ORNL: THE FIRST 50 YEARS--CHAPTER 3: ACCELERATING PROJECTS
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"Discovering how radiation does what it does to inorganic, organic,
and living matter will benefit the entire world," declared
biochemist Waldo Cohn as he speculated about the Laboratory's
postwar research agenda.
The dilemma facing the Laboratory in the years following World War
II was how to obtain the means to pursue such research. After all,
the Laboratory's brief history had been devoted largely to
supporting development of the atomic bomb. Although scientists had
touted peaceful applications of the atom, there were no assurances
that the government would be willing--or able--to shift its
administrative gears and resources to support such research.
One answer to the Laboratory's postwar research dilemma came from
an unexpected source: investigations into nuclear-powered aircraft
sponsored by the AEC and partially funded by the U.S. Air Force.
The plane never got off the ground, but the research directed
toward this effort lifted to new heights scientific knowledge in
biology, chemistry, and physics and, at the same time, led to new
advances in technologies related to reactors, computers, and
accelerators.
In the long run, spin-offs from research into atomic travel--in
funding for biology, medicine, genetics, and computer
science--would prove more useful than the primary research goal
itself.
FLIGHTS OF FANCY
Fantasies about future applications of atomic power abounded just
after World War II. Popular writing and art, which depicted
atomic-powered ships, submarines, aircraft, trains, automobiles,
and even farm tractors, stimulated public interest. These popular
images came into sharp focus at Oak Ridge, where the Laboratory
participated in development of nuclear-powered submarines,
aircraft, and ships during the late 1940s and 1950s.
The application of atomic power to motion and travel became a
centerpiece of the Laboratory's research program in the postwar
era, and efforts to devise nuclear-powered transport, especially
aircraft and submarines, involved many Laboratory researchers. This
research, in turn, contributed to the design of three nuclear
reactors, the adoption of high-speed digital computers, and the
acquisition of particle accelerators for nuclear physics. Moreover,
the efforts fueled the Laboratory's budget and staffing, both of
which increased during the late 1940s and early 1950s under the
management of its new contract operator, Union Carbide Corporation.
In February 1950, the Laboratory merged with the research divisions
at the Y-12 Plant--a move that strengthened and diversified the
Laboratory's research efforts. One direct result of this merger was
a set of projects designed to build reactor-driven machines that
could travel over land, work underwater, and perhaps even fly. In
the process, the Laboratory hoped to turn the public's postwar
atomic dreams into concrete demonstrations of atomic energy's
potential contributions to society.
Acquiring the Y-12 Plant's research divisions increased Laboratory
staff by 50% and, by 1953, more than 3600 people were employed at
the newly merged facilities. Moreover, the merger enabled the
Laboratory to acquire divisions with strong capabilities in applied
science and heavy industrial technology. The Laboratory also
benefited from the transfer of state-of-the-art hardware, such as
cyclotrons that could accelerate subatomic particles to
unprecedented speeds.
ACCELERATED ADMINISTRATION
Added responsibilities, personnel, and equipment created new
challenges in Laboratory management and administration. In late
1947, Union Carbide Corporation's Carbide & Carbon Chemical
Company, later renamed the Union Carbide Corporation Nuclear
Division, became the Laboratory's operations contractor. It enjoyed
two advantages that would serve both the company and the Laboratory
well.
First, the company's expertise in chemical engineering fit the
tasks it would be asked to accomplish. Second, Union Carbide was no
stranger to Oak Ridge. Since 1943, it had managed a large staff
that operated the K-25 Plant. In 1947, the government extended
Union Carbide's responsibilities to the Y-12 Plant's production
facilities. Thus, when the AEC called on Union Carbide to oversee
Laboratory research activities in December 1947, it placed all Oak
Ridge operations under unified management.
Union Carbide soon proved its mettle both to the AEC and Laboratory
personnel. Under the arrangement, Carbide executives--both at the
corporation's international headquarters in New York City and at
its regional headquarters in Oak Ridge--set Laboratory work rules
and pay scales. Virtually the entire Laboratory staff went on Union
Carbide's payroll. For its services, Union Carbide received a fixed
fee from the AEC that amounted to less than 2% of the Laboratory's
annual budget.
Union Carbide appointed Nelson Rucker as the Laboratory's director
until a permanent director could be found. A graduate of Virginia
Military Institute, Rucker joined Union Carbide in 1933 to manage
a Carbide plant in West Virginia. He moved to Oak Ridge with
Carbide in the early 1940s and remained there throughout the war.
