Altamont Pass

Altamont is an unincorporated community in Alameda County, California. It is located 7.5 miles (12 km) northeast of Livermore, at an elevation of 741 feet (226 m) in the Altamont Pass. It was in 1969 the site of the Altamont Free Concert at the Altamont Speedway. Originally called The Summit, the name was changed to Altamont when the Central Pacific Railroad arrived in 1869.

The Altamont Pass wind farm is located in the Altamont Pass of the Diablo Range in Northern California. It is one of the earliest wind farms in the United States. The first wind turbines were placed on the Altamont in the early 1980s by Fayette Manufacturing Corporation on land owned by cattle rancher Joe Jess. The wind farm is composed of 4930 relatively small wind turbines of various types, making it at one time the largest wind farm in the world in terms of capacity. Altamont Pass is still one of the largest concentration of wind turbines in the world, with a capacity of 576 megawatts (MW), producing about 125 MW on average and 1.1 terawatt-hours (TWh) yearly. They were installed after the 1970s energy crisis in response to favorable tax policies for investors.

Murrieta Rocks originally named Las Tinajas, (The Jars), refers to the waterholes to be found eroded into the Vaqueros Sandstone on top of the outcrop.: 431  The location is at a large outcrop of Vaqueros Sandstone, called Murrieta Rocks, about a mile northeast of Brushy Peak just within the southern bounds of the Rancho Cañada de los Vaqueros in California. From the east, the outcrop overlooks a spring in an eastern tributary arroyo to the upper Kellogg Creek that flows down from Brushy Peak.

The South Bay Pumping Plant is located 4 miles (6 km) southwest of the Clifton Court Forebay and 10.3 miles (17 km) northeast of Livermore, CA. The plant is the only main line pumping plant for the 42.9 mile (69 km) long South Bay Aqueduct. The plant pumps from the Bethany Reservoir which is part of the California Aqueduct.

The Clayton-Marsh Creek-Greenville Fault is a fault located in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area of California, in Alameda County and Contra Costa County. It is part of the somewhat parallel system of faults that are secondary to the San Andreas Fault.

Brushy Peak, also known as Brushy Knob or Las Cuevas (The Caves), is a summit in Alameda County, California that overlooks the Livermore Valley. North of the valley, it is part of the Diablo Range. It rises to an elevation of 1,686 feet (514 m) and is the location of Brushy Peak Regional Preserve; there are guided tours to the peak itself.Historically, the peak and its immediate surroundings were used for some outdoor events, like picnics.

Brushy Peak Regional Preserve is a regional park that is part of the East Bay Regional Parks (EBRPD) and the Livermore Area Recreation and Park District (LARPD) systems. It is located in unincorporated land in Alameda County, just north of Livermore, California.

Bethany Reservoir State Recreation Area is a state park unit of California, United States, adjoining the Bethany Reservoir. It is located in Alameda County, near Livermore. Situated in the northernmost part of the San Joaquin Valley, Bethany Reservoir State Recreation Area is a popular place for water-oriented recreation, especially fishing and windsurfing. The reservoir stores water for a pumping plant on the California Aqueduct.

The Bethany Reservoir is located 8 miles (13 km) northeast of Livermore, California, USA, on the California Aqueduct. It serves as the forebay for the South Bay Pumping Plant that feeds the South Bay Aqueduct.

Vasco Caves Regional Preserve is a natural and cultural protected area located on the eastern slope of Mount Diablo, on Vasco Road within eastern Contra Costa County, California. It was created to preserve wildlife habitats, California chaparral and woodlands, native plant communities, and Native American rock art.

The Harvey O. Banks Pumping Plant is located 2.5 miles (4.0 km) southwest of the Clifton Court Forebay and 12 miles (19 km) northwest of Tracy, CA. The plant is the first pumping plant for the California Aqueduct and the South Bay Aqueduct. It provides the necessary fluid head (potential energy) for the California Aqueduct to flow for approximately 80 miles (130 km) south past the O'Neill Forebay and the San Luis Reservoir to the Dos Amigos Pumping Plant. The Banks Pumping Plant initially flows into the Bethany Reservoir. It is from the Bethany Reservoir that the South Bay Aqueduct begins. The John E. Skinner Delta Fish Protective Facility is located 2 miles upstream from the facility and prevents fishes from reaching the pumping plant.Limits on water pumping from the Sacramento Delta is a politically contentious issue. In dry years, water pumped from the Delta creates a hazard to spring-run salmon. As the Banks Pumping Plant pulls water from the Sacramento River southward across the Delta, it disrupts the normal flow direction of east to west that salmon smolt follow to the Pacific Ocean. Populations of salmon and steelhead trout have reached critically low levels in the decades after SWP water withdrawals began. The fish migration issue has become hotly contested in recent years, with rising support for the construction of the Peripheral Canal, which would divert water around the Delta, restoring the natural flow direction.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a laser-based inertial confinement fusion (ICF) research device, located at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California, United States. NIF's mission is to achieve fusion ignition with high energy gain. It achieved the first instance of scientific breakeven controlled fusion in an experiment on December 5, 2022, with an energy gain factor of 1.5. It supports nuclear weapon maintenance and design by studying the behavior of matter under the conditions found within nuclear explosions.NIF is the largest and most powerful ICF device built to date. The basic ICF concept is to squeeze a small amount of fuel to reach pressure and temperature necessary for fusion. NIF hosts the world's most energetic laser. The laser heats the outer layer of a small sphere. The energy is so intense that it causes the sphere to implode, squeezing the fuel inside. The implosion reaches a peak speed of 350 km/s (0.35 mm/ns), raising the fuel density from about that of water to about 100 times that of lead. The delivery of energy and the adiabatic process during implosion raises the temperature of the fuel to hundreds of millions of degrees. At these temperatures, fusion processes occur in the tiny interval before the fuel explodes outward. Construction on the NIF began in 1997. NIF was completed five years behind schedule and cost almost four times its original budget. Construction was certified complete on March 31, 2009, by the U.S. Department of Energy. The first large-scale experiments were performed in June 2009 and the first "integrated ignition experiments" (which tested the laser's power) were declared completed in October 2010.From 2009 to 2012 experiments were conducted under the National Ignition Campaign, with the goal of reaching ignition just after the laser reached full power, some time in the second half of 2012. The campaign officially ended in September 2012, at about 1⁄10 the conditions needed for ignition. Thereafter NIF has been used primarily for materials science and weapons research. In 2021, after improvements in fuel target design, NIF produced 70% of the energy of the laser, beating the record set in 1997 by the JET reactor at 67% and achieving a burning plasma. On December 5, 2022, after further technical improvements, NIF reached "ignition", or scientific breakeven, for the first time, achieving a 154% energy yield.