power plants, and 

limit the choice of materials for fusion energy research. Livermore’s 

scientists have a long-standing interest in the topic; the Livermore 

Pool-Type Reactor, which operated on site from 1957 to 1980, provided 

neutrons to study radiation damage to materials (see Year 1952). 

Delving into Radiation Damage

Livermore materials 

simulations are closely 

coupled to a program of 

laboratory experiments. 

Researchers measure the 

atomic transport properties 

of radiation damage 

defects in metals, including 

plutonium. The data are 

used to refine codes that 

simulate and predict the 

performance of stockpiled 

nuclear weapons. 

DTEM takes snapshots of the 

dynamics that occur in samples 

of material undergoing change, 

creating a visual record of 

microstructural features as 

they rapidly evolve. Its use has 

validated simulation models and 

provides new levels of scientific 

understanding of nanostructure 

growth, phase transformations, 

and chemical reactions.

For years, scientists have longed 

for computer simulations that 

could accurately predict materials’ 

performance from atomic to engineering 

scale. In 1998, researchers at the 

Laboratory began to make great 

strides toward this goal, developing 

experimentally verified, threedimensional simulations that bridge 

these extreme scales. The first 

simulations focused on the mechanical 

behavior of molybdenum, using 

information generated at the atomic 

scale (measured in nanometers) to 

model phenomena occurring at the 

scale of micrometers. The results of 

these microscale simulations—the 

strength properties of molybdenum—

were then passed on to codes that 

model phenomena at larger scales. 

Researchers validated their codes 

by comparing their simulations to 

experimental results. 

The multiscale modeling approach 

only became possible with the 

advent of powerful, multiprocessor 

supercomputers in the 1990s. Using 

the massively parallel computers of 

of NNSA’s Advanced Simulation and 

Computing Initiative (see Year 2000), 

Livermore researchers launched a 

concerted effort to model material 

behavior over length scales ranging 

from nanometers to meters and time 

scales ranging from billionths of a 

second to tens of years. 

Through multiscale modeling and 

experiments, scientists have gained 

a better understanding of the effects 

of radiation damage on materials. The 

issue is of particular importance to 

scientists in the Stockpile Stewardship 

Program, who are concerned about 

the aging of materials in nuclear 

weapons (see Year 2006). In 2000, a 

Livermore team headed by materials 

physicist Tomás Díaz de la Rubia used 

multiscale modeling and experiments 

to demonstrate for the first time the 

underlying connection between 

radiation damage (in crystalline metals), 

which occurs at ultrasmall scales 

(nanometers and picoseconds), to 

degradation over time of the material’s 

mechanical properties. 

Multiscale material modeling has 

dramatically improved as computing 

power increased and simulation tools 

grew more sophisticated. Livermore 

researchers pioneered the development 

of first-principles molecular dynamics 

and quantum molecular dynamics 

simulation models (see Year 2003). 

At larger scales, LLNL scientists 

developed ParaDiS, a code for studying 

how dislocations in crystal structures 

harden materials under strain. State-ofthe-art experiments complement and 

validate simulations. Notably, Livermore 

scientists and engineers developed 

techniques such as dynamic x-ray 

diffraction to study the response of 

shocked crystalline materials. They also 

developed tools such as the dynamic 

transmission electron microscope 

(DTEM) to produce multiple digital 

images of ultrafast material processes 

on the billionth-of-a-meter scale. 

Many research activities at the 

Laboratory are benefiting from the work. 

At the National Ignition Facility (NIF), 

scientists are applying experimentally 

verified multiscale modeling to predict 

the lifetime of optics subjected to NIF’s 

high-intensity laser light. The multiscale 

approach is also being used to model 

biochemical processes and “designer 

materials” for applications ranging from 

supercapacitors for energy storage to 

advanced radiation detectors. 

Material Properties from Atomic to 

Large Scales

1998 Multiscale Materials Modeling
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 106 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 107

In June 2011, the High-Performance Computing Innovation Center 

(HPCIC) opened for business in the Livermore Valley Open 

Campus (LVOC). It is the first new facility at LVOC, a 110-acre 

collaborative open, unclassified research and development space on 

the eastern edge of Lawrence Livermore and Sandia/California national 

laboratories. The HPCIC serves as a focal point for collaborations 

among LLNL experts in the application of HPC and partners in industry 

and academia. HPCIC has partnered with such companies as IBM, 

Intel, Cisco, Baker Hughes, and GE on far-reaching research efforts.

In 2016, a new supercomputing facility, adjacent to LVOC, opened to 

meet a rapidly growing demand for unclassified HPC for Laboratory 

researchers and their collaborators. Construction also began at LVOC 

on the Advanced Manufacturing Laboratory for LLNL employees to work 

with industry and academic partners.

Livermore Valley Open Campus

The Ultra Clean Ion Beam Sputter Deposition System, developed at Livermore, produces 

precise, uniform, highly reflective masks in the lithographic process of printing features 

on computer chips. In many strategic partnership projects, Livermore supplies expertise 

in optics, precision engineering, and multilayer coatings.

Former Laboratory employees and members of the LLNL Entrepreneurs’ Hall Fame Lloyd 

Hackel (left) and Brent Dane stand with a robot used in laser peening to strengthen 

critical parts for aviation and other industries. The duo successfully commercialized the 

Lasershot Peening System—used around the world for aircraft parts and turbines for 

electric power generation. 

In 1999, R&D Magazine recognized 

Livermore with six of the 100 awards 

it grants annually for the most 

technologically significant new 

products and processes; the prior year 

Laboratory researchers won seven 

awards. The annual R&D 100 Awards 

competition recognizes important 

technological advancements that can 

be commercialized and that promise 

to improve people’s lives. With these 

and later successes, Livermore has 

won 158 of these coveted awards 

through 2016. That large number is a 

credit to the outstanding science and 

engineering work at the Laboratory as 

well as to Livermore’s excellent track 

record in working with industry. 

Two of the awards in 1998–1999 are 

indicative of the Laboratory’s wide 

variety of partnerships with U.S. industry 

and how technologies developed for 

national security applications often 

lead to broader societal benefits. In 

some cases, such as the 1998 awardwinning Lasershot Peening System, 

the commercialization comes quickly. 

This new technology provided a way to 

harden and extend the service lifetime 

of metal parts, such as aircraft fuselages 

and engine fan blades, faster and more 

effectively than conventional means. The 

commercialized technology, now part 

of Curtiss-Wright Surface Technologies, 

has been used since 2008 by the Boeing 

Company to manufacture wing panels 

for 747-8 aircraft.

One of the R&D 100 Awards in 1999 

was for a multilayer, thinfilm deposition 

system, a technology that is key to 

the development of extreme ultraviolet 

(EUV) lithography. Development of 

EUV lithography was being pursued 

by a unique industry–government 

collaboration that began in 1997. 

It involved Lawrence Livermore, 

Lawrence Berkeley, and Sandia national 

laboratories and a consortium of 

semiconductor companies called the 

EUV Limited Liability Company (LLC). 

The consortium committed $250 million 

to the project and then extended the 

cooperative research and development 

agreement with the laboratories to 2005. 

At the time, the goal of computer chip 

manufacturers was to print circuit lines 

at least as narrow as 30 nanometers 

(1/3,000th the width of a human hair) 

to extend the pace of innovation 

described by Moore’s Law. Industry 

saw EUV lithography as a possible 

solution, but that goal was reached by 

advancing technologies already widely 

used by manufacturers. In 2017, IBM 

announced a major breakthrough: 

the first 5-nanometer silicon chip, 

which was manufactured using EUV 

lithography. Future supercomputers at 

LLNL might be powered by processors 

made possible by EUV lithography. 

These award-winning technologies further 

advanced unique, critical skills in laser 

and optical technology and precision 

engineering that support the Laboratory’s 

national security missions. Among many 

other applications, those skills contribute 

to development of diagnostics and 

targets at the National Ignition Facility as 

well as the extremely powerful HighRepetition-Rate Advanced Petawatt Laser 

System for the European Union’s Extreme 

Light Infrastructure Beamlines facility (see 

Year 1984). 

Technologies Spin Off to Industry

1999 R&D 100 Awards
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 108 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 109

Leadership New

Michael R. Anastasio

(2002 • 2006)

George H. Miller

(2006 • 2011)

The Laboratory entered its 50th year of operation 

as a recognized national resource, with an essential 

and compelling core mission in national security and 

the capabilities to solve difficult, important problems. 

Livermore’s responsiveness to national needs was vividly 

demonstrated after September 11, 2001. Ongoing research 

and expertise, prototype development, and field-testing 

enabled Livermore to respond quickly to the terrorist 

attacks. The Laboratory’s advanced technologies such as 

radiation and pathogen detectors have strongly contributed 

to homeland security and counter the proliferation of 

weapons of mass destruction. 

An exceptional scientific and technical staff made use of the 

Laboratory’s special facilities and capabilities to resolve a key 

issue about the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile by finding 

that plutonium pits in weapons are aging gracefully. In addition, 

construction of new facilities further strengthened stockpile 

stewardship. The National Ignition Facility was dedicated in 

2009 and the Terascale Simulation Facility ushered in a new 

generation of supercomputers that have enabled first-principles 

simulations of nature at the scale of atoms.

As a national resource, Livermore’s science and technology 

have broad impact. LLNL researchers are at the forefront 

of understanding our planet’s likely future climate and 

discovering distant planets. 

The Aughts A national resource
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 110 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 111

An array of 15 projectors (far 

left) was used to display the 

results of ASCI computer 

simulations in unprecedented 

detail on the Powerwall (above), 

a nearly 20-million-pixel screen. 

Scientists also used arrays of 

flat panel displays (left) in their 

work centers and individual 

offices to visualize the results of 

ASCI calculations. 

The ASCI White supercomputer needed a floor with an extra 2 feet underneath it to 

accommodate airflow, switches, and 40 miles of cable connecting all the computer nodes. 

During the summer of 2000, 28 moving 

vans carried the pieces of the world’s 

fastest supercomputer, called ASCI 

White, from IBM’s development facilities in 

Poughkeepsie, New York, to Livermore. 

To accommodate the sheer physical 

size of this massively parallel machine, 

together with its wiring and cooling 

system demands, the Laboratory had 

doubled the size (and the underfloor 

space) of the computer room in 

Building 451. 

This latest addition to the Laboratory’s 

computing resources was deployed in 

three parts, all of which shared versions of 

IBM’s RS/6000 SP hardware technology. 

ASCI White consisted of 8,192 central 

processor units clustered into 512 nodes. 

Intended for large, highly parallel batch 

jobs, the machine demonstrated a 

processing speed of 12.3 teraops (trillion 

operations per second), about three times 

more than any other available computer 

at that time. 