At the time of his appointment to the position of Laboratory
executive director, he was serving as the Y-12 Plant's manager.
Rucker was responsible for overseeing the Laboratory's daily
activities. Playing a role comparable to that of a city manager, he
saw that the institution functioned efficiently on a day-to-day
basis, but he did not set its technical agenda. Union Carbide had
as much difficulty filling the position of director in the late
1940s as the University of Chicago had had a few years earlier.
Several prominent scientists, including John Dunning, rejected the
position. In December 1948, Carbide asked Alvin Weinberg to become
director. He also declined, citing his youth and lack of
experience, but agreed to become the associate director for
research and development.
A biophysicist, Alvin Weinberg had studied the fission of living
cells at the University of Chicago during the late 1930s. In 1941,
he joined the Metallurgical Project to investigate nuclear fission.
As an assistant to Eugene Wigner, he participated in wartime
reactor designs. In May 1945, on Wigner's advice, he moved to Oak
Ridge to join the Laboratory's Physics Division, where he succeeded
Lothar Nordheim as division chief in 1947. Weinberg, whose ability
to communicate his thoughts in writing was exceeded only by his
rare scientific talent, captured both the spirit of excitement and
that of confusion that existed at the Laboratory during the late
1940s when he wrote Wigner about his responsibilities as head of
the Physics Division. "I feel in my new job a little bit like a
trick horseback rider at a circus," Weinberg told Wigner. "The idea
seems to be to ride standing on three or four spirited horses, all
of which are interested in going in different directions."
Limited work space constituted a major challenge facing Rucker,
Weinberg, and other Laboratory managers in the late 1940s. During
the postwar turmoil, the AEC suspended new construction and often
deferred maintenance on existing structures, pending the
government's decision on the Laboratory's future. This wait-and-see
attitude, which made sense given the uncertainties in Washington,
continued while wartime frame structures swiftly deteriorated. The
only new facilities erected at the Laboratory between 1946 and 1948
were surplus Army quonset huts to relieve overcrowding, plus an
electric substation and steam power plant constructed in futile
anticipation that the proposed Materials Testing Reactor would be
built in Oak Ridge.
Overcrowding became serious in 1948 as the Laboratory added new
divisions, hired more personnel, and installed new equipment. These
events led physicist Gale Young to complain, "In accumulating
technical people which it cannot use for lack of accommodations, I
believe that the Laboratory has embarked on a course which is
suicidal to itself and detrimental to the national interest. Until
considerably more buildings have been erected, staff reductions,
rather than increases, are in order."
In 1949, with the Laboratory's future on a firmer, more stable
footing, the AEC budgeted $20 million for new construction, and
Union Carbide initiated its "Program H" to replace wooden wartime
structures with more permanent brick and mortar. In addition to
paving of streets, landscaping of grounds, and renovation of older
structures, about 250,000 ft2 of new office and laboratory space
opened in the early 1950s. Among the new facilities, three were of
particular importance: Building 4500, the Laboratory's principal
research building and administrative headquarters; a radioisotope
complex consisting of 10 buildings designed to process, package,
and ship the Laboratory's most valuable material exports; and a
pilot plant for use in chemical processing. With this new
construction, the AEC and Union Carbide gradually hoisted the
Laboratory out of the East Tennessee mud.
ACCELERATED DEVELOPMENT
The AEC's 1947 decision to centralize reactor development at
Argonne National Laboratory proved ill-considered. Argonne's
mandate from the AEC to support Navy reactor development and new
programs for civilian power and breeder reactors strained its
resources and capabilities. As a result, it supported Oak Ridge's
efforts to continue design and fabrication work in East Tennessee
to free its staff to concentrate on its own full plate of
responsibilities in Chicago.
Taking advantage of this unexpected turn of events, in 1948 Oak
Ridge urged the AEC to build the Materials Testing Reactor on the
Cumberland Plateau, 20 miles from Oak Ridge. The AEC, however,
acquired a site in Idaho and, four years later, the newly built
Materials Testing Reactor at the Idaho National Engineering
Laboratory began successful operation under the supervision of
Richard Doan, formerly the research director at Oak Ridge. Two
years before the reactor in Idaho began operation, however, the
Laboratory had the world's first solid-fuel and light-water reactor
operating in Oak Ridge. Despite the government's intentions to end
reactor work at the Laboratory, the facility's deeply rooted
efforts in development of this technology refused to wither.
