Sandia National Laboratory, New Mexico

Sandia National Laboratory is one of the three primary diversified research and development organizations operated for the Department of Energy (the other two are Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos). Sandia employs about 8,000 people and has an annual operating budget near 1.4 billion dollars. It is located on Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, with additional facilities in Livermore, California, Hawaii and at the Tonopah Test Range in Nevada. Sandia was established in 1948 to support the development of nuclear weapons. It was managed by AT&T and Bell Labs up to 1992, when management was transferred to the Martin Marietta Corporation (now Lockheed Martin). Sandia conducts R&D in defense, environmental remediation, energy production, non-proliferation verification technologies, robotics, nano-technologies and remote-sensing, just to name a few. Their historic and unusual field test area, known as Tech Area's 1 through 5, are located south of the main lab site at Kirtland, and include a 10,000 foot long test track for creating high speed collisions with nuclear transportation containers, and a large solar facility.