Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California

One of the three principal federal nuclear labs, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a complex of diverse facilities on a cramped 821 acres, at the edge of the suburban community of Livermore, California. The square plot of arid land (a former WWII airfield) is adjacent to a range of bare, rolling hills, where the Lab's field test facility, Site 300, is located (down the road from the town of Tracy). The Lab, along with its sister facility, New Mexico's Los Alamos National Lab, also has many facilities at the Nevada Test Site. Lawrence Livermore, like Los Alamos, was operated exclusively by the University of California for most of its existence, until 2007, when a consortium called Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC (of which the University of California is a member), took over.  The lab was founded by Edward Teller to build thermonuclear weapons. In 1987, the EPA declared Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory a Superfund cleanup site, followed by Site 300 in 1990.