While designing the Materials Testing Reactor in 1948, the
Laboratory built a small mock-up of the reactor to investigate the
design of its controls and hydraulic systems. In 1949, Weinberg
proposed installing uranium fuel plates inside the mock-up to test
the reactor design under critical conditions. The AEC staff feared
that Weinberg's initiative might become an opening wedge for a
revived reactor program at Oak Ridge. "We have no plans," Weinberg
reassured them, "to convert the critical experiment into a
reactor." In February 1950, the mock-up experiment at Oak Ridge
produced the first visible blue Cerenkov glow of a nuclear reaction
underwater, and it provided superb training for those who were to
serve subsequently as operators for the full-scale reactor in
Idaho.
As its reactor program burgeoned, the AEC relaxed its previous
plans to centralize reactor development and construction at Argonne
National Laboratory and Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. In
fact, the AEC allowed the Laboratory to upgrade the mock-up's
shielding and cooling systems. These improvements raised the
system's capacity to 3000 thermal kilowatts, only one-tenth of the
Materials Testing Reactor's maximum power but still useful for
experiments.
Labeled the "poor man's pile" by Wigner, the mock-up formally
became the Low Intensity Test Reactor (LITR). Experiments conducted
at the LITR established the feasibility of the boiling-
water reactor, which later became one of the design prototypes for
commercial nuclear power plants. Operated remotely from the
Graphite Reactor control room, the "poor man's pile" served the
Laboratory until 1968 when the AEC shut it down after a long,
useful life.
FLYING REACTORS
With funds drawn largely from the U.S. Air Force, the Laboratory's
major entrance into reactor development during the 1950s came
through efforts to design a nuclear airplane. British and German
development of jet engines at the end of World War II had given
quick, defensive fighters an advantage over slower long-range
offensive bombers. To address the imbalance, General Curtis LeMay
and Colonel Donald Keirn, both of the Air Force, urged development
of nuclear-powered bombers. In 1946, they persuaded General Groves
to approve Air Force use of the vacated S-50 plant near the K-25
Plant in Oak Ridge to investigate whether nuclear energy could
propel aircraft.
The initial concept called for a nuclear- propelled bomber that
could fly at least 12,000 miles at 450 miles per hour without
refueling. Such range and speed would enable nuclear weapons to be
delivered via airborne bombers anywhere in the world. The aircraft,
however, would require a compact reactor small enough to fit inside
a bomber and powerful enough to lift the airplane into the air,
complete with lightweight shielding to protect the crew from
radiation.
Under Air Force contract, the Fairchild Engine and Airplane
Corporation then established a task force at the S-50 plant to
examine the feasibility of nuclear aircraft and arranged with
Wigner to receive scientific support from the Laboratory. Initial
studies conducted by the Fairchild Corporation at the S 50 plant
showed promise and, in 1948, the AEC asked the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) to evaluate the feasibility of
nuclear-powered flight. MIT sent scientists to Lexington,
Massachusetts, for a summer's appraisal, and they reported that
such flight could be achieved within 15 years if sufficient
resources were applied to the effort. In September 1949, the AEC
approved Laboratory participation in an aircraft nuclear propulsion
project. Weinberg was made project director and Cecil Ellis
coordinator. Raymond Briant, Sylvan Cromer, and Walter Jordan later
served as directors of the Laboratory's Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion
(ANP) project.
Soon after the Laboratory acquired its nuclear propulsion project,
General Electric took over the work of Fairchild and relocated it
from Oak Ridge to its plant in Ohio. Although some Fairchild
personnel transferred to Ohio, about 180 remained in Oak Ridge to
join the Laboratory's aircraft project in May 1951. Among those who
decided to stay in East Tennessee were Francois Kertesz, a
multilingual scientist; Edward Bettis, a computer wizard before the
age of computers; William Ergen, a reactor physicist; Fred
Maienschein, later the director of the Laboratory's Engineering
Physics and Mathematics Division; and Don Cowen of the Laboratory's
Information and Reports Division.
Much of the Laboratory's initial aircraft work focused on
development of lightweight shielding to protect airplane crews and
aircraft rubber, plastic, and petroleum components from radiation.
