April 18, 2025
Alongside the most advanced computer in the world, El Capitan, LLNL also possesses the world’s most energetic laser.
An effective deterrent, no explosions required
Nuclear testing has long been depicted as mushroom clouds emerging and rising above remote desert landscapes or the ground slowly collapsing like a sinkhole as an underground detonation goes off. But those days are long gone, decades away in fact, from how the United States maintains its nuclear weapons in 2025.
The U.S. nuclear stockpile is arguably the most important part of the country’s national security, but the government stopped testing nuclear weapons here in 1992.
Instead, it has put its faith in a handful of top-notch science facilities like Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) that maintain the nuclear stockpile and test it — without explosions.
Scripps News was granted access to the California lab, where world-renowned physicists use supercomputers to perform complex laser experiments in the lab's National Ignition Facility (NIF), mimicking the conditions of a nuclear bomb going off.
Livermore Computing Center’s flagship facility, Building 453, supports LLNL’s critical national missions and science.
Powering up and cooling down El Capitan
The Association of General Contractors (AGC) and Construction Risk Partners recently honored this year’s best new and renovation construction projects with Build America Awards at the AGC Annual Convention.
Nova Probst Joint Venture was presented with an award in the Utility Infrastructure New category for the Exascale Computing Facility Modernization in Livermore, California. The modernized Exascale Computing Facility provides enhanced power and cooling for current and future supercomputers, and will enable the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to operate a series of the world’s fastest high-performance computers in the coming decade.
The joint venture team provided an additional 40 MW of power and 18,000 tons of process cooling water to Livermore Computing’s B453 by modifying and upgrading an existing building and an adjacent 3.5 acres at the laboratory.
To create fusion ignition, the National Ignition Facility’s laser energy is converted into X-rays inside the hohlraum, which then compress a fuel capsule until it implodes.
Everything in play for fusion tech
The inaugural Fusion Fest by Economist Impact, held in London, featured 400 attendees and more than 60 speakers from around the world.
Kim Budil, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is home to the National Ignition Facility, noted that the machine had recently achieved a fusion gain for the eighth time.
In a recent shot, she said that the device had produced 7 MJ with about 2 MJ having been delivered to the small capsule target. This represents a gain of about 3.4 – much more than its previous record of 2.4.
Many delegates at the meeting were optimistic that significant developments are within reach with private firms racing to demonstrate “breakeven” — generating more power out than needed to fuel the reaction.
The issue is that no one knows what technology will succeed.
A clean, efficient process for producing the fuel for nuclear power plants was made possible by LLNL’s precisely tuned, high-power lasers used for the Uranium-AVLIS Program.
Tech transfer enables isotope separation
Hexium, a pioneering isotope separation company, has emerged from stealth with $12 million in funding to modernize Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation (AVLIS) technology and reestablish U.S. leadership in isotope enrichment.
Hexium is modernizing the historic AVLIS technology originally developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) through a previous U.S. Department of Energy investment of nearly $2 billion.
By addressing bottlenecks in the production and sourcing of critical isotopes like lithium-6 and lithium-7, Hexium is helping reduce the U.S.’s reliance on foreign sources and ensuring a reliable, domestic supply of isotopes for energy, space and medical applications.
AVLIS is a proven, scalable technology capable of extracting high-purity isotopes quickly and at lower costs, including lithium. Its compact facility footprint and established supply chain make it ideal for large-scale production.
General flowchart of the pipeline for building the Centrifuge reference database based on the nt database. (Image: Jose Manuel Marti)
A Dewey Decimal System for microorganisms
Imagine trying to catalog a library with millions of books where some are misfiled and others authored by the wrong writers. This daunting challenge mirrors the difficulties faced by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) as they grappled with the National Center for Biotechnology Information's (NCBI) Nucleotide (nt) database, a colossal repository of DNA sequences from countless species.
The NCBI nt database has transformative potential, aiding in everything from disease diagnosis to environmental monitoring. However, it's become increasingly unwieldy, cluttered with errors and outdated information, according to Nicholas Be, leader of LLNL's Microbiology/Immunology Group. Notably, the database hasn't received updates compatible with the widely-used Centrifuge tool since 2018, hindering accurate DNA classification.
In a pioneering study published in mSystems, LLNL researchers revealed a groundbreaking solution: creating optimized indexes of the nt database that enhance how scientists classify microorganisms.
