Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a multiprogram science and technology
national laboratory managed for the
United States Department of Energy by UT-Battelle, LLC. ORNL is located in Oak Ridge,
Tennessee, near
Knoxville. Scientists and engineers at ORNL conduct basic and applied research and development to create scientific knowledge and technological solutions that build the nation's expertise in key areas of science; increase the availability of clean, abundant
energy; restore and protect the
natural environment; and contribute to
national security.
Encyclopedia
Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a multiprogram science and technology
national laboratory managed for the
United States Department of Energy by UT-Battelle, LLC. ORNL is located in Oak Ridge,
Tennessee, near
Knoxville. Scientists and engineers at ORNL conduct basic and applied research and development to create scientific knowledge and technological solutions that build the nation's expertise in key areas of science; increase the availability of clean, abundant
energy; restore and protect the
natural environment; and contribute to
national security.
ORNL also performs other work for the Department of Energy, including isotope production, information management, and technical program management, and provides research and technical assistance to other organizations.
Research Programs
ORNL conducts research and development activities that span a wide range of scientific disciplines. The laboratory's major research areas are described briefly below.
- Neutron scattering - The Spallation Neutron Source , when combined with the High Flux Isotope Reactor and the Oak Ridge Electron Linear Accelerator Pulsed Neutron Source, will make ORNL the world's leading center for neutron science. Future research will be supported by these facilities and by the Joint Institute for Neutron Sciences, which is being developed in cooperation with the University of Tennessee and the SNS Project to accommodate the thousands of users expected each year from universities, U.S. industry, and other laboratories.
- Biological systems - ORNL's initiative in complex biological systems draws on programs in comparative and functional genomics, structural biology, and computational biology and bioinformatics. This initiative focuses ORNL's expertise and facilities in in a wide range of biological fields related to the challenges of observing and understanding the functioning of complex biological systems.
- Energy - ORNL is one of the world’s premier centers for research and development on energy production, distribution, and use and on the effects of energy technologies and decisions on society. Clean, efficient, safe production and use of energy have long been our goals in research and development. At ORNL, unique facilities for energy-related R&D are used both for technology development and for fundamental investigations in the basic energy sciences that underpin the technology.
- Advanced materials - Scientists at ORNL are involved in studies ranging from fundamental research to the latest applications of virtually all classes of materials. ORNL's unique strengths in materials synthesis, processing, and characterization are applied to all areas of emphasis. Thousands of guest scientists come to ORNL each year to make use of its world-class facilities.
- National security - ORNL provides federal, state and local government agencies and departments with technology and expertise to support national and homeland security needs. This technology and expertise is also shared with industry to enhance America’s economic competitiveness in world markets.
- High-performance computing The laboratory conducts research and and development in computer and computational sciences in a variety of computational and experimental disciplines.
- Chemical sciences - ORNL conducts both fundamental and applied research in a number of areas, including catalysis, surface science and interfacial chemistry; molecular transformations and fuel chemistry; heavy element chemistry and radioactive materials characterization; aqueous solution chemistry and geochemistry; mass spectrometry and laser spectroscopy; separations chemistry; materials chemistry including synthesis and characterization of polymers and other soft materials; chemical biosciences; and neutron science.
- Electron microscopy - ORNL's electon microscopy program investigates key issues in condensed matter, materials, chemical and nanosciences.
- Nuclear medicine - The laboratory's nuclear medicine research is focused on the development of improved reactor production and processing methods to provide medical radioisotopes, the development of new radionuclide generator systems, the design and evaluation of new radiopharmaceuticals for applications in nuclear medicine and oncology.
- Physics - Physics research at ORNL is focused primarily on studies of the fundamental properties of matter at the atomic, nuclear, and subnuclear levels and the development of experimental devices in support of these studies.
Research Facilities
Oak Ridge National Laboratory is home to a number of highly sophisticated experimental research facilities. These research laboratories are designed to serve staff scientists and engineers, as well as researchers from universities, industry, foreign institutions, and other government laboratories. For more information about these facilities, see the laboratory's website.
User Facilities
Some ORNL research facilities have been designated as "user facilities" by the U.S. Department of Energy. Work at user facilities may be conducted on a nonproprietary or proprietary basis. More information on these facilities and how to gain access to them, is available on laboratory's .
Facts and Figures
ORNL has a staff of more than 4,000, including 1500 scientists and engineers. The laboratory annually hosts approximately 3,000 who spend two weeks or longer in Oak Ridge; about 25 percent of these are from industry. ORNL receives 30,000 visitors each year, plus another 10,000 precollege students.
ORNL funding for FY 2005 exceeds $1 billion; 80 percent of that amount comes from the Department of Energy, and 20 percent is from other federal and private customers. UT-Battelle, the laboratory's management and operating contractor, has provided more than $6 million in support of math and science education, economic development and other projects in the greater
Oak Ridge region.
The laboratory occupies about 58 square miles , and the replacement cost of its buildings is estimated to be about $7 billion.
History
Created as part of the
Manhattan Project in 1943, Oak Ridge National Laboratory was established during
World War II when American scientists feared that
Nazi Germany was rapidly developing an
atomic bomb. Built by the
United States Army Corps of Engineers in less than a year on isolated farmland in the mountains of East Tennessee, Oak Ridge became a "secret city" that within two years housed more than 75,000 residents.
The goal of the Manhattan Project was to separate and produce
uranium and
plutonium for use in developing a nuclear weapon. This work was carried out in three facilities, code-named Y-12, X-10 , and K-25. K-25 was a gaseous diffusion plant designed to separate
U-235 from
U-238. Y-12 was dedicated to the
electromagnetic separation of U-235. X-10 was a demonstration plant for the process to produce plutonium from uranium by nuclear bombardment.
Working under assumed names in the X-10 Graphite Reactor,
Enrico Fermi and his colleagues developed the world's first sustained nuclear reaction, leading to the
atomic bomb that ended the war.
ORNL's involvement with nuclear weapons ended after the war. The laboratory's scientific expertise shifted in the
1950s and
1960s to peacetime research in medicine, biology, materials and physics. During this period the Graphite Reactor was used to produce the world's first medical
radioisotopes for treating cancer. Following the creation of the U.S. Department of Energy in 1977, ORNL's mission broadened to include research in
energy production,
transmission and
consumption. The end of the
Cold War and the growth of international
terrorism led to a further expansion of research into a range of national security-related technologies. As the laboratory entered the 21st Century, new
cross-disciplinary programs in nanophase materials,
computational sciences and
biology has led to the term "nano-info-bio" to describe the emerging synthesis in ORNL's research agenda.
See also
- Spallation Neutron Source
- Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences
- National Transportation Research Center
- K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant
- Y-12 National Security Complex
- American Museum of Science and Energy
External links
General Information
- Official ORNL website
- News releases, RSS feeds, publications
- Overview of the laboratory and its major programs
- The laboratory's research and development magazine
Facts and Figures
Research Programs
Research Facilities
Research Divisions
History
Related Organizations and Facilities
- Laboratory's management and operating contractor
- Former K-25 Gaseous Diffusion Plant Site
Additional Resources
- A map of Manhattan Project Era Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
