Managed by Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC. Lawrence Livermore National Security (LLNS) is a limited liability company (LLC) that assumed management of the Laboratory on October 1, 2007. The LLNS team was formed to manage and operate Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory by entities renowned for their expertise and accomplishments throughout the Department of Energy nuclear weapons complex and beyond. The LLNS management team includes Bechtel National, University of California, BWX Technologies (BWXT), Washington Group International, and Battelle. The team also includes Texas A&M University. (For more information on the LLNS partners, see the website at www.llnsllc.com.)
The Laboratory is a government-owned, contractor-operated (GOCO) facility managed through a contract between the LLNS Board of Governors and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA). The GOCO approach originated with the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which was created to provide civilian control over the design and development of U.S. nuclear weapons as well as nuclear energy research. The AEC’s programs drew on the best the private sector had to offer through long-term administrative contracts - a practice followed by successor organizations and now DOE.
DOE determines the mission of each laboratory and provides funding for the work conducted.
Laboratory employees determine how best to carry out the research. LLNS management provides the appropriate long-term research environment with the ability to:
Recruit and retain world-class scientific talent to perform the work.
Create the kind of intellectual and organizational environment that ensures scientific integrity and insulates the work from political pressure.
Scrutinize the quality of research efforts through oversight that draws on LLNS’ extensive expertise and connections with similar research and development collaborators.
In part due to environmental issues at nuclear weapons sites, DOE greatly increased oversight activities at its GOCO facilities in the 1980s and there was a significant increase in laws, regulations, and orders to govern actions at the labs. In response, UC and DOE pioneered performance-based management to reinvigorate the GOCO concept. When the contracts were extended in 1992, they substantially increased UC management oversight responsibilities. Now extensive use is made of self-evaluation in critical areas based on an established set of performance measures.
Part of the National Nuclear
Security Administration. Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory is one of three national
laboratories that are part of NNSA—
the others are
Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories.
The laboratories provide scientific and technical expertise
in support of NNSA’
s missions:
To enhance United States national
security through the military application of nuclear
energy.
To maintain and enhance the
safety, reliability, and performance of the United
States nuclear weapons stockpile, including the ability
to design, produce, and test, in order to meet national
security requirements.
To provide the United States
Navy with safe, militarily effective nuclear propulsion
plants and to ensure the safe and reliable operation
of those plants.
To promote international nuclear
safety and nonproliferation.
To reduce global danger from
weapons of mass destruction.
To support United States leadership
in science and technology.
Work at the Joint
Genome Institute
Laboratory Sponsors. As
a national security laboratory, Livermore’s funding
largely comes from the NNSA Office of Defense Programs
for nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship activities.
Support for national security and homeland security work
also comes from the NNSA Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation,
the Department of Homeland Security, various Department
of Defense sponsors, and other federal agencies.
As a multiprogram laboratory, Livermore applies its special capabilities to meet important national needs. Activities sponsored by non-NNSA parts of DOE include work for the Office of Environmental Management as well as research and development projects the Offices of Science and many other program offices. Non-DOE sponsors include federal agencies (such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, National Institutes of Health, and Environmental Protection Agency), State of California agencies, and industry.
Planned nuclear waste
repository at Yucca Mountain