PHOENIX – The land-constrained Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco, Calif. must demolish decaying old buildings covering a third of its footprint over the next 16 years, Livermore manager Mark Costella said here Tuesday.
Livermore’s main Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) campus takes up only one square mile, Costella said. As a result, Livermore and its contractors must remove old contaminated buildings in order to make room for new construction.
Costella spoke as part of a mid-morning panel discussion on procurement at NNSA sites such as Pantex in Texas, Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.
Livermore has an 11-square mile auxiliary campus for high-explosive testing, Costella said. A total of about 9,000 people work at Livermore, he added.
Costella, who has 45 years of experience as a Livermore staffer, is the Transition and Disposition Program Manager at the lab. Costella drew laughs when he said Livermore has the unsought distinction of having four of NNSA’s 10 worst contaminated old buildings.
“So we have been working down this portfolio quite aggressively with EM [DOE’s Office of Environmental Management],” Costella said.
Livermore will soon be rolling out the 2026 version of its site development plan, which will provide contractors an overview of anticipated work projects over the next five years, Costella said.