The Battelle Energy Alliance is wholly owned and led by global nonprofit science and technology enterprise Battelle and consists of several team members, including BWX Technologies, Inc., Washington Group International, the Electric Power Research Institute, and MIT and other nuclear engineering universities. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Energy selected Battelle Energy Alliance to operate the Idaho National Laboratory, a 10-year management and operations contract valued at approximately $4.8 billion and involving some 3,000 employees. In operation since 1949, the Idaho National Laboratory is a government reservation located in the southeastern Idaho desert. For many years, INL was the site of the largest concentration of nuclear reactors in the world. In the last 30 years, the laboratory’s mission has expanded into such areas as biotechnology and energy and materials research.