Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory is a US Department of Energy national laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico. It was established in 1943 as Project Y, the Manhattan Project site that designed the first atomic bombs, and nuclear weapons remain its central mission: the laboratory says it is the only place in the country where plutonium pits, the cores of nuclear weapons, can be made. It also runs civilian research, including fusion, and the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE), an 800 MeV proton accelerator used for neutron science and isotope production. With Princeton and Oak Ridge, Los Alamos was one of three US laboratories that contributed to the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator in Germany. The laboratory is federally owned and managed by the contractor Triad National Security, LLC.