A scientist wearing a white coat and gloves operating a machine in a sterile environment

The Heavy Element Research Laboratory (HERL) is the main location for transuranic chemistry at LBNL. UC Berkeley faculty have additional laboratories on campus in which thorium and uranium can be handled. The HERL is operated and managed by the ACG, which has a solid record of handling radioactive materials safely. The HERL consists of three interconnecting laboratories with dedicated radiochemical gloveboxes, fume hoods, an X-ray powder diffractometer, an electrospray ionization mass spectrometer, and standard wet chemical laboratory equipment. The nuclear counting room shares internal access with the main laboratories and has a solid-state Ge γ-spectrometer, an α-spectrometer, and a liquid scintillation counter. The HERL is surrounded by satellite laboratories accommodating a wide range of diverse synthetic, spectroscopic, and analytical experiments with radionuclides. The ACG has an adequate inventory of low activity isotopes, such as 243Am, for experimental work. These isotopes are mostly recycled. The BGS coupled to the 88-Inch Cyclotron, both operated by the LBNL Nuclear Science Division, is unique for transactinide chemistry research.

Rebecca Abergel John Arnold Polly Arnold Corwin Booth John Gibson Stefan Minasian David Shuh