A lot has changed since the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) was founded more than three decades ago. But one thing certainly has not: the vital importance of our National Laboratories.

Today, the DOE’s mission is broad, with our programs and people responsible for promoting our nation’s energy security through the development and promotion of reliable, clean and affordable energy; ensuring our national security and maintaining a safe, reliable and secure nuclear stockpile; providing a responsible cleanup of the environmental legacy of nuclear weapons production; and promoting scientific excellence and innovation.

In all these areas and so many more, the role of our National Laboratories is absolutely central. Today, as throughout their history, the men and women of our National Laboratories are discovering solutions to our greatest environmental, energy and national security challenges.

Though much has been written about the trail-blazing history of the Manhattan Project–era work conducted at places such as Los Alamos National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the unfortunate reality is that not as much is known about the current work of those labs, or the efforts of their sister labs that comprise our modern-day complex. And therefore this book provides a 10-year retrospective of the National Laboratories’ most significant accomplishments.

As this book makes clear, collectively the DOE’s 17 National Laboratories remain the single greatest scientific enterprise in the world. This is true for a whole host of reasons—not least of which is the quality of the people who make the enterprise run. In fact, since the founding of the first DOE lab more than 60 years ago, the complex has been associated with the recipients of more than 80 Nobel Prizes.

To put it simply, this is a book about the transformational science and engineering that occurs at our National Laboratories. It is on a scale that is absolutely unique in the world. As the book describes in vivid detail, over the past decade, the National Laboratories have been responsible for developing new, cleaner and sustainable fuels and technologies to power our vehicles and our homes; for making conventional fuels more efficient and clean; for developing new technologies that are protecting our troops and thwarting terrorism here and around the world; for finding new and better ways to detect and treat cancer, Parkinson’s disease and other debilitating diseases; and, using the world’s most advanced supercomputers and technologies, for better enabling our ability to certify the reliability of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile without conducting underground nuclear tests.

As a nation, we will continue to depend on the power of science and engineering to push back the boundaries of what is possible. And therefore we will continue to depend on our National Laboratories and the remarkable men and women who work there.

As this splendid book illustrates, they have a record of success that will only be matched by what we know they will accomplish in the future.

James Schlesinger
U.S. Secretary of Energy, 1977–1979

Samuel W. Bodman
U.S. Secretary of Energy, 2005–2009