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Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory
St ruc tura l Ins t rumentat i on of the Conta i ned F i r i ng Fac i l i t y
1998
Site 300 Contained Firing Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a conventionally reinforced concrete structure designed as a
reusable facility for the detonation of high explosives. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory retainedWJE to install instrumentation sensors during
the construction of the facility to validate the firing chamber’s structural system.
The project was one of the most challenging instrumentation assignments ever undertaken by WJE. The lessons on remote digital acquisition
systems learned from this project have been essential to the successful completion of numerous other instrumentation projects.
Notes of Interest
• The United States Department of Energy oversees the
design of nuclear weapons at two national laboratories:
the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which is
managed and operated by the University of California,
in Livermore, California, and the Los Alamos National
Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico.
• A current project is the “small, sealed, transportable,
autonomous reactor”or “SSTAR.” It is designed to be a
“world”nuclear reactor that can give countries with smaller
or underdeveloped electricity grids a self-contained reactor
that would operate for thirty years without refueling and
then be retrieved.
• The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is not
allowed to have actual nuclear weapons or nuclear explosive
devices on site. Plutonium at the lab is stored in a fortified
research facility, guarded by a large force of heavily armed
and specially trained University of California security
police officers.
WJE 50 Years