Beating around the bomb

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) was originally set up in 1952 as a rival to the Los Alamos National Laboratory to conduct research in nuclear weapons and thermonuclear fusion. However, LLNL's weapons research now accounts for less than 30% of its research programmes. The laboratory has branched into almost every kind of applied science, environmental science and even contributes to the Human Genome Project. Much of its expansion can be traced to the efforts of a small part of its operation, the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program, which nurtures the small, speculative projects in the interests of curiosity-driven research.