ASCI White’s arrival marked the 

successful third step in a fivestage plan by the Department of 

Energy to sponsor development 

of a 100-teraops supercomputer 

by 2004. Launched in 1995 as the 

Accelerated Strategic Computing 

Initiative (ASCI), this collaboration of 

Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia 

national laboratories with U.S. industry 

and academia was later renamed the 

Advanced Simulation and Computing 

Program. The goal was to significantly 

improve capabilities to simulate with 

high resolution the performance 

of weapons in the nation’s nuclear 

stockpile. The White machine, as the 

latest ASCI advance, became one of 

the cornerstones of NNSA’s Stockpile 

Stewardship Program. 

Effective use of a computer like 

ASCI White required sophisticated 

software and network support. 

Laboratory innovations to transfer and 

store the massive data sets generated 

by ASCI White simulation runs—and to 

analyze that data visually—enhanced 

the practical value of this machine. 

Locally designed tools enabled the 

efficient parallel storage of vast output 

files. And local software (called a 

terascale browser) displayed data 

visualizations on wall-sized screens to 

allow faster interpretation of results 

and bug detection. 

ASCI White’s benefits were soon 

evident. Use of the machine for 

pioneering scientific simulations 

began even as component upgrades 

continued on ASCI White’s nodes. 

By the spring of 2002, scientists at 

Livermore and Los Alamos, using 

separate approaches to parallel 

code development for ASCI White, 

successfully completed two of the 

most refined computer simulations 

ever attempted, the first full-system 

three-dimensional modeling of a 

nuclear weapon explosion. Livermore’s 

simulation alone used more than 

1,024 processors and took 39 wallclock days to run. The Los Alamos 

work, executed remotely at Livermore 

by using a secure network connection 

to New Mexico, took over 120 days. 

High-bandwidth connections to 

Los Alamos and Sandia, coupled with 

extensive user support services at 

Livermore, allowed this machine to be 

used effectively by all three laboratories 

until it was retired in 2006.

ASCI White Arrives

Accelerated Strategic 

Computing Initiative 2000
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 112 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 113

Specialists from Livermore 

and Los Alamos national 

laboratories deployed the 

Biological Aerosol Sentry 

and Information System 

(BASIS) for the 2002 Winter 

Olympics in Salt Lake City, 

Utah. BASIS was developed 

under the sponsorship 

of NNSA’s Chemical 

and Biological National 

Security Program. 

LLNL has developed an array of DNA pathogen signatures against which a biologicalagent detector matches gathered samples. DNA signature development involves 

microbiologists, molecular biologists, biochemists, geneticists, and informatics experts.

The events of September 11, 2001, lent 

new urgency to the Laboratory’s efforts 

to apply its technologies, tools, and 

expertise to better prepare the nation to 

defend against terrorist use of weapons 

of mass destruction (WMD). The 

prospect of a devastating bioterrorist 

attack became even more real a few 

weeks later when a terrorist sent anthrax 

through the mail, killing five people and 

sickening 17. Livermore researchers 

were able to provide immediate help 

because they had begun addressing 

the threat of WMD terrorism long 

before September 11. Since the 

formation of the Nonproliferation, Arms 

Control, and International Security 

Directorate in 1992, the Laboratory 

had been effectively organized to take 

a comprehensive, multidisciplinary 

approach to emerging WMD threats. 

LLNL was developing technologies and 

tools to counter threats and working 

closely with response agencies to 

ensure that the technological solutions 

met real-world operational needs. 

The Laboratory provided post-9/11 

analysis and assessments as well as 

information tools and expert personnel 

to the Intelligence Community. LLNL’s 

Nuclear Threat Assessment Center 

operated seven days a week to 

evaluate numerous smuggling incidents 

and nuclear-related threats. In addition, 

the Counterproliferation Analysis and 

Planning System (CAPS), developed at 

Livermore and extensively used by the 

Department of Defense, supported U.S. 

military efforts to counter WMD threats. 

As the anthrax mail cases illustrated, 

the U.S. is vulnerable to bioattack. 

Developments in DNA detection 

technologies are at the core of the 

nation’s biodefense capabilities. The 

LLNL’s miniaturized DNA analysis 

device was commercialized by Cepheid 

Inc., as the Smart Cycler. It was 

based on polymerase chain reaction 

(PCR) technology breakthroughs in 

biodetection instrumentation made by 

Laboratory researchers, who pioneered 

the miniaturization and ruggedization 

of DNA identification devices. In 1998, 

the technology was successfully 

demonstrated in field tests at Dugway 

Proving Ground, Utah, and an early 

version of the handheld instrument was 

delivered soon after to selected users.

In addition, the Biological Aerosol 

Sentry and Information System (BASIS), 

developed jointly by by Livermore and 

Los Alamos, was deployed to Salt Lake 

City, Utah, as part of the overall security 

strategy for the 2002 Winter Olympic 

Games. Smart Cycler biodetectors are 

the heart of the BASIS field laboratory. 

Because biodetectors require unique 

antibodies or DNA sequences to 

identify and characterize pathogens, 

LLNL set out to develop “gold standard” 

DNA signatures and assay protocols, 

which are then validated by the Centers 

for Disease Control and Prevention 

(CDC) and distributed by the CDC to 

the public health community. 

The Laboratory has continued to make 

major advances in capabilities to detect 

pathogens for biosecurity, disease 

control, and other health applications 

(see Year 2011). For example, almost 

exactly one decade after 9/11, Laboratory 

scientists announced an advance in PCR 

technology that makes possible nearinstantaneous DNA analysis that could 

be deployed in research laboratories and 

doctors’ offices around the world. 

Defending against Terrorism

2001 Biodetectors Respond

The Forensic Science Center

The Laboratory’s Forensic Science Center (FSC) is one of the two 

U.S. laboratories to be internationally accredited by the Organisation 

for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to analyze suspect 

chemical-warfare agents. Created in 1991, the center combines 

state-of-the-art science and technology with expertise in chemical, 

nuclear, biological, and high-explosives forensic science to provide 

24/7 counterterrorism support to federal agencies. FSC researchers 

also advance the state of the art in forensic science. In 2016, an 

LLNL-led tem developed the first-ever biological identification method 

that exploits the information encoded in proteins of human hair—a 

potential game-changer for forensics.
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 114 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 115

At a 50th anniversary panel discussion, directors Michael Anastasio, Bruce Tarter, 

John Nuckolls, Michael May, John Foster, and Herbert York reflect on the Laboratory’s 

past, present, and future. Harold Brown participated via teleconference, and Edward Teller 

gave a video presentation. Roger Batzel passed away in 2000.

Shown rising on the banks 

of Lake Haussmann, the 

$91-million Terascale 

Simulation Facility was 

completed in 2004 ahead of 

schedule and under budget. 

It initially housed two of 

the world’s most powerful 

computers, BlueGene/L 

and the 100-trillionoperations-per-second 

ASCI Purple machine.

At a 50th-anniversary event for the local community, former astronaut and U.S. Senator 

John Glenn enclosed a memento thanking the Laboratory for its service to the nation and 

helped seal a time capsule, which is to be recovered at the 100th anniversary. 

Installation at TSF of BlueGene/L’s 

64 racks, air-cooled cabinets with 

1,024 nodes (2,048 processors) each, 

was completed in summer 2005. 

The 65,536-node system clocked 

280 teraflops, a record-breaking 

benchmark speed. The astonishingly 

successful system was later expanded 

to 106,496 nodes and achieved 

480 teraflops.

Anniversaries are a time to reflect on 

one’s accomplishments, learn from and 

be reinvigorated by them, and look to 

the future. The Laboratory celebrated 

50 years of “Making History, Making a 

Difference” through panel discussions, 

special conferences and publications, 

and events such as the dedication 

of a time capsule and a Family Day 

weekend to conclude the festivities. 

This look to the future in 2002 was 

underscored by the selection of a 

new Laboratory director, Michael 

Anastasio, and groundbreaking 

ceremonies on April 4, 2002, for two 

mission-critical facilities. 

Construction began on the Terascale 

Simulation Facility (TSF), a $91-million 

world-class supercomputing facility. 

With 48,000 square feet of floor space 

for machines, TSF was designed to 

usher in a leap in supercomputing 

capability as part of DOE’s Accelerated 

Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI). 

In November 2002, DOE announced 

that IBM would develop for TSF the 

two fastest machines in the world: the 

100-teraflops (trillion floating-point 

operations per second) ASCI Purple, 

designed to be a workhorse for stockpile 

stewardship, and a research machine 

called BlueGene/L. The latter was an 

innovative, scalable supercomputer 

based on energy efficient “system-on-achip” technology.

Blue/Gene L proved to be the future 

of supercomputing. It topped the 

list of the world’s most powerful 

computers for four years, ultimately 

achieving 480 teraflops peak speed. 

The peak performance of its Blue/

Gene Q successor, Sequoia, is nearly 

20,000 teraflops (20 petaflops). 

Sequoia is sited in the Livermore 

Computing Complex, known as TSF 

before supercomputing outgrew the 

building’s name. The next leap in 

capability is Sierra (see Year 2017). 

Plans are in the works for a facility 

upgrade to accommodate delivery 

of a 1,000-petaflop-scale (exascale) 

supercomputer in the next decade. 

On the other side of the Laboratory, 

a groundbreaking ceremony also 

began construction on the International 

Security Research Facility (ISRF). 

ISRF was necessary, in part, to 

accommodate growth within the 

Laboratory’s Intelligence Program 

(see Year 1965) following the events 

of September 11, 2001. The twostory, 64,000-square-foot building 

houses LLNL’s work in support of 

the Intelligence Community. In the 

mid-2000s, the Intelligence Program 

(Z Program) started the Cyber, Space, 

and Intelligence Initiative, which 

focused on cyber defense and network 

intelligence, space security, intelligence 

analysis, and persistent surveillance. 

Z Program continues to provide 

technical solutions and assistance to 

defend U.S. government networks and 

secure critical infrastructure, assess 

foreign cyber threats, and support 

information operations efforts. The 

program also provides innovative 

analysis to anticipate new and 

developing terrorist threats involving 

the use of chemical, biological, 

radiological, nuclear, and explosive 

(CBRNE) weapons and investigate 

opportunities to counter them. 

Z Program also works to understand 

the state of foreign weapons of mass 

destruction (WMD) programs; informs 

U.S. counterproliferation decisions, 

policies, and efforts; and develops 

supporting technology solutions 

to dissuade or prevent states from 

acquiring WMD-related technologies, 

materials, and expertise.

