Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

I came here and left with 5 arms, 3 legs, 4 eyes and a weird growth on my…
No, not really. I left with a good appreciation for the work being done here. They offer free tours of the NIFTI project, presented in a way that the layman (or dumb people like me) can understand by people who can explain things from quanitumcomplicatedphysicaltriginometrybioroboticn­eomatrixVCR to simple things like «why the walls are that color».
It is, lacking a better vocabulary, an awe inspiring place. This isn’t Disney land, and there aren’t rides and there’s not a place to buy plastic dolls and there’s no Tshirts with clever sayings on them. But, there is a very complicated laser system that you get a very full view of how it works from start to finish.
Worth the time!

So proud to have professors at Las Positas college work here! They are outstanding.

Awesome place, fun people, good location. Ask about the big building of lasers they have!

I had wanted to tour NIF and Site 300. I recommend the coffee cups, T-​shirts, and periodic table at the visitor center/​gift shop. The cafeteria is affordable. If you have any questions, the public affairs office may help. Contrary to the website, I am told tours fill up fast and that reservations have to be made over a month in advance to get a spot during the spring. When tours fill up, one has to wait so I recommend scheduling earlier than I did to get a spot on the tour. Parking is very easy to find as there are a lot of spaces that are available.

This year I went on my second tour of Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Last year I made it only to the visitor center. The visitor center itself is very cool, with several hands on activities as well as a ton of informational signs. It is also a lot easier to plan a visit to the visitor center, as no background clearance is required ahead of time.
If you really want to learn about what it going on, however, I recommend a tour of the lab itself. I had to submit information online about a month in advance to get clearance for the tour, and to check in with a government ID to get a visitor pass on the day of the tour. The lab has done a great job of creating a behind the scenes look at what happens. We were led by our guide (it seems all guides work at the lab full time and go through training to become tour guides) through doors requiring security badge swipes. We got to see all of the activities up close and personal, and as the lab is in operation ²⁴⁄₇ this also meant seeing everyone completing their jobs– from changing out parts on the equipment to sitting in the «command room» (seriously it looked like something from Apollo 13) working on the checklists to countdown to the next experiment.
The lab has also set up informative diagrams and signs along this behind the scenes tour, so while you are in the area that work is taking place, there is also the opportunity for the guide to pause along he path and explain the happenings in more detail. If you’re a science or engineering nerd, or just into hi tech, seems like you’re living in the future experiments, I highly recommend this experience.

We signed up for the public tour and were surprised at how good it was. The best part was the visit to NIF. The other two sites for visits — the weather response room and the lab assay room were a little less interesting to view but impressive to learn what they do and how they are connected to systems throughout the world.

A great place to work. Innovative. Bettering the planet. The National Ignition Facility is spectacular.

This lab is one of three Department of Energy facilities in the Bay Area. Lawrence Berkeley is sponsored mainly by the Office of Science, and does more fundamental science research from biology to chemistry to nuclear physics; Stanford is focused on particle accelerators, so also fundamental physics; Livermore is the most applied lab of the three, focusing on the applications end of the R&D pipeline, conducting research ranging from radiation detection to atmospheric modeling and much more. Some scientists from this lab won the Nobel Prize shared with Al Gore as part of the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, awesome huh?!

LLNL was established in 1952 as the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at Livermore. It was an offshoot of the existing University of California Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley. It was intended to spur innovation and provide competition to the nuclear weapon design laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, home of the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic weapons. Edward Teller (the one who betrayed J. Robert Oppenheimer) and Ernest O. Lawrence, director of the Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley, are regarded as the co-​founders of the Livermore Laboratory.
The new laboratory was sited at a former Naval Air Base and training station in Livermore. The site was already home to several University of California Radiation Laboratory projects that were too large for its location in the hills above the Berkeley campus, including one of the first experiments in the magnetic approach to confined thermonuclear reactions (fusion).
I did my graduate school research at Los Alamos, and continue to have a soft spot for any Department of Energy Facility. And maybe it’s only a coincidence that both of my Father-​In-​Laws were in the Nuclear business. It also represents a road not traveled in terms of my early career choices.
I came to LLNL yesterday for a tour of the National Ignition Facility (NIF). Our group got the «A» Tour, which means we had the opportunity to see the Borg-​like Targeting Chamber in addition to the massive Laser Bays, and the various auxiliary areas. it was all super cool to see and gave me a much deeper understanding of various National Security, Energy, and Research issues. The Tour organization itself was very professional and we were very lucky to have one of the key engineers who helped design this facility to lead our tour. I left very impressed and actually a bit jealous that I didn’t work here.
But don’t take my word for it. See for yourself on how the NIF is Bringing Star Power to Earth:

Very cool place. Check out

The National Ignition Facility is AMAZING! It’s real-​life StarTrek stuff.

This place rocks!!!