Abstract: The National Laboratory is a strategic scientific and technological force and an important platform conducting high-level basic research and applied basic research. How to strengthen the goal-oriented strategic basic research of national laboratories, as well as improving the original innovation ability of frontier technologies and strategic fields, are important issue that need to be solved urgently in the construction of national laboratories in China. Based on the input-output analysis framework of basic research, this paper systematically investigated and analyzed the operation mode and output characteristics of strategic basic research organizations in DOE National Laboratories. The study found that the DOE National Laboratories are located in 15 states with different strategic missions, capabilities, and structures. Meanwhile, DOE national laboratories are either science oriented or technology oriented. According to the number of project types undertaken, they can be further divided into multi-project laboratories and single-project laboratories. From the perspective of basic research expenditure and R&D team structure, the National Laboratories are primarily funded by the Department of Energy, and the funds of different types of national laboratories have different emphases. The scientific laboratories spend a high proportion of basic research funds, while the technology-oriented laboratories spend much more on applied research and experimental development. In addition, the laboratory's R&D team consists of full-time staff, associate faculty, postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, undergraduate students, and visiting scientists. Among them, the safety laboratory has the largest number of people, and the multi-project science laboratory has a large proportion of postdoctoral researchers and graduate students, and a lot of facility users, which provides talent support for carrying out strategic basic researches. The number of basic research output of DOE national laboratories increased year by year from 2010 to 2019. The multi-project national laboratories produce a large amount of scientific papers with great influence. The technology-oriented single-project national laboratories focus on the completion of their energy strategies or tasks, and pay more attention to the development of applied researches. Basic researches at DOE national laboratories are interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary as a whole, while each national laboratory has a unique set of core competencies and areas of center. At the same time, DOE national laboratories conduct strategic basic researches through partnerships with government, academia, and international organizations. In 2010-2019, the number of papers conducted through the international cooperation has tripled. The national laboratories performed differentiated international cooperation based on their strategic tasks and basic research needs, which is generally manifested in the mode of developing countries as the main ones, while constantly strengthened cooperation with China. According to the above analysis, there are four recommendations in terms of building national laboratory in China. First, it should be guided by national goals and strategic needs to raise national laboratory overall layout. Second, basic research funds should be deployed on the basis of clear mission orientation and research direction of national laboratories, including strengthening the layout and construction of national laboratories for strategic basic researches in the world scientific frontier in physics and related fields, in nuclear science and technology and clean energy. Efforts should be made to develop national laboratories for the strategic application of cutting-edge technologies. Third, diverse and innovative personnel system should be built. The system of talent introduction, training, evaluation and incentive should be improved and a diversified and inclusive working environment should be created, aiming to build a reasonably structured laboratory talent team. Last but not least, the collaborative innovation mechanism of national laboratories with the participation of various forces should be improved, and the internal and external openness and cooperation should be strengthened. This paper has important reference value for constructing national laboratories and conducting strategic basic researches in China.