Reflecting on the Past and 

Groundbreaking for the Future

Celebrating and 

Breaking Ground 2002
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 116 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 117

In August 2015, the Laboratory honored Berni Alder at a special 

symposium to celebrate his 90th birthday and his illustrious 60-

year research career at Livermore. Alder saw the opportunity to 

use supercomputers to simulate the properties of materials and 

joined the Laboratory in 1955. He invented computational molecular 

dynamics and helped develop Monte Carlo methods. Alder and 

his colleagues at Livermore 

have made pioneering advances 

in the field ever since. In 2009, 

Alder received the National 

Medal of Science, the highest 

honor bestowed by the U.S. 

government upon scientists, 

engineers, and inventors. 

Now LLNL scientists explore 

“extreme chemistry” with quantum 

molecular dynamics simulations 

of thousands of atoms. Classical 

molecular dynamics models are 

much larger. The Laboratory’s 

Gordon Bell Prize winner in 2005 

was a 524-million-atom simulation 

of resoldification of tantalum. 

Berni Alder, Father of Molecular Dynamics 

Simulations

Record-setting molecular dynamics 

simulations on BlueGene/L won 

Gordon Bell Prizes in 2005 and 

2006. First, physicist Fred Streitz 

(shown) led a team performing a 

524-million atom simulation of the 

solidification of tantalum at extreme 

conditions. Computer scientist 

François Gygi then led a team using 

Qbox to study the properties of 

molybdenum under high pressure.

Livermore researchers 

used quantum simulations 

to discover a new class of 

cheap and efficient catalysts 

to facilitate the process of 

splitting water to make zeroemission hydrogen fuel. 

They found that the surfaces 

of the new materials actively 

produce hydrogen, whereas 

only the edges are active 

for other similar (layered 

metal dichalcogenide) 

catalysts. Their results were 

experimentally validated 

by collaborators. 

In 2003, a team of LLNL researchers, 

the Quantum Simulations Group, 

launched a Laboratory Directed 

Research and Development project 

to make practical “first-principles” 

molecular dynamics simulations. Such 

calculations were possible for small 

problems, but practicality required the 

development of new algorithms and 

numerical methods combined with 

the emergence of highly parallel 

terascale computing. 

First-principles simulations are ideal 

tools for examining the atomic and 

electronic structure of materials, from 

the simple hydrogen atom to complex 

biomolecules and nanostructures. 

The simulations are based on the 

laws of quantum mechanics with no 

fitted parameters as input. As a result, 

they are well suited to predict highly 

complex and unexpected states of 

matter. They have many applications 

relevant to LLNL’s national security 

mission: calculations of the properties 

of high explosives, equation of state of 

molecular liquids, shock simulations, 

biochemistry, and nanotechnology. 

The Quantum Simulations Group 

successfully addressed the major 

challenge of achieving linear 

scaling. With this improvement, 

the computational complexity is 

proportional to the number of atoms 

rather than the cube of the number. In 

addition, the simulations were modified 

to run efficiently on a large number of 

processors in parallel. The researchers 

used some of the Laboratory’s largest 

computers at the time to demonstrate 

the use of large-scale first-principles 

molecular dynamics simulations 

on a wide range of problems. This 

work opened the door to numerical 

simulations of physical processes 

occurring on length scales of several 

nanometers, which was previously 

inaccessible. 

Successful development and application 

of Qbox, a practical first-principles 

molecular dynamics code, earned LLNL 

researchers and collaborators the 2006 

Gordon Bell prize, a prestigious award 

for innovations in high-performance 

computing. The simulation, run on 

BlueGene/L, studied the behavior 

of 1,000 molybdenum atoms (a 

high-Z metal) under immense pressure. 

The ability to validate experiments 

and understand and predict material 

performance at the nanoscale under 

extreme conditions is especially 

important to LLNL’s nuclear stockpile 

stewardship mission and experiments at 

the National Ignition Facility.

Broader mission areas also benefit. 

Qbox, now a high-performance 

open-source software infrastructure, 

is increasingly used as a predictive 

tool in the exploration of properties 

of new materials for batteries, solar 

energy conversion, light-emission 

devices, dielectric materials, and 

phase-change materials for optical 

storage. For example, in one project 

LLNL researchers simulated the 

solid-electrolyte interfaces in lithium–

ion batteries. Using Qbox and even 

more advanced tools, they were able 

to locate key reactions and provide 

a detailed, microscopic view of the 

interface of chemistry and dynamics. 

Predictive simulation tools play an 

increasingly important role in LLNL’s 

basic materials research. Progress in 

quantum simulations of condensed 

and molecular systems, combined 

with advances in high-performance 

computing, has created the possibility 

of using truly predictive simulation tools 

to address the complexity of materials—

both natural and designed for special 

applications—at the nanoscale.

Simulating Nature at the Scale of Atoms

2003 First Principles Physics Codes
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 118 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 119

A key instrument aboard NNSA’s MESSENGER mission to Mercury 

was the Laboratory’s gamma-ray spectrometer. Launched on August 

3, 2004, the spacecraft journeyed more than 4.88 billion miles over 

six-and-a-half years to reach the planet. The germanium crystal had to 

be cooled to –330°F in the presence of the extreme heat from the Sun 

and re-radiating from Mercury’s surface. The instrument, which orbited 

the planet for four years, collected data to help determine the elemental 

mineral composition of Mercury’s surface. The information gathered is 

forcing researchers to rethink theories about how the planet was formed. 

A later, newer version of the MESSENGER instrument, called GeMini, 

also was licensed by ORTEC—and a still later version, GeMini Plus, is 

being developed to fly on a NASA mission to the asteroid Psyche. 

A Mission to Mercury

An R&D 100 Award winner 

in 2009, the GeMini gammaray spectrometer uses a 

germanium crystal kept 

at low temperature by an 

innovative ultraminiature 

cooling system. The 

spectrometer flew to the 

planet Mercury and has 

been commercialized as 

an affordable, portable 

instrument for accurately 

detecting and identifying 

nuclear materials.

Inspectors at the Comprehensive Nuclear-TestBan Treaty Integrated Field Exercise in Jordan 

in 2014 identified sources of interest using the 

Detective instrument.

LLNL researchers have developed improved scintillator materials (left) to better 

detect and distinguish special nuclear materials from other sources of radiation and 

a novel technology for detecting thermal neutrons from plutonium shielded to evade 

detection (right).

Years before the events on 9/11, 

Laboratory researchers began to focus 

their research efforts to counter the 

threat of weapons-of-mass-destruction 

use (see Year 2001). The attacks that 

day redoubled attention to nuclear 

threats that might not arrive in the form 

of missiles launched from abroad. A 

new generation of portable radiation 

detection devices were needed by 

military, law enforcement, and first 

responders to easily and quickly identify 

radioactive materials and distinguish 

among them. 

LLNL researchers brought to bear their 

expertise in nuclear physics, microand nanotechnologies, and materials 

science to develop innovative systems 

to more reliably detect and distinguish 

special nuclear materials (uranium 

and plutonium) from other sources of 

radiation. They quickly developed a 

portable gamma-ray spectrometer, now 

commercialized as ORTEC’s Detective.

Detective was licensed to ORTEC, a 

unit of AMETEK, Inc., in June 2003—

only 21 months after 9/11. Gamma 

rays come from many sources, so it 

is important to count only those at 

the precise energies that are emitted 

by special nuclear materials. Highpurity germanium crystals cooled to 

–280°F are ideal for this application. 

LLNL researchers invented ways to 

make this possible in a small package. 

Detective features a miniaturized 

electromechanical refrigeration system, 

uses sophisticated artificial-intelligencebased radionuclide identification 

algorithms, and weighs only 15 pounds. 

The battery-powered device can be 

operated by workers or first-responders 

with minimal training. This miniaturized 

detector technology was also sent into 

space (see the box).

More than 1,200 Detective instruments 

have been acquired for use at 

border crossings, cargo ship docks, 

transportation terminals, and other 

locations to differentiate between 

potentially dangerous radioactive 

materials and otherwise harmless 

radiation sources. 

During the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear 

Power Plant crisis in 2011, Detective 

radiation detectors were used to 

ensure that American citizens at the 

embassy and on military bases were 

safe, help Japanese governmental 

authorities determine who should 

be evacuated or sheltered in place, 

and identify agricultural areas of 

radiological concern. 

Finding highly-enriched uranium is 

especially difficult. A more effective, yet 

still very challenging, approach is to 

detect and discriminate neutrons from 

background gamma rays. Improved 

detection requires effective, affordable 

materials to use as scintillators, which 

convert the radiation to measurable 

flashes of light. Currently used crystal 

scintillators are difficult to grow in large 

sizes and are expensive. Materials 

science experts at the Laboratory 

made a breakthrough widely thought 

to be impossible: They developed 

inexpensive plastic materials that 

are almost as effective as crystal 

scintillators. Further research has led 

to much faster and cheaper ways to 

grow large crystal scintillators as well 

as a novel approach to detecting lowenergy neutrons using scintillators with 

nanoengineered features. 

For Enhanced National Security—and 

Space Exploration

2004 Portable Radiation Detectors
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 120 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 121

LLNL engineer Lisa Poyneer and 

Stanford University astrophysicist Bruce 

Macintosh (previously at Livermore) 

stand in front of the Gemini Planet 

Imager, which is mounted on the Gemini 

South telescope in Chile (bottom left). To 

correct for atmospheric turbulence, the 

imager uses a small deformable mirror 

(top left) made of etched silicon with 

4,096 actuators.

Images of the young star HR4796A revealed a narrow ring around the star (left), which could be dust from asteroids or comets left behind 

by planet formation. An image of only polarized light (right) more clearly shows starlight scattered by the nearer side of the ring.

In 2005, a team of Laboratory scientists 

and collaborators launched an effort 

to greatly advance the state of the art 

in adaptive optics (see Year 1996) 

to directly image extrasolar planets. 

It was the birth of the Gemini Planet 

Imager (GPI) project. Meanwhile, an 

international team including another 

Laboratory scientist discovered the 

first Earth-like extrasolar planet, using 

a network of telescopes across the 

globe and a technique pioneered by 

LLNL, called microlensing. Microlensing 

astronomy began with an international 

effort, launched by the Laboratory and 

applying technologies developed for 

Clementine (see Year 1994) to look 

for Massive Compact Halo Objects 

(MACHOs).

Designated OGLE-2005-BLG-290 Lb, 

the newly found planet is composed of 

rock and ice, has five times the mass 

of Earth, and orbits a red dwarf star at 

about three times the distance between 

Earth and the Sun. It was discovered 

through microlensing, which occurs 

whenever a distant solar system so 

closely aligns with the nearby star 

that the two appear as one image in 

a telescope. The gravity of the nearer 

star acts as a lens, bending the path 

of the photons from the solar system; 

the closer the alignment of the two, the 

greater the apparent brightness. A 

small, 12-hour-long fluctuation in 

brightness provided evidence of the 

presence of the orbiting planet.

