ORNL: THE FIRST 50 YEARS--FOREWORD
This article also appears in the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Review (Vol. 25, Nos. 3 and 4), a quarterly research and
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In 1947, when the Atomic Energy Commission inherited from the
Manhattan District the two scientific children of the Chicago
Metallurgical Laboratory--the facilities at Oak Ridge and
Argonne--it decided to designate them "national laboratories." No
one really knew what a national laboratory was. In a general way,
these institutions were supposed to explore the peaceful uses of
nuclear fission. But in choosing to call them "national" rather
than "atomic energy" laboratories, the commission displayed
extraordinary foresight, or perhaps luck. An atomic energy
laboratory, in principal, goes out of business when the problems of
atomic energy are solved, are taken over by commercial enterprises,
or are regarded (as at present) as unimportant. A national
laboratory, by contrast, is more or less ensured immortality by
virtue of its name. The designation "national" implies that no
problem of national importance--whether in energy, environment,
defense, industrial competitiveness, or basic science--is
necessarily off-limits.
In the 50 years since Oak Ridge National Laboratory was founded, it
has become a full-fledged national socio-technological institute.
Its capabilities span the entire range of scientific disciplines,
including the social sciences. It addresses an array of problems
whose only common attribute is their significance both to the
nation and the world.
Who, for example, would have predicted in 1943 that ORNL in 1993
would be one of the world's most powerful environmental
laboratories, equipped to address economic, climatological,
ecological, and energy aspects of global climate change? Or who
would have expected ORNL to emerge as one of the world's most
powerful centers for the development of high-temperature materials?
How did this metamorphosis take place? After all, ORNL was
conceived by its founding genius, Eugene P. Wigner, as a major
center for nuclear reactor development.
In 1947, the Atomic Energy Commission, following the advice of the
General Advisory Committee (GAC), decided that a laboratory in the
hills of Tennessee could never achieve scientific distinction. It,
therefore, designated Argonne as the country's only center for
reactor development. The outlook for ORNL's survival was bleak.
Robert Oppenheimer and James Conant were doubtful that the
laboratory could survive; and I. I. Rabi, another prominent member
of the GAC, tried to persuade the scientists of ORNL to move, en
masse, to the newly formed Brookhaven National Laboratory. So, ever
since it was founded, ORNL's survival has been an overriding
concern.
But, in a sense, survival is the overriding concern of all
organizations, profit or nonprofit. That the weapons laboratories
during these 50 years have not had this worry has not saved them
from confronting their survival now that peace has broken out. The
question is, therefore, not, "Is survival your mission?"; the
question is, "Have you accomplished `great things' that transcend
the obvious, and ever-present, issue of survival?"
To record ORNL's transition from wartime pilot plant to national
sociotechnical institute and to interpret its many achievements
that transcend mere survival is the task accomplished so well by
historians Leland Johnson and Daniel Schaffer in Oak Ridge National
Laboratory: The First Fifty Years.
"Gray eagles" such as myself who were present at the creation of
the laboratory are falling off, one by one. With each of our deaths
another bit of organizational memory disappears. Yet this memory is
an important element of organizational morale. By knowing and
understanding how ORNL overcame challenges to its very existence,
and how it eventually achieved greatness should serve to inspire
the new generation of Laboratory employees. For this
accomplishment, the new generations, as well as the gray eagles,
must be grateful to the authors of this splendid history of ORNL.
--Alvin W. Weinberg
ORNL Director (1955-1973)
PREFACE
This history of the first 50 years of Oak Ridge National Laboratory
was prepared to com-memorate the institution's golden anniversary
in 1993. The Laboratory's 50th Year Celebration Committee provided
direction and resources for the study, and we are grateful to its
members for their guidance and encouragement. Don Trauger chaired
the committee composed of Ed Aebischer, Bill Alexander, Darryl
Armstrong, Stanley Auerbach, Deborah Barnes, Waldo Cohn, Charles
Coutant, Joanne Gailar, Carolyn Krause, Charles Kuykendall, Ellison
Taylor, Mike Wilkinson, and Alex Zucker--all current or retired
Laboratory employees. Anne Calhoun, Kim Pepper, Barbara Baker, and
Nancy Holcombe, also Laboratory staff members, coordinated the
committee's work.
Our exploration of historical sources was facilitated by Martin
Marietta Energy Systems librarians Mary Alexander, Gabrielle
Boudreaux, Deborah Cole, Bob Conrad, Nancy Gray, Dianne Griffith,
Kendra Jones, Bill Myers, Vicki Punsalan, and Deborah York; by
Linda Cabage, Ray Evans, and Lynn Rodems, all of the Energy Systems
Office of Public Affairs; by Becky Lawson, Lowell Langford
(formerly of ORNL), Linda Crews, Shirlene Rudder, Marie Swenson,
Yvonne Leffew, Shirley Adcock, Betty Clack, and Virginia Norman,
all of Laboratory Records; by Carolyn Krause, Jim Pearce, and Bill
Cabage, all of the Publications Division; and by photographer Frank
Hoffman (retired) and his assistant Anna Conover, now of the
Analysas Corporation. The authors appreciate their kind assistance.
For making available the resources of the Children's Museum of Oak
Ridge, we owe special thanks to Jane Alderfer, Jim Overholt, and
Selma Shapiro. Research assistants Susan Schexnayder, Cathy Shires,
and Edythe Quinn provided invaluable insights into the voluminous
materials, and administrative assistant Becky Robinson helped keep
the information in order once it was collected. Marilyn Morgan, a
graduate student in the University of Tennessee's English
department and a Review intern, helped review the manuscript and
wrote several sidebars, and Carolyn Krause, in addition to her work
on Trauger's committee, helped write many of the sidebars, and,
with Jim Pearce and Mike Aaron, edited the manuscript, and
coordinated the work of the electronic publishers and layout
artists.