Knowing a nuclear aircraft would never become airborne carrying the
thick walls typical of reactor shields, Everitt Blizard and his
team worked two shifts daily, testing potential lightweight
shielding materials in the lid tank atop the Graphite Reactor. As
research progressed, however, the Graphite Reactor proved
inadequate to meet the level of research activity. To continue its
shielding investigations, the Laboratory added two unique nuclear
reactors to its fleet.
First, in December 1950, the Laboratory completed its 2-MW Bulk
Shielding Reactor at a cost of only $250,000. To build this
reactor, the Laboratory modified its earlier Materials Testing
Reactor design to create what became popularly known as the
"swimming pool" reactor. This reactor's enriched uranium core was
submerged in water for both core cooling and neutron moderation.
From an overhead crane, the reactor could be moved about a concrete
tank, the size of a swimming pool, to test bulk shielding in
various configurations. A 10-kW nuclear assembly (named the Pool
Critical Assembly) was subsequently placed in a corner of the pool
to permit small-scale experiments without tying up the larger
reactor.
The Laboratory standardized this inexpensive, safe, and stable
design, which became a prototype for many research reactors built
at universities and private laboratories around the world. Upgraded
with a forced cooling system in 1963, it supplanted the Graphite
Reactor (retired that year) and proved extremely useful for
irradiation and study of materials at low temperatures.
A second Laboratory reactor resulting from the nuclear aircraft
project was the Tower Shielding Facility, completed in 1953. Cables
from steel towers could hoist a 1-MW reactor in a spherical
container nearly 200 feet (60 meters) into the air. Because no
shielding surrounded the reactor when suspended, it operated under
television surveillance from an underground control room.
Containing uranium and aluminum fuel plates moderated and cooled by
water, this reactor helped scientists answer questions about
radiation from a reactor flying overhead; it also helped
researchers better understand the type and amount of shielding that
would be needed aboard a nuclear aircraft.
Experiments indicated that a divided shield, consisting of one
section around the aircraft's reactor and another around its crew,
would comprise a combined weight less than that of a single thick
shield blanketing the aircraft's reactor. Researchers, however,
could never devise a reactor and shielding light enough to ensure
safe flight. They even considered a "tug-tow" arrangement in which
the crew and controls would be in a towed glider, separated from,
yet tied to, the reactor by a long umbilical cable. The Tower
Shielding Facility reactor later was upgraded, and shielding
experiments recently took place there in support of breeder reactor
development, long after visions of a nuclear aircraft faded from
memory.
FIREBALL REACTOR
The Bulk Shielding Reactor and Tower Shielding Facility were
designed to test materials that might be used on a nuclear-powered
aircraft. For the U.S. Air Force, improved materials represented a
means toward an end: a nuclear-powered engine that could drive
long-range bombers to takeoff speeds and propel them around the
world. To achieve this goal, the Laboratory designed an
experimental 100-kW aircraft reactor as a demonstration. This small
reactor, operating at high temperatures, used molten uranium salts
as its fuel, which flowed in serpentine tubes through an 18-inch
(46-centimeter) reactor core. A heat exchanger dissipated the
reactor's heat into the atmosphere. In 1953, the Laboratory
constructed a building to house this experimental reactor.
To contain molten salts at high temperatures within a reactor, the
Laboratory used a nickel-molybdenum alloy, INOR-8, designed by Oak
Ridge researchers and fabricated at the International Nickel
Company. Able to resist corrosion at high temperatures while
retaining acceptable welding properties, the alloy was
commercialized as Hastelloy-N by private industry (an early example
of technology transfer) to supply tubing, sheet, and bar stock for
industrial applications. The aircraft reactor also compelled
Laboratory personnel to learn how to perform welding with remote
manipulators and how to remotely disassemble molten-salt pumps. In
addition, Laboratory researchers also devised two salt reprocessing
schemes to recover uranium and lithium-7 from spent reactor fuel.
The first test run of the Aircraft Reactor Experiment took place in
October 1954. The reactor ran at 1 MW for 100 hours. Don Trauger
and other observers of the reactor's operations recall that the
reactor core, pumps, valves, and components literally became red
hot. Completing the design, fabrication, and operation of such an
exotic nuclear reactor in five years was considered a noteworthy
event, and dignitaries such as General James Doolittle, Admiral
Lewis Strauss, and Captain Hyman Rickover visited Oak Ridge to see
the red-hot reactor in action.
