The United States has 24 national labs and technology centers, ranging from the sprawling, historic Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the first nuclear bomb was developed, to the smaller, humbler Ames Laboratory on the campus of Iowa State University, which specializes in rare-earth metals. Here are a few of the nation’s better-known national laboratories:

• Los Alamos National Laboratory

• Location: North of Santa Fe, New Mexico

• Quick fact: First atomic bombs developed there; less than a month after first successful test in 1945, two atomic bombs dropped on Japan, hastening the end of World War II

• Size: 43 square miles

• Employees: 13,593

• Annual budget: $2.2 billion

• Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

• Location: Livermore, Calif.

• Quick fact: Founded in 1952 as the nation’s second nuclear weapons lab, after Los Alamos

• Size: 1.2 square miles

• Employees: 8,300

• Annual budget: $1.6 billion

• Oak Ridge National Laboratory

• Location: Oak Ridge, Tenn.

• Quick fact: Site of the development of the plutonium and uranium isotopes needed for the first atomic bombs

• Size: 1,100 acres

• Employees: 6,800

• Annual budget: $1 billion

• Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

• Location: Batavia, Ill.

• Quick fact: Operates the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator

• Size: 6,800 acres

• Employees: 2,100

• Annual budget: $300 million

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• Other national laboratories and technology centers

• Albany Research Center (N.Y.)

• Ames Laboratory (Iowa)

• Argonne National Laboratory (Ill.)

• Brookhaven National Laboratory (N.Y.)

• Environmental Measurements Laboratory (N.Y.)

• Idaho National Engineering Laboratory

• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Calif.)

• National Energy Technology Laboratory (W.Va, Pa., Okla.)

• National Petroleum Technology Office (Okla.)

• National Renewable Energy Laboratory (Colo.)

• New Brunswick Laboratory (Ill.)

• Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (Tenn.)

• Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Wash.)

• Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (N.Y.)

• Radiological & Environmental Sciences Laboratory (Idaho)

• Sandia National Laboratory (N.M.)

• Savannah River Technology Center (S.C.)

• Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (S.C.)

• Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (Calif.)

• Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Va.)

Compiled by Lauren Markoe from information provided by the Department of Energy