The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz, along with numerous research centers and academic abroad centers. The system is the state's land-grant university. Major publications generally rank most UC campuses as being among the best universities in the world. Six of the campuses, Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and San Diego are considered Public Ivies, making California the state with the most universities in the nation to hold the title. UC campuses have large numbers of distinguished faculty in almost every academic discipline, with UC faculty and researchers having won 71 Nobel Prizes as of 2021.
Los Alamos National Laboratory is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the American southwest. Best known for its central role in helping develop the first atomic bomb, LANL is one of the world's largest and most advanced scientific institutions.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a federal research facility in Livermore, California, United States, founded by the University of California, Berkeley in 1952. Originally a branch of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Lawrence Livermore laboratory became autonomous in 1971 and was designated a national laboratory in 1981.
The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United States. The DOE oversees the U.S. nuclear weapons program, nuclear reactor production for the United States Navy, energy-related research, and domestic energy production and energy conservation.
Battelle Memorial Institute is a private nonprofit applied science and technology development company headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. Battelle is a charitable trust organized as a nonprofit corporation under the laws of the State of Ohio and is exempt from taxation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code because it is organized for charitable, scientific and education purposes.
Stockpile stewardship refers to the United States program of reliability testing and maintenance of its nuclear weapons without the use of nuclear testing.
EG&G, formally known as Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier, Inc., was a United States national defense contractor and provider of management and technical services. The company was involved in contracting services to the United States government during World War II and conducted weapons research and development during the Cold war era. It had close involvement with some of the government's most sensitive technologies.
BWX Technologies, Inc., headquartered in Lynchburg, Virginia is a supplier of nuclear components and fuel to the U.S. On July 1, 2015, BWX Technologies Inc. began trading separately from its former subsidiary Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises Inc. after a spinoff. Sandy Baker became CEO and Fees became chairman. The company had 2,500 employees in Lynchburg and 4,500 in total.
Michael Anastasio led two national science laboratories during a time of transition. He was the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and president of the Los Alamos National Security LLC, the company that operates the laboratory. He is the former director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The University of California Board of Regents appointed Michael R. Anastasio the director of LLNL on June 4, 2002. He started on July 1, 2002. In 2005 he became the president of the Los Alamos National Security LLC, and became the director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory on June 1, 2006. During his directorship at Lawrence Livermore, the laboratory won 25 R&D 100 Awards and maintained its world-class leadership position in high-performance computing and its application to global climate modeling.
Siegfried S. Hecker is an American metallurgist and nuclear scientist. He served as Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1986 to 1997 and is now affiliated with Stanford University, where he is research professor emeritus in the Department of Management Science and Engineering in the School of Engineering, and senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. During this time, he was also elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering (1988) for outstanding research on plutonium and the forming of materials, and for leadership in developing energy and weapons systems.
The Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test Facility (DARHT) is a facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory which is part of the Department of Energy's stockpile stewardship program. It uses two large X-ray machines to record three-dimensional interior images of materials. In most experiments, materials undergo hydrodynamic shock to simulate the implosion process in nuclear bombs and/or the effects of severe hydrodynamic stress. The tests are described as "full-scale mockups of the events that trigger the nuclear detonation". The powerful pulsed X-ray beams allow for an ultra-fast motion picture to be constructed showing the details of the process being studied in three dimensions. The tests are often compared with computer simulations to help improve the accuracy of the computer code. Such testing falls under the category of sub-critical testing.
Darleane Christian Hoffman is an American nuclear chemist who was among the researchers who confirmed the existence of Seaborgium, element 106. She is a faculty senior scientist in the Nuclear Science Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor in the graduate school at UC Berkeley. In acknowledgment of her many achievements, Discover Magazine recognized her in 2002 as one of the 50 most important women in science.
John C. Browne is an American physicist.
Linton Forrestall Brooks is an American government official who served as the Under Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Security from 2002 to 2007.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is a United States federal agency responsible for safeguarding national security through the military application of nuclear science. NNSA maintains and enhances the safety, security, and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile; works to reduce the global danger from weapons of mass destruction; provides the United States Navy with safe and effective nuclear propulsion; and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the United States and abroad.
Edward Moses is an American physicist and is the former president of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization. He is a past principal associate director for the National Ignition Facility & Photon Science Directorate, where he led the California-based NIF, the largest experimental science facility in the US and the world's most energetic laser, that hopes to demonstrate the first feasible example of usable nuclear fusion.
Charles F. McMillan is an American nuclear physicist and served as the 10th director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. His appointment was effective June 1, 2011. He succeeded Michael R. Anastasio. On September 5, 2017, McMillan announced he would be leaving the director position at the end of the year.
Warren Fletcher "Pete" Miller Jr. is an American nuclear engineer known for his work in the areas of computational physics, radioactive waste management, transport theory, nuclear reactor design and analysis, and the management of nuclear research and development programs.
The Federal Protective Forces are paramilitary forces of the United States Department of Energy (DOE) responsible for the protection of Category I special nuclear material. Though officially classified as security police, they hold law enforcement status while engaged in the performance of official duties. Officers are equipped and trained to respond to serious incidents at Department of Energy facilities by armed adversaries and to reacquire stolen nuclear material. The FPFs have been described, by the DOE, as "elite fighting forces" designed to operate in "combat environments".
Thomas Mason is a Canadian-American condensed-matter physicist who serves as the director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Prior to this appointment, he had been an executive at Battelle Memorial Institute from 2017 to 2018, and the director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 2007 to 2017. Mason moved to Oak Ridge in 1998 at the start of construction of the Spallation Neutron Source which he led from 2001 until project completion in 2006.