Its success led the Laboratory to propose additional study of this
reactor concept and the design of a larger 60-MW, spherical
prototype, known as the "fireball reactor," to conduct more
sophisticated experiments. Laboratory researchers, for example,
asked what would happen if an airplane turned upside down while
irradiated molten liquid pulsated through the engine. More
significantly, they wondered what would happen if the plane failed
in midair or during takeoff or landing.
Three unique reactors were not the only hardware the Laboratory
acquired as a result of its nuclear aircraft project. The project
helped justify construction of a critical experiments facility to
test reactor fuels and a physics laboratory to study the effects of
radiation on solid materials. It also advanced Laboratory efforts
to acquire its first nuclear particle accelerators and digital
computers.
Because the success of nuclear flight depended on expensive and
complex hardware on the ground, the Laboratory benefited from being
on the receiving end of a well-funded government project. However,
the Laboratory's ability to take advantage of this situation also
depended on the skill of its research and support staff and the
managerial expertise of its leaders. Internal administrative
adjustments, including the merger of the Y-12 Plant's research
division with the Laboratory, also helped.
ORNL'S Y-12 LABORATORIES
By 1950, all parties--the government, the Laboratory, and the
company--largely viewed Carbide's management of the Laboratory as
a success. Recognizing that staff loyalties resided with the
Laboratory, Carbide did not attempt to convert them to "company
personnel." It eagerly identified and rewarded ambitious Laboratory
staff (elevating some to managerial positions), undertook sorely
needed facility reconstruction and expansion, and fostered basic
and applied sciences. "Carbide management has demonstrated,"
asserted one manager, "that first-rate basic research can be done
in an industrial framework."
When Nelson Rucker, Carbide's executive director of Laboratory
operations, transferred to a plant in West Virginia in 1950, a
major reorganization ensued. Alvin Weinberg, formerly associate
director, became the Laboratory's research director, and Clarence
Larson, formerly the Y-12 Plant manager, became the Laboratory's
new director.
A chemist from Minnesota, Larson had worked at the University of
California's radiation laboratory before moving to Oak Ridge to
become the Y-12 Plant research director in 1943 and superintendent
in 1948. An able manager and accomplished scientist, Larson
strengthened and broadened the Laboratory's research activities.
Before Larson's appointment, Union Carbide considered moving the
Laboratory to the Y-12 Plant, where the Biology Division already
occupied a building. By 1950, however, the chilling tensions of the
Cold War and the heated battles of the Korean War sparked rapid
expansion of nuclear weapons production, which increased the
workload at the Y-12 and K-25 plants and led to construction of new
gaseous diffusion plants at Paducah, Kentucky, and Portsmouth,
Ohio. As a result, space became precious at the Y-12 Plant, and
plans to move the Laboratory there were aborted. Thus, the
Laboratory's acquisition of the Y-12 Plant's three research
divisions--Isotope Research and Production, Electromagnetic
Research, and Chemical Research--left everyone and everything in
the same place. However, as a result of the administrative
realignment, Y-12 Plant researchers in these divisions began
reporting to Laboratory management.
ISOTOPES
By 1950, the Laboratory was distributing more than 50 different
radioisotopes to qualified research centers. Cobalt-60, used for
cancer research and therapy, was a prime isotope on the
Laboratory's distribution list. When the Laboratory began to ship
isotopes overseas, the AEC approved a cooperative arrangement
between the Laboratory and the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear
Studies to train foreign scientists in radioisotope research.
The Laboratory's isotope research efforts were further advanced
through the merger of the Y-12 Plant's Isotope Research and
Production Division with the Laboratory's Isotopes Division. This
union added stable, nonradioactive i.otopes to the Laboratory's
catalog.
The Y-12 Plant's stable-isotopes program had emerged at the end of
the war when Y-12 staff ceased separating uranium isotopes for
atomic weapons. Eugene Wigner then urged continued use of some
calutrons to separate the stable isotopes of all elements. "We
should have as the very basis of future work in nuclear physics and
chemistry knowledge of the various cross sections of pure stable
isotopes," he urged. The AEC approved Wigner's proposal, and a
group led by Clarence Larson, Christopher Keim, and Leon Love began
to separate various isotopes of stable elements.
Researchers at first used four calutrons salvaged from
electromagnetic equipment. Stable-isotope research and development
required modifications to the calutrons, better understanding of
the obscure chemistry of less common elements, spectroscopic
analysis of nuclear properties, and advances in the use of isotopes
as tracers.