To image and characterize distant 

planets, Livermore scientists and 

engineers began in 2005 to develop 

a next-generation, dedicated planethunting, high-contrast “extreme” 

adaptive-optic (ExAO) system for the 

Gemini Observatory in Chile. LLNL’s 

Bruce Macintosh (now at Stanford 

University) served as principal 

investigator of the GPI project, an 

international partnership. First-light 

experiments occurred in November 2013. 

Sensitive enough to see giant (but 

not Earth-sized) planets, GPI sits 

on the 8.1-meter-diameter Gemini 

South telescope, at an altitude of 

2,715 meters. The size of a small car, 

GPI is mounted behind the telescope’s 

primary mirror. LLNL engineers 

devised a remarkably agile ExAO 

system that measures 1,000 times 

per second the light passing through 

2,000 control points at the aperture 

of the telescope. Every thousandth of 

a second, the system adjusts the 

shapes of two deformable mirrors to 

correct for atmospheric distortions. 

The 2.56 centimeter-square mirror 

designed for fine focusing employs 

4,096 tiny microelectromechanical 

actuators. GPI produces the fastest 

and clearest images of extrasolar 

planets ever recorded.

During its first observations, GPI 

captured images of a planet four times 

the size of Jupiter orbiting the star Beta 

Pictoris, 63 light-years from Earth. Two 

disks of dense gas and debris were 

also observed. The Beta Pictoris system 

and a later discovered Jupiter-like 

planet orbiting a young star, 51 Eridani, 

provide clues about the early formation 

of solar systems. These discoveries are 

part of an ongoing three-year effort to 

find and study young Jupiters circling 

about 600 nearby stars. 

Discovering and Studying 

Distant Worlds

2005 Extrasolar Planets
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 122 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 123

On September 25, 2012, JASPER (the Joint Actinide Shock Physics 

Experimental Research facility) fired its 100th shot. Located at the 

Nevada National Security Site, the 20-meter-long, two-stage light 

gas gun is a key scientific tool for the Stockpile Stewardship Program. 

Experiments at JASPER have enabled LLNL scientists to understand 

important properties and behaviors of plutonium. The shots make 

essential contributions to aging studies. The gun can shoot a projectile 

at up to about 17,000 miles per hour into a chamber containing at a 

small plutonium 

target, subjecting it 

to millions of times 

atmospheric pressure 

and temperatures 

of thousands of 

degrees. LLNL 

operates JASPER 

in conjunction with 

the Joint Laboratory 

Office–Nevada.

JASPER Supports Plutonium Aging Studies

Livermore chemist 

Brandon Chung (left) and 

mechanical technologist 

Kenneth Lema peer 

through a glovebox to 

check the setup on the 

dilatometer that measures 

the dimensions of 

plutonium samples.

Researchers used the 

gas gun at the Joint 

Actinide Shock Physics 

Experimental Research 

facility to simultaneously 

shock samples of aged 

and new plutonium. 

Heading into 2006, there was 

uncertainty about how long aging 

plutonium pits in the U.S. nuclear 

deterrent would work. DOE was 

considering development of a 

new, multibillion-dollar facility to 

remanufacture pits, one of the most 

important components comprising a 

nuclear weapon.

Many physicists, metallurgists, and 

chemists have worried that the natural 

radiation produced by plutonium 

over many years might sufficiently 

damage the pit, compromising weapon 

performance. Although the plutonium 

isotope used in pits has a half-life of 

24,000 years, its decay rate is high 

enough to produce a significant amount 

of damage after only a few decades. 

Weapon scientists needed greater 

assurance that a pit would retain its size, 

shape, and strength in the presence of 

an ever-increasing amount of radiation 

damage. Many pits are in deployed 

weapon systems that are far older than 

their originally planned lifetimes.

In 1997, DOE launched a $100-million 

effort at Livermore and Los Alamos 

national laboratories directed at 

studying this enigmatic material. 

Livermore scientists used some of 

the most accurate instruments in the 

world to measure the microstructural, 

physical, and chemical properties of 

plutonium and its alloys. In dynamic 

experiments such as gas-gun tests and 

static studies using diamond anvil cells, 

they examined how radioactive decay 

affects plutonium’s structure, phase 

stability, and equation of state (EOS). 

They also measured the element’s 

density and volume with unprecedented 

accuracy and reviewed data from past 

nuclear tests. 

One of the challenges associated with 

forecasting aging effects was that the 

oldest weapons-grade plutonium made 

in the U.S. and available for detailed 

analysis was about 45 years old, taken 

from pits retired from the stockpile. To 

simulate the properties of pits many 

decades into the future, researchers 

accelerated the age of samples by 

adding isotopes with shorter half-lives. 

The researchers “spiked” an alloy of 

weapons-grade plutonium-239 with 

plutonium-238, which has a half-life of 

87 years, so that it accumulates radiation 

damage 16 times faster than weaponsgrade plutonium alone. Artificially aged 

samples can then be tested against new 

and naturally aged samples. 

Years of research culminated in 2006 

with the announcement that plutonium 

aging would not affect warhead reliability 

for decades. The laboratories’ results 

indicated that pit lifetimes were much 

longer than scientists had previously 

estimated. An independent panel of 

scientists, who advise the government 

on science and technology, reviewed 

their work and concurred that the 

credible lifetime for most pit types is at 

least 100 years.

Plutonium continues to age gracefully. 

Ongoing research since 2006 shows 

that no unexpected aging issues are 

appearing in plutonium that has been 

accelerated to an equivalent of around 

150 years of age. In addition to lending 

increased confidence in the reliability 

and effectiveness of the future stockpile, 

this work helped reinforce the DOE 

decision that a new pit manufacturing 

facility was not needed at this time, thus 

saving taxpayers billions of dollars. 

Determining that Nuclear Weapon 

Pits Age Gracefully

2006 Plutonium Aging
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 124 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 125

As principal investigator for the Earth 

System Grid Federation (ESGF), 

computer scientist Dean Williams led the 

development of a large, interactive data 

and visualization system for researchers 

from around the world to securely store 

and share models, analyses, and results 

along with observational data. ESGF 

supported the fourth assessment report 

of the Intergovernmental Panel on 

Climate Change.

Laboratory researcher Will Smith looks at microcapsules that can 

be used to capture carbon dioxide from coal or natural gas-fired 

power plants, as well as in industrial processes like steel and 

cement production. 

LLNL chemist Sarah Baker holds a gas chromatography vial used 

to measure the amount of methanol produced by a 3D-printed 

enzyme-embedded polymer. The research could lead to more 

efficient conversion of methane to energy production and should 

be useful in a wide range of applications.

As part of a Navistar SuperTruck I 

team, Livermore helped design a 

new type of tractor-trailer truck that 

significantly improves fuel economy. 

Full-scale wind tunnel tests of the 

design have been conducted at the 

NASA Ames Research Center. 

In 2007, the Nobel Peace Prize was 

shared by the Intergovernmental Panel 

on Climate Change (IPCC) and former 

Vice President Al Gore for their efforts 

to build up and disseminate knowledge 

about the role human activities play 

in climate change and to lay the 

foundations for the measures that are 

needed to counteract such change. At 

the Laboratory’s Program for Climate 

Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison 

(PCMDI), more than 40 LLNL 

employees were delighted with and 

honored by the choice (see Year 1992). 

That year IPCC issued its Fourth 

Assessment Report. In the opening 

acknowledgements of the report, 

PCMDI is thanked for “the archiving 

and distribution of an unprecedented 

amount of climate model output.” 

IPCC presented PCMDI a plaque 

with the inscription, “in recognition 

of extraordinary contributions to the 

Fourth Assessment Report.” PCMDI 

has made major contributions to 

all five IPCC reports, from the First 

Assessment Report in 1990 to the 

Fifth Assessment Report in 2013. 

Laboratory scientists authored sections 

of reports and provided comparisons 

and assessments of worldwide climate 

models that feed into IPCC conclusions 

and recommendations.

Moreover, PCMDI researchers provide 

valuable database support to the global 

climate analysis community; work on 

key issues such as ocean warming, 

cloud modeling, and natural climate 

fluctuations; and conduct studies of 

human influence on climate. Comparing 

past data records with the results from 

climate models and satellite records, 

they work with colleagues worldwide 

to better understand contributing 

factors to climate change and improve 

predictions of expected variations. 

Facing the prospect of significant 

climate change, Laboratory researchers 

are devising innovative “negative 

emissions” technologies—eliminating 

the emission of greenhouse gases 

in the atmosphere. Livermore scientists, 

along with collaborators, developed 

a new type of carbon-capture media 

composed of core-shell microcapsules, 

which consist of a highly permeable 

polymer shell and a fluid made up of 

sodium carbonate solution (simple 

baking soda found in grocery stores). 

The fluid reacts with and absorbs 

carbon dioxide (CO2

), confining it 

within the shell. Once saturated, the 

microcapsules are emptied of the CO2

in an environmentally benign manner 

and ready for reuse. Another team of 

LLNL researchers combined biology 

and 3D printing to create the first 

chemical reactor that can continuously 

produce methanol from methane 

(a potent greenhouse gas) at room 

temperature and pressure. 

More broadly, LLNL is applying 

expertise in high-performance 

computing (HPC), additive 

manufacturing (see Year 2014), and 

materials science to enhance the 

nation’s energy and resource security. 

For example, Laboratory scientists 

are working to make liquid hydrogen 

practical as a zero-emission fuel for 

transportation, and they are part of a 

Laboratory–industry collaboration that 

designed a tractor-trailer truck with 

104 percent improved fuel efficiency. 

LLNL is also leading the multilaboratory 

DOE HPC for Manufacturing Program, 

which provides HPC expertise to help 

U.S. industry advance innovative 

clean energy technologies, reduce 

energy and resource consumption, and 

strengthen competitiveness.

A Nobel Peace Prize and the Challenge 

of Climate Change

Climate Change and 

Its Impacts 2007
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 126 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 127

Detecting Clandestine Nuclear 

Explosions

Laboratory seismologists used supercomputers to simulate the ground 

motion of the magnitude 6.0 south Napa earthquake on August 24, 

2014. The University of California at Berkeley’s Seismology Laboratory 

provided descriptions of the earthquake source, and high-resolution 

LLNL simulations determined how the rupture process affected the 

region’s 3D geological structure. The simulations also examined the 

impact of surface details on local ground motion. Comparison with 

observed data serves to improve models, making them better tools to 

study future earthquake scenarios. 

