Does Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Lab have an underground system?

Another topic was gathering info on underground bases in the US and one that came to mind for me is Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Lab have an underground base there? A few nights ago we were doing a helichopter transport to the central valley and we as always detoured around the Lab (its airspace is restricted) On the backside of the mountain that the lab is near is dotted with underground bunkers. Im pretty sure they are storing nuclear material etc there. However, does anybody know if there is a base underground there? I have read Richard Sauders book about underground bases, but I can't remeber anybody ever talking about Lawrence which is only 45 miles away.

My best friends father used to be a security guard at Lawrence Livormore labs. He said that they did have some underground facilities, but Im not sure what they use them for.

I do know the depeartment of Energy runs the place or at least funds it, and they do alot of work with lasers, acording to his dad.

I used to live in Manteca, and was born and raised in the bay area. I have heard alot of people say that the lab has underground stuff, which Im sure most do, especially bunkers. As to the extent of what the udnerground facilities are used for, i couldnt tell you. Maybe just storgae areas, or maybe even more.

Originally posted by Skadi_the_Evil_Elf
My best friends father used to be a security guard at Lawrence Livormore labs. He said that they did have some underground facilities, but Im not sure what they use them for.
I do know the depeartment of Energy runs the place or at least funds it, and they do alot of work with lasers, acording to his dad.

I used to live in Manteca,

Small world, our transport was to a hospital in Manteca. The national ignition facility is there and that is a DOE project.

Wow, didnt know about the National Ignition facility.

My Ex Boyfriends father worked at the Sandia Labs, he told us some vague, interesting stuff about it. Mostly confirmation on laser type projects, but nothing specific.

I have on several occasions seen wierd things out in that direction, like wierd lights and objects. So I assumed that there were screwing around with some toy up there.

I know of some people who claim they have heard undergound rumbling when they were up in the hills around there, but I dunno how true it is or not.

needless to say, Im pretty sure they have undergound facilities there. I know the bunker thingys you said you saw when flying over. You can just make out part of one when driving over the Altamont pass, comming from the Bay Area, if you look behind on the far side of the hill towards the eastern part of the lab.

Those places have rooms full of large lasers, capacitors and optics. The lasers reflective chamber is coated with gold and has xenon and tungston in it as well which is why they lock them up under ground if they are not being used.

The main component they use are huge blue laser amplifiers, they have 16 flash tubes in them and about 6 Nd:glass slabs in them.




I was about 5ft at the time and I was standing on a milk crate. I could have bought it for $300, but it would have needed to be shipped and I don't have the capacitors to power it with.

I assume that those are part of the national ignition facility?

The blue tube is one out of many laser amplifiers used at the NIF and in the pharos lll laser.

Edit: This one does not have gold in it but I bet the current ones do. This is the EXACT one I was standing beside and told a friend buy and look at how much he sold it for!

www.thaltech.com...

[edit on 5-7-2004 by XL5]

Originally posted by XL5
Edit: This one does not have gold in it but I bet the current ones do. This is the EXACT one I was standing beside and told a friend buy and look at how much he sold it for!

Not something you usually see at a swap meet

LOL nope (surplus store)! In the future I could have put it in a short bus and set the whole system up in the back...put a big red "rage button" in the dash.

[edit on 5-7-2004 by XL5]

What the hell you gonna do with a monster size laser?

Originally posted by Skadi_the_Evil_Elf
What the hell you gonna do with a monster size laser?

Hmmmm, lots of fun stuff I imagine. You could defend the homestead aginst rouge crows and the occasion Jehova Witness

I used to live in livermore. A whole lot of people were getting cancer for no good reason including children. It was a common belief that the labs had tunnels running under the city for god knows what and thats what was causing it. I think a few people even tried to sue the city or labs because of the incredibly high cancer rates. I know we moved out of there after only a few months just because of whole situation, it was a pretty hot topic around there.

The National Ignition Facility is deisgned to tackle the problems of intertial confinement fusion(ICF). It is along side magnetohydrodynamic confinement (such as Princeton Plasma Laboratory), but uses lasers instead of high plasma temperatures to reach the Lawson parameters required for fusion. The applications for ICF are tremendous, as a source of energy and military appications for fusion microbomblets. The fusion pellets are compared to simulations of nuclear explosions done on supercomputers.Lawrence Livermore recently got a new supercomputer ,The Thunder, which is capable of 20 trillion calcualtions per second(20 TeraFlops). The lab a few years back did the first 3-D nuclear simulation on one of the computers(.....my mouth is watering as i speak..).

Some more info here, really nice site:

www.llnl.gov...

[edit on 9-7-2004 by TACHYON]

Originally posted by TACHYON
supercomputer ,The Thunder, which is capable of 20 trillion calcualtions per second(20 TeraFlops). The lab a few years back did the first 3-D nuclear simulation on one of the computers(.....my mouth is watering as i speak..).

Is the whole setup underground?

I dont think the computer is but I dont remember if it was LANL or LLNL which had an underground provision for nuclear weapons maintenance. It was one of the two labs. I dont think they are allowed to have nukes on the lab, but I could be wrong. Man I would love to work on those things.

God Bless America

[edit on 9-7-2004 by TACHYON]

Originally posted by TACHYON
I dont think the computer is but I dont remember if it was LANL or LLNL which had an underground provision for nuclear weapons maintenance. It was one of the two labs. I dont think they are allowed to have nukes on the lab, but I could be wrong. Man I would love to work on those things.
[edit on 9-7-2004 by TACHYON]

The computers or the Nukes I was talking to one of our pilots the otehr day who used to work for LL and he said there was alot of underground stuff but he didn't seem to think there was any smoking gun there. As far as having nothing nuclear, i don't know. The security there has always been tight and there are quite a fw bunkers carved into that hillside. You never know.

Originally posted by Skadi_the_Evil_Elf
What the hell you gonna do with a monster size laser?

It's Friday, so at the risk of getting chastized:






Who cares, it's a fricking lazzer!

[edit on 7/9/2004 by titian]

As far as Im concerned it is better to have underground labs to keep stuff secret from US enemies. And to give the illusion of being weak.

Originally posted by TACHYON
As far as Im concerned it is better to have underground labs to keep stuff secret from US enemies. And to give the illusion of being weak.

How does the illusion of being weak work for the US?

Other countries can underestimate, not work as hard etc...

[edit on 10-7-2004 by TACHYON]