Christopher Keim, a group leader, later recalled that copper
isotopes were the first to be collected. Using enriched copper-65
as the source material for neutron irradiation, George Boyd, John
Swartout, and colleagues positively identified nickel-65 as a
nickel isotope with a half-life of 2.6 hours. This discovery
represented the first use of calutron-separated stable isotopes in
research. "All that had to be done," Keim modestly explained, "was
to put copper chloride into the charge bottle, heat it with uranium
tetrachloride, lower the magnetic field, and space the collector
slots to receive the copper-63 and copper-65 ion beams."
Stable isotopes of iron, platinum, lithium, and mercury, for
example, were separated and shipped to university, government, and
industrial laboratories worldwide to aid basic research in physics,
chemistry, earth sciences, biology, and biomedicine. They became
especially valuable to medical science, for which they were
converted into radionuclides used as tracers to diagnose cancer,
heart disorders, and other diseases affecting human internal organs
and bones. Contributing to basic scientific knowledge and enhancing
the quality of human life, the Laboratory's stable isotopes program
continued to expand through the 1970s. At its height, the program
generated more than $1 million annually in sales revenue.
PARTICLE ACCELERATORS
In 1950, the Y-12 Plant's Electromagnetic Research Division, under
Robert Livingston, became the Laboratory's Electronuclear Division,
switching from studies of calutrons to fundamental research on the
formation and motion of ions in eldamental research on the
formation and motion of ions in electric fields. The Electronuclear
Division was also in charge of the cyclotrons used for particle
acceleration. At the same time, Arthur Snell and colleagues in the
Physics Division entered the particle acceleration field as well,
using electrostatic accelerators. ndependent lines of particle
acceleration--cyclotrons in the Electronuclear Division and
electrostatic accelerators in the Physics Division. This hot
pursuit of fast-moving subatomic particles was propelled by rapid
postwar advances in the basic science of nuclear physics.
During the postwar years, exploration of the unknown particles and
forces of atomic nuclei led to the discovery of subatomic particles
smaller than neutrons, electrons, and protons. The study of these
elementary particles emerged from nuclear science as a subfield
labeled high-energy physics. Oak Ridge, as a national laboratory
dedicated to fundamental research, was anxious to participate in
subatomic explorations.
Its research efforts had an abortive start in 1946, however, when
the Laboratory proposed to purchase a large betatron accelerator to
join the hunt for elusive subatomic particles. This purchase
required approval by the Army, and the resulting bureaucratic
delays made the 160-ton betatron obsolete when it finally arrived.
Saddled with an outdated piece of equipment, the Laboratory sold it
as surplus to another government agency. By 1948, however, the
Laboratory's nuclear aircraft program, with support from the U.S.
Air Force, was inching down the runway. This project added impetus
to accelerator research because of the need to understand the
effects of radiation on shields and other materials that would be
part of the aircraft.
In 1948, Arthur Snell, director of the Physics Division, asked
Wilfred Good and Charles Moak to start an accelerator program using
materials readily and inexpensively available at the Laboratory and
the Y-12 Plant. "The objective was clear," recalled Good. "Neutrons
were the key to the new frontier of applied nuclear energy; to
fully exploit neutrons, their behavior had to be thoroughly
understood; and the Van de Graaff accelerator was the only known
source of neutrons of precisely determined energies." The Chemistry
Division had acquired a 2.5-MV Van de Graaff electron accelerator
from the Navy. Richard Lamphere of the Instrumentation and Controls
Division converted it into a 3-MV proton accelerator that could
bombard lithium targets with protons to produce a stream of
neutrons. This little Van de Graaff accelerator supported research
for 30 years, its most important service to science coming when
John Gibbons, Richard Macklin, and colleagues used it to confirm a
theory that atomic elements originated through nucleosynthesis in
the centers of stars.
To test radiation effects at energies lower than those generated by
the Van de Graaff accelerator, the Laboratory also acquired a
Cockcroft-Walton accelerator, an early particle accelerator named
for its inventors. The Laboratory installed these first
accelerators in an abandoned powerhouse.
In March 1949, Alvin Weinberg and Herman Roth of the AEC met Air
Force commanders and contractors to discuss priorities in the
nuclear aircraft research program. After concluding that a 5-MV Van
de Graaff accelerator was needed, the Air Force agreed to purchase
it if the Laboratory would construct a building to house it. First
installed at the Y-12 Plant, the 5-MV Van de Graaff accelerator
produced its first beam in 1951, making it the world's
highest-energy machine of its kind. In 1952, the Laboratory
completed the building for the High Voltage Laboratory and moved
the three electrostatic particle accelerators into it. A decade
later, it added a 6-MV tandem Van de Graaff accelerator to extend
the energy capability of the existing machines and to accelerate
ions heavier than helium. Thirty years later, Laboratory physicists
still view this accelerator as a valuable research tool.