South Napa Earthquake Simulation

2008 RSTT

In 2008, Lawrence Livermore, 

Los Alamos, and Sandia national 

laboratories were working with the 

U.S. Air Force Technical Applications 

Center (AFTAC) to produce the first 

3D model of the Earth specifically for 

monitoring nuclear tests. Led by LLNL’s 

Stephen Myers, the collaborators 

developed the Regional Seismic 

Travel Time (RSTT) technology, which 

dramatically improved international 

capabilities to detect and locate lowyield nuclear explosions. The fouryear-long effort, which began in 2006, 

earned Myers an Ernest O. Lawrence 

Award for his leadership of the project.

Before the development of RSTT, 

detection of small-yield events 

was problematic. The weak signal 

challenged the ability to use long-range 

seismic data. Events were difficult to 

locate using regional seismic data 

because the propagation of regional 

signals depends on local geological 

details. Because of these geological 

variations, event location could not be 

pinpointed by using signal travel times 

to various regional seismic stations. 

RSTT includes a worldwide digital 

3D model of the seismic properties 

of Earth’s crust and upper mantle, 

which makes it possible to accurately 

calculate travel times and incorporate 

regional seismic data. Small-yield 

events are detected quickly and with 

an accuracy once achieved only 

with large, globally recorded events. To 

date, the United States has sponsored 

six workshops to share the RSTT 

technology with 67 nations.

AFTAC and the Preparatory Commission 

for the Comprehensive Nuclear-TestBan Treaty use RSTT to monitor nuclear 

events around the world, including 

those in North Korea. The existence of a 

cluster of events in North Korea enables 

RSTT to determine event location even 

more precisely. Seismologists have 

been able to pinpoint the locations of 

five North Korean underground nuclear 

tests—in 2006, 2009, 2013, and two 

in 2016—within about 100 meters 

accuracy when the location of one 

event is known. In addition, LLNL 

researchers have built upon the RSTT 

model and extended it to the center of 

the Earth, an additional depth of more 

than 6,000 kilometers. The Laboratory 

is pursuing even-more-accurate 

3D models to better detect small 

clandestine nuclear explosions.

The NNSA laboratories and 

collaborators continue efforts to 

improve detection capabilities. Source 

Physics Experiments (SPEs) are being 

conducted at the Nevada National 

Security Site. These highly instrumented 

underground, high-explosives tests 

provide data to improve capabilities 

to detect and identify low-yield 

nuclear explosions amid the clutter 

of conventional explosions and small 

earthquakes. Phase I of the SPE series, 

which consisted of six experiments, 

concluded in October 2016. 

Lawrence Livermore is also 

partnering with Los Alamos, Pacific 

Northwest, and Sandia national 

laboratories in the Low Yield Nuclear 

Monitoring Program, a five-year 

collaborative initiative to address 

key obstacles that hamper detection 

of low-yield nuclear tests. The 

research focuses on signature 

discovery, understanding, and 

signature exploitation. 

LLNL engineer Justin Jones inspects the 

interface at the top of the high-explosives 

canister in preparation for the Source 

Physics Experiment-6 test, which was 

conducted at the Nevada National Security 

Site in October 2016.

An improved version of 

RSTT called LLNL-Global 3D 

(G3D) is used to simulate 

the waves generated by a 

hypothetical seismic event. 

The seismic waves (the 

yellow lines) are shown 

propagating through the 

Earth’s interior. Added to 

the simulation image are 

representations of the 

surface waves.
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 128 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 129

Laboratory Director George H. Miller introduces dignitaries at the NIF dedication ceremony held in May 2009 (top). The facility required 

more than 55,000 cubic meters of concrete, 7,600 tons of reinforcing steel rebar, and 5,000 tons of structural steel. The giant laser has 

nearly 40,000 optics that precisely guide, reflect, amplify, and focus 192 laser beams onto a target about the size of a pencil eraser. 

Upgrades to NIF are dramatically 

improving diagnostic capabilities. 

Technicians inspect a mirror (left) in 

the Advanced Radiographic Capability 

(ARC), which will be used to produce 

an x-ray “movie” to diagnose NIF target 

implosions with tens-of-picoseconds 

resolution. In addition, a new Target 

and Diagnostic Manipulator (TANDM, 

shown below) is being used with a 

newly installed Advanced Tracking Laser 

Alignment System to further enhance 

the efficiency of NIF operations. 

NIF experiments require speciallydesigned, precision-fabricated targets, 

such as the one shown, which is used to 

study how to manage instability growth 

and achieve the fuel density conditions 

needed to achieve fusion ignition.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) was 

formally dedicated on May 29, 2009, 

exactly 12 years to the day after its 

groundbreaking. Prominent dignitaries 

and more than 3,500 guests attended 

the ceremony, portions of which 

were aired live on network television. 

Construction of NIF, the world’s largest 

laser, was honored by the Project 

Management Institute as a facility 

“pushing beyond the state of the art,” 

earning the prestigious Project of the 

Year for 2010. The award recognizes the 

year’s most innovative and successful 

project. The effort was completed 

on budget and on time according to 

the construction schedule that was 

rebaselined in 2000 (see Year 1997). 

Because NIF is the only facility 

that can create the conditions that 

are relevant to understanding the 

operation of modern nuclear weapons, 

the 192-beam, 1.8-million joule 

laser is a crucial element of NNSA’s 

Stockpile Stewardship Program. 

NIF creates high-energy-density 

(HED) conditions—temperatures 

of 100 million degrees and pressures 

100 billion times that of the Earth’s 

atmosphere—similar to those in stars 

and detonating nuclear weapons. 

Campaigns of HED science 

experiments at NIF explore wideranging phenomena central to stockpile 

stewardship. The experiments provide 

valuable data about the properties 

of materials at extreme conditions, 

the interaction of matter with intense 

radiation, and hydrodynamic turbulence 

and mixing. These issues are critical 

to understanding nuclear weapons 

performance and improving the 

predictability and results of fusionignition experiments (see Year 2013). 

Achieving ignition is a vital goal in 

support of stockpile stewardship 

and provides an option for long-term 

energy security.

As the world’s premier HED science 

experimental facility, NIF is also operated 

as a user facility for the scientific 

community with an unprecedented 

capability for studying materials at 

extreme conditions. While the defining 

mission of NIF is stockpile stewardship, 

experiments also support broader 

national security needs. In addition, a 

Discovery Science program provides 

opportunities for researchers to explore 

conditions that exist in the core of 

planets and re-create at miniscule 

scale puzzling energetic phenomena 

observed by astronomers. The NIF 

User Group includes researchers from 

DOE national laboratories, international 

fusion energy researchers, scientists 

from academia, and other national and 

international users.

The demand for experimental time 

to use NIF’s unique capabilities has 

always exceeded supply. The NIF team 

took steps to dramatically increase 

shot opportunities in response to this 

demand and budget constraints. 

These efforts benefited from the results 

of a NIF efficiency improvement study 

requested by Congress and conducted 

by the NIF team in partnership with 

the other NNSA laboratories. The shot 

rate increased from 191 in FY 2014 

to 415 in FY 2016. In addition to 

many process improvements, new 

equipment and technologies are 

reducing the time between shots. 

With the combination of enhanced 

diagnostics, improved capabilities 

to manufacture complex targets, 

and the development of new 

types of experimental platforms, 

faster progress is possible in HED 

science for stockpile stewardship. 

The range of innovative HED 

experiments that can be performed 

at NIF is ever expanding.

A Mainstay for Stockpile Stewardship 

and HED Science

2009 NIF Dedication
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 130 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 131

William H. Goldstein

(2014 • Present)

Bret E. Knapp

(2013 • 2014)

Acting Director

Penrose C. Albright

(2011 • 2013)

NewLeadership

The 21st century presents an expanding array of challenges 

and an ever-changing security environment. Nuclear deterrence 

remains the ultimate security guarantee for the United States; 

yet, we face tensions with increasingly bold actors in a complex 

strategic environment with growing threats in multiple security 

domains. We must be prepared for surprises.

As a “new ideas” laboratory, our mission is to strengthen the 

nation’s security through cutting-edge science, technology, and 

engineering. Livermore’s first priority is to sustain the nation’s 

nuclear arsenal. Responsible for the next two warhead lifeextension programs, LLNL is pursuing innovations in materials 

and manufacturing to transform the NNSA weapons complex by 

expediting production, lowering costs, and delivering systems that 

are safer and more secure.

Research at the frontiers of science and technology underlies 

our ability to deliver cutting-edge solutions to the nation’s most 

pressing challenges. Leadership in high-performance computing, 

for example, is enabling predictive simulations and extraction 

of information from “big data” for applications ranging from 

bioinformatics to persistent surveillance. Expertise in materials 

science and engineering, combined with unique experimental 

capabilities, makes possible development of advanced 

neurological sensors, discovery of new elements and new planets, 

and progress toward a clean energy future.

The Tens A “new ideas” laboratory for the 21st century
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 132 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 133

In addition to developing advanced conventional munitions, LLNL 

is providing the DOD Combatant Commands with timely, actionable 

intelligence to the warfighter to combat the spread of weapons of mass 

destruction. In the early 1990s after the Gulf War, LLNL developed the 

concept of combining intelligence with engineering assessments of 

industrial sites and processes to help in planning military operations 

potentially involving weapons of mass destruction facilities and other 

industrial hazards. In 1994, when the U.S. military began extensive 

counterproliferation planning, LLNL was well-prepared to work closely 

with military planners to establish the Counterproliferation Analysis and 

Planning Systems (CAPS) program. LLNL operates CAPS and is often 

called upon on short notice by the Intelligence Community, DOD, and 

the Combatant Commands to respond to urgent science and technology 

queries and taskings in times of crises.

Supporting the Warfighter

Materials scientist 

Jennifer Rodriguez 

examines a highperformance 

carbon composite 

part, created using 

the 3D direct-ink 

writing process 

newly developed at 

LLNL. Carbon fiber 

structural material 

has important 

applications 

in aerospace, 

transportation, 

and defense. 

An experiment team including (from left) 

Dennis Freeman, Lee Griffith (behind the 

device), and David Hiromoto positions a 

munition case prior to structural testing. 

This testing was part of LLNL’s rapid 

development of the BLU-129/B munition 

for the U.S. Air Force, completed in the 

short span of 18 months. The munition 

is designed to be more effective against 

the intended target and reduce collateral 

damage—both critical concerns for 

warfighting in urban environments. 

The BLU-129/B’s carbon-fiber composite 

case produces no lethal fragments when the 

munition is detonated. The case also weighs 

much less than a conventional steel case.

The U.S. Air Force had an urgent need 

for a game-changing conventional 

munition. U.S. troops were on the 

ground in increasingly crowded 

battlefields, and air support was limited 

by the risk of collateral damage. A team 

of LLNL researchers answered the call. 

