You have two choices. Two different professions. You have to ask yourself: “What do I want to be when I grow up?” “DO I want to be in construction? Or Nuclear Physics?”
A wise friend told me to “Do what you love. It is easy to go to work if you love what you are doing.” And he was right. No matter where you live, it will not be enjoyable if you are being beat down by work.
Sorry. Your life choices are mundane and pointless to the rest of us. I have thought before that “pointless” should be swapped with “personal” given the number of engagements, new babies, break-ups, career choices, and deaths announced here. Which may be mundane and pointless to others, but are not to the person doing the announcing.
If you wanted advice and didn’t want to be in MPSIMS, you could have posted in IMHO.
Were I in your position – single, unattached, willing to move and with great opportunities, I’d probably concentrate on how good the opportunity is, where it can take my career, and which opportunity would be harder to get again.
In this case, I’d be looking quite seriously at the nuke job. It sounds fascinating, the pay would be good, the opportunity is excellent and it’ll pimp your CV much better than a construction job, even one in a management position, which means that if, down the road, you find yourself in need of a new job for whatever reason, it’s a job that can help you get another job, especially one in the same or a related field.
Granted, you end up having to move somewhere you don’t want to move to, but again, were it me, as long as it wasn’t too objectionable a place, I think I could put up with less appealing digs for the sake of more money and a better career. It needn’t be permanent, of course, and once again future opportunities can mean moving to better places.
YMMV as always, but that’s what would go through my head.
It’s management, he won’t be pointing lasers at balls of heavy hydrogen, nor will he be opening holes in the ground and putting one row of bricks on top or another. Management skills are always transferable. Great advice on the calculator, by the way, I’ve had my share of discussions about “real dollars” (or, as Mark Twain put it but badly paraphrased “how many times a week will I be able to eat chicken?”).
Compare, in no particular order:
I have to agree with taking the Livermore job. If the traffic isn’t too awful, you can commute in if you don’t want to live right there.
Since we spend more of our lives at our jobs than doing any other single thing, doing something you are pretty sure you are going to love is important. Having a job that bores you or that you actively dislike tends to color the rest of your life as well.
And, I also asked the Magic 8 Ball I have on my desk (for making those really important decisions, don’tcha know), and here’s the results:
Me: Magic 8 Ball, should Defective Detective take the construction job in San Diego?
Magic 8 Ball: My sources say No.
Me: Magic 8 Ball, should Defective Detective take the nuclear fusion job in Livermore?
Magic 8 Ball: Without a Doubt.
So there ya go. 
And how many times did you have to ask those questions to get the answers you wanted?
Agreed.
The difficulty with that is that anywhere within driving distance is either way, way too expensive in terms of cost of housing or is even more dull than Livermore. As you move toward Silicon Valley, the housing cost becomes too high. I would suspect that the cost of living bump doesn’t include the housing cost of Silicon Valley. You’d have to work in the valley to get that. And then traveling farther away are more bedroom communities where people commute from. Those are even more dull than Livermore.
Two more things I forgot to add to my previous post. And again these are only factors that I would consider, so they may not apply to you. The first is that every once in a while, the news reports some experiment or some virus they were working on in Livermore Labs gets loose. That would squick me out. The other thing I would consider is that I love geeks and nerds. And I bet there are a lot of them in Livermore. So that might incline me more to take the job there.
I’m as against dusting off and zapping San Diego with a 2000’s-style “Death Ray” from orbit as anyone, but it’s the only way to be sure.
Well, I asked my Magic 8 Ball.
“Should he go to San Diego?” “It is certainly so.”
“Should he go to Livermore?” “Without a doubt.”
So can you split yourself and take both jobs? 
Just once. It’s not let me down yet!
It seems TroubleAgain’s likes both jobs equally though.