Sandia labs to undertake $5B construction effort over next decade
Yuichiro Chino / Getty Images
Sandia National Laboratories is growing its physical infrastructure to help advance its core national security research efforts, notably radiation environment testing and power source capabilities.
Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico is slated to invest $5 billion in construction over the coming decade, expanding its facilities to better support the myriad federal research and development efforts undertaken at the lab.
Sandia Labs Director Laura McGill announced the construction plans during a Wednesday press conference, saying that investment in new construction is a “win-win” between the New Mexico-based contracting firms and laboratory researchers.
“We will be furthering our mission and providing a stable source of work and economic opportunity for design firms, construction companies and the skilled tradespeople across our state in this region,” she said.
Matthew Burger, director of the facilities and infrastructure program and strategic investments at Sandia Labs, added that two major projects this investment will support are a new Power Sources Capability Facility and a Combined Radiation Environments for Survivability Testing Facility. Other minor construction projects will also advance simultaneously with those two initiatives.
“As our nation's national security mission continues to evolve, so must our physical footprint,” Burger said. “These investments represent the most significant construction efforts at Sandia’s New Mexico site in nearly 20 years.”
In terms of mission specifics, McGill said that multiple fields of emerging technologies remain top research priorities for the lab, most notably artificial intelligence.
“Sandia is really leaning into AI; it's transforming our national security,” she said. “We are strengthening our expertise so that we can safely harness AI to the benefits of our capabilities and our future. At Sandia, we're developing world class algorithms to accelerate science and engineering, but also we're applying it to improve our business operations.”
McGill noted that other fields — such as advancements in Sandia’s nuclear deterrent programming, quantum computing sciences and materials science — were also priorities for the lab.
Sandia’s expansion comes as the U.S. national laboratory network, run by the Department of Energy, have seen differing impacts from the Trump administration’s cost-cutting efforts. Some labs, such as Argonne National Lab in Illinois, faced a suspension of $37 million in research activities earlier this year.