Los Alamos Lab, Michigan launch $1.25 billion nuclear research partnership

Los Alamos National Laboratory is widening its nuclear weapons research network through a $1.25 billion supercomputing center with the University of Michigan, a project that could send more scientists, computing power and federal money into work tied to simulations that help modernize the U.S. arsenal.

The partnership, called Michigan SPARC, short for Strategic Partnership for Accelerated Research and Collaboration, centers on high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, science, energy and national security. Lab officials said the effort builds on a five-year, $15 million research contract awarded to the University of Michigan in early 2024, and includes permanent LANL scientists stationed in Ann Arbor to work alongside university faculty and students. The laboratory says Daniel Israel and Joshua Dolence already have taken joint appointments and relocated to Michigan.

The University of Michigan says the planned site in Ypsilanti Township will include a 240,000-square-foot federal research facility and a separate 50,000-square-foot academic research building. The university says the campus will not be a commercial data center or manufacturing site. It will be powered by a dedicated electrical substation and could create more than 200 permanent jobs, 30 to 50 staff positions to run and maintain the computing network, and about 300 construction jobs.

For Los Alamos, the stakes run beyond a campus partnership. Recent reporting says the lab’s Michigan portion will support nuclear weapons research, including simulations related to plutonium pit development and simulated nuclear weapon experiments. The United States has not conducted live nuclear testing since 1992, which puts more weight on computer modeling and other non-test methods for maintaining the reliability of the stockpile. That makes Michigan SPARC part of a larger shift in how LANL carries out its weapons mission from Los Alamos County to partner sites with advanced computing capacity.

The University of Michigan bought 124 acres on Textile Road in June 2024 for $8.1 million for the planned site. Its updated FAQ says the facility is intended to support science, energy and national security research, with both classified and non-classified components.

The project has also triggered sharp resistance in Ypsilanti Township and on campus. On March 31, 2026, township trustees unanimously adopted Resolution No. 2026-05 opposing a Los Alamos nuclear research facility anywhere in the township. More than 700 University of Michigan employees, faculty and students have signed a petition calling on the university to cancel the project and sever ties with Los Alamos. State lawmakers have also introduced legislation to rescind a $100 million state grant tied to the project.

For Los Alamos, the partnership could strengthen the lab’s national security reach, deepen hiring pipelines and embed its scientists more closely with the next generation of university researchers. It also ties the county’s flagship institution to a fast-moving fight over where nuclear research should be done, who should oversee it and how far its footprint should spread.