Everything about National Laboratory totally explained
The
United States Department of Energy National Laboratories and Technology Centers are a system of facilities and laboratories overseen by the
United States Department of Energy (DOE) for the purpose of advancing
science and helping promote the economic and defensive national interests of the
United States of America. Most of the DOE national laboratories are actually
federally funded research and development centers administered, managed, operated and staffed by private corporations and academic universities under contract to DOE. The 2005 NASA Authorization Act designated the U.S segment of the
International Space Station as a national laboratory with a goal to increase the utilization of the ISS by other Federal entities and the private sector.
History
The system of centralized national laboratories grew out of the massive scientific endeavors of
World War II, in which new technologies such as
radar, the
computer, the
proximity fuze, and the
atomic bomb proved decisive for the
Allied victory. Though the United States government had begun seriously investing in scientific research for national security since
World War I, it was only in late 1930s and 1940s that monumental amounts of resources were committed or coordinated to wartime scientific problems, under the auspices first of the
National Defense Research Committee, and later the
Office of Scientific Research and Development, organized and administered by the
MIT engineer
Vannevar Bush.
During the second world war, centralized sites such as the
Radiation Laboratory at MIT and
Ernest O. Lawrence's
laboratory at the
University of California, Berkeley allowed for a large number of expert scientists to collaborate towards defined goals as never before, and with virtually unlimited government resources at their disposal.
In the course of the war, the Allied nuclear effort, the
Manhattan Project, created several secret sites for the purpose of bomb research and material development, including a laboratory in the desert of
New Mexico directed by
Robert Oppenheimer (
Los Alamos, and sites at
Hanford, Washington and
Oak Ridge, Tennessee). Hanford and Oak Ridge were administered by private companies, and Los Alamos was administered by a public university (the
University of California). Additional success was had at the
University of Chicago in
reactor research, leading to the creation of
Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago, and at other academic institutions spread across the country.
After the war and its scientific successes, the newly created
Atomic Energy Commission took over the future of the wartime laboratories, extending their lives indefinitely (they were originally thought of as temporary creations). Funding and infrastructure were secured to sponsor other "national laboratories" for both classified and basic research, especially in
physics. Each national laboratory would generally be centered around one or many expensive machines (such as
particle accelerators or
nuclear reactors).
Most national laboratories maintained staffs of local researchers as well as allowing for visiting researchers to use their equipment, though priority to local or visiting researchers often varied from lab to lab. With their centralization of resources (both monetary and intellectual), the national labs serve as an exemplar for
Big Science.
Elements of both competition and cooperation were encouraged in the laboratories. Often two laboratories with similar missions were created (such as
Lawrence Livermore which was designed to compete with
Los Alamos) with the hope that competition over funding would create a culture of high quality work. Laboratories which didn't have overlapping missions would cooperate with each other (for example, Lawrence Livermore would cooperate with the
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, which itself was often in competition with
Brookhaven National Laboratory).
The national laboratory system, administered first by the Atomic Energy Commission, then the
Energy Research and Development Administration, and currently the
Department of Energy, is one of the largest (if not the largest) scientific research systems in the world. The DOE provides more than 40% of the total national funding for
physics,
chemistry,
materials science, and other areas of the
physical sciences. Many are locally managed by private companies, while other are managed by academic universities, and as a system they form one of the overarching and far-reaching components in what is known as the "
iron triangle" of
military,
academia, and
industry.
List of NASA National Laboratories
List of DOE National Laboratories and Technology Centers
National Laboratories
Argonne National Laboratory* at DuPage County, Illinois
Brookhaven National Laboratory* at Upton, New York
Idaho National Laboratory* between Arco and Idaho Falls, Idaho
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory* at Berkeley, California
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory* at Batavia, Illinois
National Renewable Energy Laboratory* at Golden, Colorado
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory* at Livermore, California
Los Alamos National Laboratory* at Los Alamos, New Mexico
Oak Ridge National Laboratory* at Oak Ridge, Tennessee
National Energy Technology Laboratory** at Albany, Oregon, Fairbanks, Alaska, Morgantown, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Tulsa, Oklahoma
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory* at Richland, Washington
Sandia National Laboratories* at Albuquerque, New Mexico and Livermore, California
Savannah River National Laboratory* at Aiken, South Carolina
Technology Centers
Ames Laboratory* at Ames, Iowa
New Brunswick Laboratory**, at Argonne National Laboratory
Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education* at Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory* at Princeton, New Jersey
Radiological & Environmental Sciences Laboratory**
Savannah River Ecology Laboratory*
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center* at Menlo Park, California
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility* at Newport News, Virginia
* GOCO (Government-owned, Contractor-operated)
** GOGO (Government-owned, Government-operated)
List of scientific user facilities
Accelerator Test Facility
Advanced Light Source
Advanced Photon Source
Alcator C-Mod
Argonne Tandem Linear Accelerator System
Atmospheric Radiation Measurement
B-Factory
Bates Linear Accelerator Center
Booster Neutrino
Center for Functional Nanomaterials
Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies
Center for Microanalysis of Materials
Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences
Center for Nanoscale Materials
Combustion Research Facility
Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility
DIII-D Tokamak Facility
Electron Microscopy Center for Materials Research
Energy Sciences Network
Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory
Final Focus Test Beam
Free Air CO2 Experiment
High Flux Isotope Reactor Center for Neutron Scattering
Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility
Intense Pulsed Neutron Source
James R. Macdonald Laboratory
Joint Genome Institute
Linac Coherent Light Source
Main Injector
Los Alamos Neutron Science Center
Manuel Lujan Jr. Neutron Scattering Center
Materials Preparation Center
Molecular Foundry
National Center for Electron Microscopy
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center
National Spherical Torus Experiment
National Synchrotron Light Source
Next Linear Collider Test Accelerator
Neutrinos at the Main Injector
Notre Dame Radiation Laboratory
Pulse Radiolysis Facility
Radiochemical Engineering Development Center
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
Shared Research Equipment Program
Spallation Neutron Source
Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory
Structural Biology Center
Tevatron Collider
Texas A&M Cyclotron Institute
Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory
University of Washington Tandem Van de Graaff
Yale University Tandem Van de GraaffFurther Information
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