A closer look at the three groups bidding to run the lab.

TEAM: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA/TEXAS A&M

The University of California System has been part of Los Alamos National Laboratory since its beginning. UC oversees 10 campuses, nearly 240,000 students, five medical centers and three national laboratories, including a partnership at LANL, and at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in northern California.

UC has overseen work with significant nuclear weapons projects at these facilities through World War II and the Cold War. But because of safety and security problems, the contracts for LANL and Lawrence Livermore were put out to bid by the Department of Energy in 2003. UC has held onto the management of both labs since, but now runs them in partnership with private companies — one of them being Bechtel, which now is partnering with Purdue University.

The Texas A&M University System, Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s alma mater, has partnered with the University of California to help run Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since 2007. Its other team members there include private companies Bechtel, BWXT, AECOM and Battelle. The university oversees 11 universities in Texas and 152,000 students as well as several state agencies. It also houses a top nuclear engineering department with two “research” nuclear reactors.

TEAM: BECHTEL/ PURDUE UNIVERSITY

Bechtel has co-managed LANL since 2006. It also has management contracts at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Y-12 in Tennessee, and the nuclear assembly plant, Pantex, in Amarillo, Texas. It also is constructing a massive radiation treatment facility at the Hanford site in Washington state, a project that has been plagued with setbacks, cost overruns and fines for falsifying the quality of nuclear materials. It previously held contracts at Idaho National Laboratory. The company also won contracts to clean up the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in the 1980s and the nuclear reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979.

Purdue University, based in West Lafayette, Ind., is a research institute with several locations and polytechnic institutes throughout Indiana. The university has strategic research alliances with Sandia National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Ames, Argonne and Brookhaven national laboratories. Purdue also bid on the 2016 contract to manage Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, but lost to Honeywell.

TEAM: UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS SYSTEM

The University of Texas System has 14 campuses and 234,000 students, many of whom focus on “cybersecurity, bioterrorism, policy and statecraft and other national security issues.” The university also has a nuclear and radiation engineering division. UT also bid for — and lost — when the LANL contract was on the table in 2005. It was an unsuccessful bidder for the Sandia contract in 2016. Texas does not have a known public partner, though experts believe one is likely to join.

NAMES TO KNOW

Battelle Memorial Institute The world’s largest research institute, with a net revenue of $4.7 billion in 2015, Battelle is expected to be part of a bid team. Though it has not announced a partner, some believe it could join with the University of California and Texas A&M.

The company is no stranger to the nuclear defense industry and currently helps manage Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory with UC as a subcontractor. In addition to Lawrence Livermore, Battelle oversees the management of work at six other large national laboratories, including Brookhaven National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Lab and the National Biodefense Analysis & Countermeasures Center. Jacobs Jacobs, a private engineering and construction company based in Dallas, also had a hand in a number of federal contracts, ranging from the national labs to nuclear submarine projects. The company currently helps oversee Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois and the Nevada National Security Site. It acquired CH2M last year, which has run waste cleanup projects in Washington state, Idaho and New York. Together, Bechtel and Jacobs also were granted contracts to manage environmental cleanup at several sites, beginning in the late 1990s, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Department of Energy sites in Portsmouth, Ohio, and Paducah, Ky. Lockheed Martin Until 2016, the defense and aeronautics company ran Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque for more than two decades and is one of the contractors that runs Y-12 and Pantex. It also vied for the Los Alamos contract in 2005. Based in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin maintains contracts with NASA, the Air Force, Army and Pentagon.