Within nine months, they completed 

prototype development, a process that 

typically takes four to six years, and 

provided the manufacturer with most 

of the tooling needed to assemble 

the newly designed munition. The first 

BLU-129/B was delivered to the theater 

of operations in 2011, 18 months after 

the effort began. The Air Force had a 

munition fully capable of being safely 

deployed near friendly soldiers and 

noncombatants. 

The breakthrough design of a lowcollateral-damage munition and its 

expeditious development was the 

product of a long-running munitions 

program with the Department 

of Defense (DOD) coupled with 

Livermore’s signature capability of 

pairing high-performance computing 

(HPC) simulations with focused 

experiments to accelerate technology 

development. Ongoing work as part of 

the Joint DOD/Department of Energy 

Munitions Technology Development 

Program provided excellent options—

disruptive new technologies—for 

high explosives and case materials to 

minimize collateral damage. Scientists 

and engineers were able to rapidly 

converge on a production-ready design 

that optimized performance through 

iterations of experiments and detailed 

HPC simulations of material behavior 

under extreme conditions. 

The BLU-129/B uses a new type of 

explosive charge called multiphase 

blast explosive (MBX). Experiments 

conducted by the Air Force Weapons 

Laboratory had revealed that a target 

subjected to an MBX detonation 

experienced a greater impulse of 

energy than did targets subjected to 

other explosive compositions. The highexplosive confines damage to a small 

zone near the target location. The use 

of MBX also made it possible to replace 

metal, which is a source of shrapnel, 

with carbon fiber as the case material. 

Combined use of MBX and a carbon 

fiber composite case greatly reduces 

collateral damage.

Development activities greatly benefited 

from Livermore’s growing expertise in 

modeling and fabricating composite 

materials such as carbon fiber. 

Composites are made from two or more 

chemically and physically different 

materials that when combined can be 

“tailored” to deliver specific effects. The 

pattern in which the fibers are wound 

further control the composite’s precise 

characteristics. LLNL’s HPC modeling 

capabilities helped researchers 

optimize case materials to meet 

stringent operational and performance 

requirements. The BLU-129/B’s carbonfiber composite case has the strength 

to withstand penetration into concrete 

structures and produces no lethal 

fragments on detonation. The total 

system weight is also greatly reduced. 

This weapon exemplifies a new class 

of innovative munitions, integrating 

disruptive technologies that significantly 

reduce unnecessary loss of life. The 

ability to couple sophisticated guidance 

systems with weapons that have a 

more accurate lethal footprint has been 

profound. The BLU-129/B has been 

in service since 2011, and in 2017, it 

entered into a third production run.

Development of a New Precision 

Munition—in 18 Months

2010 BLU-129/B
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 134 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 135

Today, it is possible to identify microbial pathogens in a sample without 

any prior knowledge of the organisms present. DNA extracted from the 

sample can be sequenced to recover short genetic fragments, which 

can be compared to accumulated genomic data. The huge challenge, 

addressed by the developers of the Livermore Metagenomics Analysis 

Toolkit (LMAT), is that genomic data is 115 gigabases in size and 

constantly growing. LLNL researchers successfully addressed the 

big-data search problem using one of the Laboratory’s most advanced 

computers and then devised a means to use cloud computing to make 

LMAT widely available to other researchers.

Laboratory researchers tested the dual use of LLMDA and LMAT in a 

study on microbial infections and the healing of U.S. soldiers’ wounds. The 

combination of technologies provided an efficient means for associating 

the presence of certain bacteria with the rate of healing, information that 

can help clinicians make more informed treatment decisions.

LMAT: Livermore Metagenomics Analysis Toolkit

LLNL biologist Crystal Jaing is preparing to insert the LLMDA array into the microarray scanner. Results are then displayed 

at nearby computer monitor.

In 2011, researchers reported results 

from an early application of the newly 

developed Lawrence Livermore 

Microbial Detection Array (LLMDA), 

a tool for rapid detection of bacteria, 

viruses, and other organisms. Working 

with the San Francisco-based Blood 

Systems Research Institute, Laboratory 

scientists used LLMDA to test whether 

samples of seven live, attenuated 

viral vaccines used for infants were 

contaminated with other viruses. The 

rapid, low-cost tests successfully 

confirmed the results found by the 

institute’s laborious DNA sequencing of 

all the genetic materials in the vaccines.

Since then, LLNL has worked with 

more than three dozen collaborators 

from seven nations employing LLMDA 

in widespread applications: better 

understanding diseases, advancing 

health care, detecting animal diseases, 

improving treatment of U.S. soldiers’ 

wounds, and studying human 

archeological remains. Soon it will 

be in the International Space Station 

monitoring the presence of microbes 

that might pose health threats.

The heart of LLMDA is a microarray 

(about one inch square) filled with 

distinct microspots, called probes, 

where strands of DNA are attached to 

a surface. The latest version of LLMDA, 

the Axiom Microbiome array, can 

handle up to 96 samples in separate 

microarrays. Each microarray has 

1.4 million probes and can detect 

12,513 different microorganisms, 

including 6,901 bacteria, 4,770 viruses, 

381 fungi, 370 archaea, and 91 protozoa. 

And the detection work can be 

performed within a 24-hour period. 

LLMDA has been commercialized and is 

now available in high-throughput format, 

processing 96 samples at a time.

LLNL’s expertise in bioinformatics 

and high-performance computing, 

combined with a biotechnology 

advance, led to the invention of LLMDA. 

After the anthrax letter scare in 2001 

(see Year 2001), the Laboratory’s 

bioinformatics group, focused on 

biosecurity, began to build computer 

software that would search for unique 

“signatures”—spanning 100 to 200 DNA 

bases—in bacterial and viral 

pathogens. The application, called 

KPATH, efficiently tackled the “big data” 

problem of finding unique signatures 

among all other already-sequenced 

human and microbial genes. When 

a sudden outbreak of severe acute 

respiratory syndrome (SARS) occurred 

in 2003, the Centers for Disease Control 

and Prevention sought help from LLNL, 

and KPATH produced several candidate 

signatures in three hours. The team has 

developed DNA-based signatures for 

virtually every biothreat pathogen for 

which adequate genomic sequences 

are available. 

The same year as the SARS outbreak, 

Thomas Slezak, the bioinformatics 

group leader, conceived of LLMDA 

when he learned of an important 

technology breakthrough in 

microarray technology: DNA probes of 

60 or more bases became possible. 

This advance made it feasible to 

design a microarray in which the large 

number of probes would have different 

DNA sequences, providing signatures 

of microorganisms for which there is 

interest. Complementary advanced 

software could then determine what 

microbes are in a tested sample based 

on sequences that match between 

a probe and sample DNA that has a 

fluorescent tag for detection with 

a laser. The idea worked.

Bioinformatics for Biosecurity and 

Human Health

2011 LLMDA

LLMDA features aggregates of probes arranged 

in a square grid. The grid has hundreds of 

thousands of squares, and each square holds 

millions of copies of a single probe. Several 

dozen squares on the grid contain probes that 

correspond to unique genetic sequences from 

a single organism. 

Illustration by Sabrina Fletcher.
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 136 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 137

LLNL Director Parney Albright (left) 

accepts a proclamation from Livermore 

Mayor John Marchand during the 

naming of 116 S. Livermore Avenue as 

Livermorium Plaza. With the discovery 

of Livermorium, the city of Livermore is 

one of only six cities to have an element 

named after it on the periodic table.

Livermore nuclear chemist John 

Despotopulos (below) works with 

the Laboratory’s automated ion 

chromatography fraction collection 

system, which can chemically separate 

up to 12 samples simultaneously. The 

capability supports many LLNL missions, 

including studies of the properties of the 

newly discovered elements.

Livermore entered the history books on 

May 30, 2012, when the International 

Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry 

(IUPAC) adopted the name livermorium 

for element 116, in honor of the 

discovery team at Lawrence Livermore 

National Laboratory and the City of 

Livermore. The city and the Laboratory 

jointly celebrate the discovery of 

the element on Livermorium Day, 

May 30th, each year at Livermorium 

Plaza (located, coincidently, at 116 S. 

Livermore Avenue).

Livermorium and flerovium (element 114) 

joined the periodic table on the same 

day. The name flerovium honors Georgy 

N. Flerov, the head of the Laboratory of 

Nuclear Reactions, later named the Flerov 

Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, which 

is part of the Joint Institute for Nuclear 

Research in Dubna, Russia. Livermore 

chemist Ken Hulet met Professor Flerov 

at an international meeting in 1989, 

and the two agreed to join forces to 

create new superheavy elements using 

the U400 cyclotron at Dubna. During 

40 days of virtually continuous operations 

in November–December 1998, an 

American–Russian team accelerated 

ten-thousand trillion calcium-48 (a rare 

isotope of calcium with 48 neutrons) ions 

per hour to about 10 percent the speed 

of light and bombarded plutonium-244. 

On November 22, 1998, they created 

the first atom of flerovium-289, which 

lived for 30.4 seconds before decaying. 

In 2000 and 2001, the collaborators 

performed three sets of experiments 

with curium-284 targets and produced 

livermorium-292, once in each campaign.

This LLNL–Dubna team has discovered 

six elements (for some, with additional 

key collaborators) —113, 114, 115, 116, 

117, and 118. All six elements have 

been officially named: 113-nihonium; 

114-flerovium; 115-moscovium; 

116-livermorium; 117-tennessine; and 

118-oganesson. (IUPAC recognized 

Japanese scientists at RIKEN as the 

official discoverers of element 113, 

though Russian and U.S. teams found 

the element a few years earlier.)

These discoveries are important steps 

in the quest for the “island of stability,” 

a predicted region of superheavy 

elements on the chart of nuclides with 

half-lives that are longer by several 

orders of magnitude than the half-lives 

of other superheavy elements, typically 

measured in micro- or nanoseconds. 

Superheavy elements on the island 

have more spherical shape and should 

be more stable. The discovery of 

livermorium and flerovium—on the edge 

of the island of stability—demonstrated 

its existence. Researchers are probing 

the new elements’ chemical properties 

and exploring ways to create more of 

their isotopes. The Livermore–Dubna 

team is also awaiting construction of 

an additional dedicated accelerator at 

Dubna, which should greatly increase 

the production rate of superheavy 

New Superheavy Elements for 

the Periodic Table

2012 Livermorium

elements. Many fundamental questions 

remain about the limitations of matter 

and its chemical behavior at the far end 

of the periodic table.

Discovery and exploration of the 

properties of superheavy elements 

is just one facet of Laboratory core 

capabilities in radiochemistry. Expertise 

in radiochemistry provided essential 

support to the nuclear test program, and 

interest in the field is expanding again 

with applications in national and global 

security, energy security, environmental 

stewardship, and human health.
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 138 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 139

As the Stockpile Stewardship Program began, weapon designers faced 

two key scientific challenges: energy balance and boost. Energy balance 

pertains to “missing energy” in the sophisticated simulation codes used to 

design weapons. Nuclear tests had gathered data used to adjust for this 

missing energy. One of the most notable accomplishments of sciencebased stockpile stewardship was a theoretical explanation, modeled 

with high-performance computing (HPC) and validated by experiments, 

including shots at NIF. 

