Brookhaven National Laboratory, located in Upton, New York on Long Island was formally established in 1947 at the site of a former U.S. Army base. Brookhaven is operated for the United States Department of Energy by Brookhaven Science Associates. It is staffed by over 3,000 scientists, engineers, technicians, and support personnel, and hosts 4,000 guest investigators every year. Discoveries made at the lab have won five Nobel Prizes.

Facilities at Brookhaven Lab include the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, designed for research into a quark-gluon plasma, two synchrotrons, and two cyclotrons used to produce radioactive materials for medical applications. Areas of research include nuclear and high-energy physics, structural biology, and nuclear nonproliferation.

Accidental, unpublicized releases of tritium into the environment during the 1990s have angered people living near the lab.

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