Sandia National Laboratories

Facility forms `vital segment' of defense

Web posted Tuesday, November 14, 2000

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By Brandon Haddock
Staff Writer

Although national laboratories at Los Alamos, N.M., and Livermore, Calif., pioneered the science behind atomic weaponry, another laboratory was responsible for developing the circuits and mechanisms that made the bombs work.

Those tasks belonged to Sandia National Laboratories, which continues to perform the mission today.

Sandia, with campuses located in Albuquerque, N.M., and Livermore, began in 1945 under the code name Z Division at Sandia Base in New Mexico. The lab, initially part of Los Alamos National Laboratory, was responsible for designing, assembling and testing ordnance developed at Los Alamos, according to a piece on Sandia history on the lab's Web site.

Sandia received its name, and was severed from Los Alamos, in 1948, a year before American Telephone & Telegraph Co. assumed management duties at the lab at the behest of President Truman. The president personally lobbied for the telephone giant to operate the lab in a letter sent in May 1949 to AT&T President Leroy A. Wilson.

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``This operation, which is a vital segment of the atomic weapons program, is of extreme importance and urgency in the national defense, and should have the best possible technical direction,'' Mr. Truman wrote. ``In my opinion you have here an opportunity to render an exceptional service in the national interest.''

During the ensuing decades of the Cold War, Sandia played a prominent role both in developing the nation's nuclear weapons and in protecting the country from the nuclear arsenals of the Soviet Union.

Among the lab's achievements were a rocket for high-altitude nuclear tests; computer systems for satellites designed to detect nuclear explosions; the Poseidon missile used by U.S. submarines; and the highly secret, reinforced trucks used to transport atomic weapons.

Many of the lab's creations now are used widely in the open market. Sandia pioneered the use of a sterile ``clean room'' to manufacture electronics, an invention that has spread to the world of medicine. The lab also developed a new diamond-drill bit for mining oil and gas, and has conducted extensive research into possible new sources of electricity, such as solar power.

Sandia was designated a national laboratory in 1979. Today, it employs more than 7,600 people, including more than 6,700 at its main facility in Albuquerque and 900 at a satellite lab in Livermore. The lab is operated by Lockheed Martin, which took over the contract from AT&T in 1993.

Reach Brandon Haddock at (706) 823-3409.

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