Livermore physicist Omar Hurricane won the Ernest O. Lawrence Award 

for creating the energy balance model and leading a team over a 10-

year effort that solved the mystery of missing energy. Subsequently, he 

led the “high-foot” campaign. Boost, the use of thermonuclear reactions 

to enhance the yield of a weapon’s primary, also needs to be better 

understood. That will require continued advances in HPC and future 

experiments at NIF including progress toward achieving ignition. 

Finding a Balance and Understanding Boost

LLNL researchers prepare 

for an experiment at NIF. 

Every aspect of a shot is 

checked and monitored in 

NIF’s NASA-inspired Control 

Room, where operators 

access data through a 

hierarchy of on-screen 

graphics menus. 

A colorized image shows a NIF “big foot” deuterium–tritium (DT) implosion (left) conducted 

on February 7, 2016. The shot used a shortened three-shock pulse, a thinner DT ice layer, 

and a subscale diamond ablator. Other experiments are testing whether rugby-ball-shaped 

hohlraums (right) can better control the drive symmetry on the target capsule.

On August 13, 2013, researchers 

conducted the first of a series of 

experiments at the National Ignition 

Facility (NIF) that clearly demonstrated 

self-heating, a mechanism needed to 

achieve fusion ignition and sustained 

fusion burn. The shot imploded a tiny 

cryogenically cooled deuterium–tritium 

capsule and produced a record number 

of neutrons (3 x 1015). In March 2014, 

a subsequent experiment increased 

the neutron yield to 9.3 x 1015. Alpha 

particles (helium nuclei) from fusion 

reactions further heated the plasma 

in a central spot and produced more 

than half of the total fusion yield 

(27 kilojoules). The fusion yield was 

considerably more than the energy 

imparted to the imploding deuterium–

tritium fuel.

These successful shots were part of 

a “high-foot” campaign. The high-foot 

laser pulse is shaped in a way that 

reduces hydrodynamic instabilities 

and breakup of the imploding capsule 

shell; however, overall compression in 

the implosion is insufficient for ignition. 

Experimental results were remarkably 

close to simulations that modeled 

asymmetries and some engineering 

details. Seeing how these higher 

velocity implosions behaved was 

important for understanding 

and identifying other issues that 

affect performance. 

Achieving fusion ignition and energy 

gain at NIF is a grand scientific 

challenge. Experimental campaigns, 

such as the high-foot shots, are making 

progress in identifying impediments 

to success and exploring ways to 

overcome them. One impediment is 

associated with poor control of the 

overall symmetry of the x-ray pulse 

created by the laser beam impinging on 

the walls of the hohlraum, the openended cylinder containing the target 

capsule. Drive symmetry is needed to 

implode the target uniformly to about 

30 times smaller diameter, create a 

central hot spot, and ignite the fuel. 

To improve target performance, 

researchers have been investigating 

a complex set of trade-offs among 

hohlraum designs and gas fills, and 

they experimented with high-density 

carbon (diamond) target capsules 

with a low-level fill of helium in the 

hohlraum. With less helium, the 

interaction between the laser light 

and the helium plasma is reduced 

so that 20 to 25 percent more x rays 

radiate the capsule. However, the 

laser pulse must be shorter so as not 

to be partially blocked by the faster 

ingress of the expanding hohlraum 

walls that are less restrained by helium. 

Because of diamond’s high density 

compared to other capsule materials, 

the capsules work with the shorter pulse 

length and produce higher efficiency, 

more symmetric implosions. The 

experiments are enabling a closer look 

at engineering features that impact the 

implosion, such as the fill tube and the 

capsule support.

Hydrodynamic instabilities in the 

imploding capsule present another 

set of issues—they can perforate 

the confining shell and they can 

contaminate the hot spot through 

the mixing of materials into the fuel. 

Experiments demonstrated that the 

Progress on the Path to Fusion and 

Energy Gain

2013 Self-Heating

Photo credit: Don Jedlovec.

“tent”—an ultrathin membrane that 

supports the target capsule inside the 

hohlraum— and the tube that fills the 

target with deuterium–tritium fuel are 

significant sources of material mixing 

that reduce neutron yield. Researchers 

are considering design options to 

reduce these effects.
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 140 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 141

Engineer Eric Duoss examines models of new ultralight structures Laboratory researchers have fabricated by AM. The team 

has developed, for example, micro-architected metamaterials—artificial materials with properties not found in nature—that 

can withstand a load of at least 160,000 times their own weight. 

LLNL researchers have made graphene 

aerogel microlattices with an engineered 

architecture using direct ink writing. 

The material’s exceptional properties 

will make for better energy storage and 

nanoelectronics.

Livermore AM technician Manuel Iniguez holds a metal part produced in partnership 

with the Y-12 National Security Complex. This match drill fixture is the first additively 

manufactured part to be qualified for NNSA production and takes one-fifth the labor hours 

to produce as compared with previous manufacturing methods.

LLNL’s Laboratory Directed 

Research and Development Program 

investments in the early 2010s 

launched an explosion of interest 

and remarkable advances in additive 

manufacturing (AM). Often in the 

form of 3D printing, AM typically adds 

successive layers of materials to 

precisely fabricate objects that may 

be designed to have very complex 

geometries. The focus has been 

to advance those technologies—

together with “ink” and “dry powder” 

starting materials—that are important 

for mission applications and not 

commercially available. 

By integrating manufacturing expertise, 

precision engineering, materials science, 

and high-performance computing, 

LLNL’s AM research has led to innovative 

multifunctional materials for stockpile 

stewardship, global security, and 

energy security. Materials of interest 

have ranged from aerogels with special 

structural properties to actinides; from 

carbon fiber composites to precision 

optical glass; from blood vessels to high 

explosives; and from polymers to metals 

and ceramics of all sorts.

A principal driver behind the focus on 

AM was Livermore’s responsibility to 

lead for NNSA the next two warhead 

life-extension programs (LEPs, see 

Year 2016). The combination of 

thorough integration of simulation and 

experiments (see Year 2010) and AM 

promises to accelerate design and 

development, assist in production 

certification, reduce manufacturing 

costs, and improve quality and 

performance of components. An 

example is the advance of direct ink 

writing (DIW) to manufacture cushions 

and pads, which are used in nuclear 

weapons to absorb shocks and fill gaps 

between components. 

At first, LLNL researchers collaborated 

with the inventor of DIW to adapt the 

technology for printing the polymerbased cushions and pads. The 

Laboratory then partnered with Kansas 

City National Security Campus to 

bring the technology into the NNSA 

manufacturing enterprise. The team 

received an NNSA Award of Excellence 

in 2015 for exceptional creativity in 

developing the AM process for cushions 

and pads. LLNL researchers have 

also made DIW-printed engineered 

graphene aerogel microlattices—

strong, lightweight, and compressible 

materials for use in high-performance 

supercapacitors. 

The combination of well-diagnosed 

experiments and high-performance 

computing simulations of material 

behavior is critical to many advances. 

For example, Laboratory scientists 

have made key discoveries about 

defect formation in the 3D printing 

of metals and ways to prevent it. 

Researchers have also succeeded in 

printing aerospace-grade carbon fiber 

composites. They mastered the flow of 

carbon fiber filaments through the DIW 

nozzle and the chemistry for curing the 

material quickly.

The growing AM effort has attracted 

many talented scientists and engineers 

to Livermore, including more than 

40 postdoctoral researchers. More 

than 80 invention disclosures and 50 

patent applications have been filed. 

Many academic collaborations are 

under way, as are nearly a dozen 

cooperative research and development 

agreements (CRADAs) and industryrelated projects. In 2016, construction 

of the 13,000-square-foot Advanced 

Manufacturing Laboratory began at 

the Livermore Valley Open Campus to 

further expand collaborations.

21st-Century Production of Tailor-Made 

Materials and Components

2014 Additive Manufacturing

Illustratiion by Ryan Chen.
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 142 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 143

Laboratory engineer Vanessa Tolosa holds up an implantable flexible electrode array. Capable of monitoring and stimulating thousands of 

neurons for years, the technology leverages LLNL work on the groundbreaking artificial retina project (top), which developed and applied 

biologically compatible micro-technologies to restore eyesight. 

LLNL’s tiny thin-film electrode 

array, compared to the size 

of a dime, uses complex 

electronics connections to 

stimulate and record neural 

signals. The implantable 

device offers a wide range 

of treatment applications, 

from Parkinson’s disease to 

seizures or depression. 

Through “heart-on-a-chip” technology—modeling a human heart on an engineered chip 

and measuring the effects of compound exposure using microelectrodes—Laboratory 

researchers hope to ensure potentially lifesaving new drugs are safe and effective while 

reducing the need for human and animal testing. 

In 2014–2015, LLNL’s Neural 

Technologies Group launched several 

flagship projects under the White House 

BRAIN initiative. The initiative aims to 

build the next-generation brain interfaces 

for human therapeutic use and for 

advancing fundamental understanding 

of the brain. Supported by the Defense 

Advanced Research Projects Agency 

and the National Institutes of Health, 

LLNL engineers and researchers 

from the University of California at 

San Francisco (UCSF) began to design 

and build an advanced, humanimplantable neuromodulation system 

to treat neuropsychiatric conditions, 

such as anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder. The system will 

be capable of autonomous, closed loop 

sense-and-stimulate therapy. 

In collaboration with Case Western 

Reserve University, Laboratory 

engineers also began building a 

prototype neural system to enable 

naturalistic feeling and dexterous 

control of prosthetic limbs for wounded 

warfighters. Additionally, an LLNL–

UCSF team started work on an 

electrode array system for studying 

brain activity at unprecedented 

resolution. They are designing and 

building electrode arrays that can 

record from hundreds to thousands of 

brain cells simultaneously. The ultimate 

goal is to develop arrays with 1,000-

plus channels that can be expanded to 

10,000 channels. 

The keys to success in these projects 

are LLNL’s expertise in nanoand microtechnologies and their 

development of novel materials that 

make devices biocompatible and 

fully implantable for long-term use, 

supported by a dedicated Medical 

Device Fabrication Facility. Laboratory 

researchers have continued to improve 

key technologies since their first major 

success in 2009: LLNL led a multiinstitutional team in the design and 

fabrication of an artificial retina—a 

fully implantable neural prosthetic that 

restores a sense of vision to people 

who have lost their sight because of 

ocular disease. LLNL engineers were 

responsible for systems integration and 

contributed three major components to 

the artificial retina program. 