For enlightenment and inspiring ideas, we are indebted to Laura
Fermi, Richard Fox, Milton Lietzke, Herbert MacPherson, Herbert
Pomerance, Herman Postma, Raymond Stoughton, Chet Thornton, Elaine
Trauger, Alvin Trivelpiece, Alvin Weinberg, and a host of
Laboratory personnel who took time from their busy schedules for
both formal interviews and informal chats that broadened our
understanding of the Laboratory's past. For the many fine
photographs used here, we especially thank Ed Westcott, Frank
Hoffman, and Bill Norris.
Astrophysicists tell us the space-time continuum and the behavior
of light prevent us from seeing a true image of the present. Like
it or not, these physicists say, only the past provides a clear
portrait of our lives and behavior--a con-clusion that historians
are more than eager to share.
Unlike physicists and other scientists, however, historians and
writers live in a world of changing human perceptions and behavior,
not in a world of immutable natural laws and fixed physical
phenomena. For these reasons, what follows should be considered a
history, not the history, of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Except
for rare instances (for example, the day that the Graphite Reactor
went critical), people will disagree about the relative importance
of specific Laboratory accomplishments and the relative
contributions of various Laboratory staff members. Problems of
assessment and attribution, moreover, are compounded by problems of
space, time, and memory. For the writers, space limitations
required selecting for discussion only a few of the Laboratory's
many significant achievements, projects, and programs. For readers,
50 years of history dims memories and may place at odds what
actually happened with what participants now think happened.
Despite these inevitable limitations, we hope this presentation of
Oak Ridge National Laboratory's past will be conducive to a better
understanding of its present, serving both as a guidepost for the
Laboratory's strengths and a road map for its future endeavors. We
also hope that readers, through these pages, are able to share some
of the joy, excitement, and pride that have accompanied the
Laboratory staff's journey of discovery.
--Leland Johnson and Daniel Schaffer
PROLOGUE
One of the world's premier scientific research centers, Oak Ridge
National Laboratory represents a marriage between science and
industrial technology forged for national defense during the throes
of global war. Currently managed by Martin Marietta Energy Systems,
Inc., it is the oldest national laboratory on its original site,
site of the world's oldest nuclear reactor, and home to the
Department of Energy's largest and most diversified multiprogram
laboratory.
As a government-sponsored institution managed by a private
corporation to advance science and technology in partnership with
universities and industrial firms, Oak Ridge, along with other
national laboratories, embodied a new approach to scientific and
governmental administration. Because solutions to energy and
environmental problems have been found as much in engineering and
applied technology as in basic science, the Laboratory, since its
inception, has offered a vital link between the two and has always
carried an avowedly semi-industrial appearance clothed by an
academic predisposition.
Celebrating 50 years of service to the United States in 1993, Oak
Ridge National Laboratory has changed the history of the nation and
the world. As a remarkable and sometimes bewildering complex of
sophisticated industrial, scientific, and educational activities in
an isolated rural setting, the Laboratory encapsulates the
ever-changing nature of the U.S. research agenda, reflecting on a
small, institutional scale sweeping shifts in national and global
concerns during the past 50 years.
In its early years, the Laboratory employed 1500 scientists and
support staff housed in primitive wooden frame buildings. There,
people worked--often unknowingly--on the construction of a nuclear
reactor and the production of plutonium from uranium. Since then,
the Laboratory has passed through many transitions. In the postwar
years, it survived budget and staff retrenchments by focusing on
nuclear science and the development of nuclear energy for peaceful
uses, including production of radioisotopes for biological
research. In the 1960s, it became the first national laboratory to
turn to research tied only tangentially to nuclear energy. During
the 1970s, it expanded its research, in accord with shifting
national priorities, to encompass all forms of energy and their
impacts on the environment. In the 1980s, it became a multiprogram
laboratory of the Department of Energy, leading broad research
initiatives responsive to national needs. By its 50th anniversary,
Oak Ridge National Laboratory had emerged as a leading global
research center for issues related to energy, environment, and
basic science and technology.
Currently employing about 4500 people, the Laboratory's research
agenda ranges from global warming to energy conservation to
high-temperature superconductivity to ozone-safe substitutes for
chlorofluorocarbons. It is committed to improving national science
education and to speeding the transfer of its technological
developments to the commercial marketplace.
Since 1943, scientists and technicians at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory have confronted issues vital to human life and its
environment. Established to create nuclear weapons of unprecedented
destructive power, the supreme paradox of its history is its
subsequent contributions to improving energy production and use,
the environment, health, and the economy. Millions of people have
benefited from the results of the Laboratory's isotope production
and research and development activities.
Examples of applications of ORNL efforts are isotopes and
instruments for medical diagnosis and treatment; ultrapure vaccines
that have minimal side effects; regulations to protect human health
and safety; bone marrow transplants for radiation accident victims;
higher-quality meat resulting from use of the technology to freeze
and thaw embryos from superior animals and implant them in foster
mothers; nuclear reactors that supply one-fifth of U.S.
electricity; a more powerful U.S. Navy; energy-efficient
refrigerators, hot-water heater, and other appliances; and stronger
alloys and ceramics for use at high temperatures.
During the next 50 years, the Laboratory is likely to expand its
agenda to encompass the full array of scientific and technical
issues facing the nation and world. In the process, it will further
enhance its role as a national laboratory in service to
America's--and the world's--scientific and technical needs. The
Laboratory, in short, has a history worth remembering and a future
worth watching.
--Alvin Trivelpiece
ORNL Director
(keywords: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, history)
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Date Posted: 2/22/94 (ktb)