In addition to the development of 

neural implants, LLNL researchers 

applied their expertise and unique 

capabilities to create a “humanon-a-chip.” The in vitro chip-based 

human investigational platform (iCHIP) 

combines living primary human cells, 

tissue engineering, and microfluidics 

to reproduce the body’s physiological 

response under an array of conditions. 

The iCHIP serves as a testing platform 

for exposure to agents whose effects 

are unknown to humans. Its use in 

testing new pharmaceuticals could 

dramatically accelerate the drug 

development process.

In 2014, LLNL scientists used the iCHIP 

platform to expose isolated human 

dorsal root ganglia nerve cells, which 

form part of the peripheral nervous 

system, to capsaicin (responsible for 

the burning sensation in chili peppers) 

and quantified cell response. By 2017, 

researchers reproduced on iCHIP 

four major biological systems vital 

to life: the central nervous system 

(up to four different types of brain 

cells), peripheral nervous system, 

the blood–brain barrier (which keeps 

potential toxins outside the brain), 

and the heart. Future work includes 

the integration of these systems—

and the addition of other organs—to 

create a complete testing platform. A 

new bioprinting facility is facilitating 

work on 3D printing of biological 

tissues and organ structures with 

novel bioinks.

Neural Implants, Plus a Humanon-a-Chip

2015 Neural Implants

Illustratiion by Ryan Chen.
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 144 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 145

Hydrodynamic experiments performed 

at Livermore’s Contained Firing Facility 

(CFF) and at Los Alamos provide essential 

support to the W80-4 LEP. A recent 

upgrade for the Flash X-Ray machine 

(below) in the CFF provides the capability 

to take two images during a single 

experiment, enabling researchers to follow 

the time evolution of implosions. 

LLNL engineers and materials scientists developed a method to additively manufacture 

cushions and pads that protect and position components within a nuclear weapon. Use 

of AM lowers production costs and allows for precise control of the material properties, 

which improves the predictability of performance. 

A critical need for the 

W80-4 LEP is to qualify and 

remanufacture additional 

insensitive high explosives 

to be used in the 

refurbished warheads. Work 

on the processing (e.g., 

shaping and machining) of 

batches of high-explosive 

materials for testing 

purposes is conducted in 

facilities at the Laboratory’s 

remote Site 300.

The W80 thermonuclear warhead 

entered service in 1982 with a 20-year 

design life. Its delivery system, a longrange cruise missile developed by the 

U.S. Air Force, had a 10-year design 

life. After more than three decades in 

service, researchers are now working in 

earnest to extend the life of the warhead 

and replace the missile. 

LLNL is partnered with Sandia National 

Laboratories to develop and certify 

the refurbished W80 warhead, which 

is designed for the new Long-Range 

Standoff Missile being developed 

in parallel by the U.S. Air Force. 

Designated the W80-4, this will be the 

first warhead designed for use with a 

new missile or delivery system since 

nuclear testing ended in 1992. The 

design options being considered for 

the W80-4 are cost-conscious and offer 

improvements to weapon safety, security, 

and effectiveness. First production of the 

W80-4 is planned for 2025.

In 2016, the W80-4 life-extension 

program (LEP) was in the midst of 

Phase 6.2, during which the project 

team must down-select among options 

generated in Phase 6.1. A mature set 

of requirements has been defined, 

business systems put in place to 

track schedule and budget, and 

NNSA made significant investments 

to recapitalize critical infrastructure at 

the Laboratory. In support of the LEP, 

researchers have initiated the first sets 

of major non-nuclear experiments, and 

LLNL’s exceptional high-performance 

computing capabilities are being 

heavily used to study and refine 

design options.

A major challenge of extending the life 

of the W80 is refurbishing materials and 

components that cannot be produced 

exactly as originally manufactured. For 

instance, the main explosive charge 

needs replacing; however, the original 

producers of the high-explosive 

constituents are either no longer in 

business or have made production 

process changes. Accordingly, LLNL has 

been working with the current material 

manufacturers to reconstitute the facilities 

and modify processes necessary for 

production, and researchers have started 

the process of reformulating the material 

(see Year 1976). 

The design and certification process 

will require innovations and extensive 

use of world-class computational 

and experimental resources. An area 

of significant innovation at LLNL is 

the use of additive manufacturing 

(AM) to improve the quality and 

reduce the cost of parts for weapons 

undergoing LEPs (see Year 2014). 

Major achievements in 2016 included 

producing AM parts for testing and 

developing refined capabilities to 

control the microstructure and physical 

properties of these parts. Two major 

hydrodynamic tests conducted during 

the fiscal year provided important 

data in support of an option for the 

W80-4 using AM.

As efforts on the W80-4 LEP continue, 

Livermore scientists and engineers 

are looking ahead to resuming work 

on the LEP for the first interoperable 

warhead (IW1) for ballistic missile 

systems in the stockpile. These two 

LEPs offer opportunities to introduce 

processes and technologies into the 

NNSA nuclear weapons complex to 

speed up design-to-production and 

lower costs.

Extending the Stockpile Life of an 

Aging Warhead

2016 W80-4 LEP
LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 146 LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY 147

LLNL scientists (from left), Vladimir Tomov, Tzanio Kolev, and Veselin Dobrev examine a simulation that is representative of 

the type of computing methods that will be needed on future supercomputers. As part of the DOE’s Exascale Computing 

Project, Livermore is leading a co-design center, the Center for Efficient Exascale Discretizations. Co-development of 

the software ecosystem, the hardware technology, and a new generation of applications is necessary to ensure all the 

components work together as a system.

Sierra (left), built by IBM and being delivered in 2017–2018, is the next in a long line of supercomputers at LLNL. The Laboratory and IBM 

Research are exploring another approach to supercomputing with the 16-chip TrueNorth platform (right), delivered in 2016. It is a first-of-akind brain-inspired platform for deep learning for complex cognitive tasks such as pattern recognition.

Computer 

scientists Adam 

Bertsch (left) 

and Pythagoras 

Watson examine 

components of 

the Sierra earlyaccess machine, 

which is being 

used to help 

prepare codes 

to run on the full 

version of Sierra 

as soon as it 

comes online.

The history and the future of Lawrence 

Livermore National Laboratory and 

supercomputing are deeply intertwined. 

Before the doors opened for business 

on September 2, 1952, the Laboratory’s 

founders ordered delivery of a Univac-1, 

the world’s most powerful computer 

at the time. After taking a crash 

course in the new art of computer 

programming, Livermore scientists 

used the machine while it was at the 

vendor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 

untill the Univac’s delivery to Livermore 

in April 1953. On the 65th anniversary 

of LLNL, computer scientists are busy 

adapting their simulation codes so that 

they run proficiently on Sierra, which is 

being delivered to Livermore and will 

be one of the world’s most capable 

supercomputers when fully operational 

in 2018.

The remarkable advances the Laboratory 

has made in nuclear weapons design 

and engineering stem from a continuing 

unchanged practice: work hand-in-hand 

with U.S. industry to push the state of the 

art in high-performance computing (HPC) 

and then effectively integrate scientific 

and engineering simulations with more 

expensive, time-consuming testing to 

move innovative ideas to final products. 

This approach to problem solving 

permeates all mission areas at LLNL. 

It is particularly essential for stockpile 

stewardship. In the absence of explosive 

nuclear testing, experiments test aspects 

of nuclear weapons performance. They 

also provide data to validate simulation 

models used to support integrated 

assessments of the condition of aging 

nuclear weapons and extend their 

stockpile life.

Sierra, the next-generation 

supercomputer built by IBM, is a result 

of DOE’s Collaboration of Oak Ridge, 

Argonne, and Livermore (CORAL) 

initiative, a three-laboratory partnership 

of NNSA’s Advanced Simulation and 

Computing (ASC) Program and the 

Office of Science’s Advanced Scientific 

Computing Research Program. In 2018, 

with support from ASC and institutional 

funding, LLNL will also take delivery of 

a smaller, unclassified companion to 

Sierra to provide the most advanced 

computing capabilities to all program 

and mission areas at the Laboratory.

Sierra is expected to provide four to six 

times the sustained performance and 

handle five to seven times the workload 

of Sequoia. Sited at Livermore and 

serving the needs of the three NNSA 

laboratories, Sequoia is NNSA’s fastest 

supercomputer at 20 quadrillion (1015) 

floating-point operations per second. 

With its advanced architecture that 

includes graphics processing units, 

the new machine is five times more 

energy efficient than Sequoia; however, 

restructuring existing and designing 

new software to run efficiently on 

Sierra—and anticipated future 

supercomputers—is a challenge. 

Sierra is an important next step toward 

exascale computing, an essential goal 

for long-term success in stockpile 

stewardship. LLNL is one of six 

laboratories helping to execute the 

Exascale Computing Project (ECP), 

a collaborative effort between DOE’s 

Office of Science and NNSA, that is 

performing the necessary research 

and development for efficient exascaleclass systems. Benefiting from the 

results of ECP, current plans are 

for NNSA to fund the delivery of an 

exascale computer to LLNL in 2023. It 

is an exciting prospect for the future of 

HPC and the Laboratory.

Sierra, the Future of Supercomputing, 

and the Laboratory

2017 Sierra
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writers 

Gorgiana Alonzo 

Steve Azevedo

Breanna Bishop 

Sheri Byrd

Cindy Cassady 

Paul Chrzanowski 

T. R. Girill 

Arnie Heller

Kate Hunts

Kent Johnson

Don Johnston

Pamela MacGregor

Nolan O’Brien 

Ann Parker

Elizabet Rajs

David Schwoegler 

Lynda Seaver 

Jeffrey Sketchley 

Anne M. Stark 

Sue Stephenson 

Sue Stull

Cynthia Talaber

Jeremy Thomas 

Katie Walter 

Stephen Wampler 

Gordon Yano 

Jesse Yow 

Contributors 

Paul Brown 

Beverly Bull 

Hriar Cabayan 

Jay Chase 

Paul Chu 

Fred Coensgen 

Tom Crites 

Roger Cunning 

Ken Fowler

Sybil Francis 

Karl Freytag 

Dave Fuess 

Dave Goerz 

Clark Groseclose

Rose Hansen 

John Holzrichter 

Omar Hurricane

Joe Keller 

Ron Kerst

Rod Kramer

Michael MacCracken

Michel McCoy 

Chuck Meier 

Edmund Miller

Milo Nordyke

Mike Ong

Andrew J. Poggio 

Richard Post 

Terri Quinn

Karen Rath

Douglas Rotman 

Robert Schock 

Eric Schwegler

Robert Sharpe

Dawn Shaughnessy 

Michael Thelen 

Carl Walter

Ian Watson

Bing Young