CYCLOTRON ACCELERATION
While Arthur Snell and members of the Laboratory's Physics Division
concentrated on particle acceleration through direct-current
high-voltage machines, Robert Livingston and the Y-12 Plant's
electromagnetic team pursued an independent course of achieving
acceleration with cyclotrons. Invented in 1930 by Ernest Lawrence
at Berkeley, cyclotrons had two D-shaped electrodes (dees) in a
large and nearly uniform magnetic field. The dees operated at high
electric potential and were alternately positive or negative. They
accelerated the charged particles (ions), andceleration with
cyclotrons. Invented in 1930 by Ernest Lawrence at Berkeley,
cyclotrons had two D-shaped electrodes (dees) in a large and nearly
uniform magnetic field. The dees operated at high electric
potential and were alternately positive or negative. They
accelerated the charged particles (ions), and the magnetic field
confined them to a circular orbit.
Cyclotrons were the forerunners of the giant synchrotrons of the
1990s, and during their 60 years of development, they increased the
energy of protons (nuclei of hydrogen atoms) from one million
electron volts to 20 trillion electron volts. The cost of the
machines also multiplied from $100,000 each to $10 billion each.
Having built calutrons during the war for electromagnetic
separation of uranium isotopes, Livingston and his associates at
the Y-12 Plant had abundant experience and took advantage of the
unused electromagnets left over from the war effort. During the
late 1940s and early 1950s, they built three cyclotrons to study
the properties of compound nuclei and heavy particle reactions. The
cyclotrons were identified by their diameters measured across the
dees as 22-inch, 63-inch, and 86-inch machines.
Livingston's team built the 22-inch cyclotron in the late 1940s to
test how electromagnets in calutrons could be used and how
high-current calutron ion-source techniques could be applied to
cyclotron functioning. The cyclotron served its purpose, and its
size was later doubled to 44 inches for testing new ion sources,
new beam-focusing methods, and new ways to increase the intensities
of accelerated beams.
The 86-inch cyclotron began operation in November 1950 and was used
to perform radiation damage studies for the nuclear aircraft
project. As the world's largest fixed-frequency proton cyclotron,
it produced a proton beam four times more intense than any other
cyclotron; its blue beam projected through the air as much as 16
feet (5 meters), visibly impressing visitors. Bernard Cohen, chief
physicist for this machine, used it to study proton-induced nuclear
reactions and to supply the isotope polonium-208 until a commercial
source became available.
This was the era of hydrogen bomb development, and the question
arose whether a powerful hydrogen bomb might ignite nitrogen in the
atmosphere, causing a worldwide holocaust. To find the answer, the
AEC asked the Laboratory to build a cyclotron that would accelerate
nitrogen ions to determine the probability that they would react
with each other at hydrogen-bomb temperatures to produce carbon,
oxygen, and enormous amounts of energy. The Laboratory asked Alex
Zucker, a newly minted Ph.D. from Yale University, to develop a
source of multiply charged nitrogen ions. After successfully
completing this task, he was directed to build a cyclotron to
measure the cross section of the nitrogen-nitrogen reaction and
thereby determine whether the atmosphere would burn.
Built in 18 months at a cost of $300,000, the cyclotron became
operational in 1952. Zucker and his collaborators, Harry Reynolds
and Dan Scott, soon demonstrated that a hydrogen bomb would not
ignite a giant chain reaction that would immolate the earth. They
then turned the cyclotron into a basic research instrument, the
world's first source of energetic heavy ions, making the
interactions of complex nuclei a new field of scientific
investigation.
The Laboratory's first cyclotrons were the most economical ones
ever built because the Electro-nuclear Division used surplus
electromagnetic equipment that required little modification.
Because the Y-12 Plant's calutron tracks had been placed side by
side in vertical formation, the Laboratory's cyclotrons were marked
by their unique vertical mounting instead of the horizontal
position of the dees found at other laboratories. These pioneering
cyclotrons helped advance the technology of high-beam currents, and
they have since been the force behind the Laboratory's versatile
Oak Ridge Isochronous Cyclotron completed in 1962 and still later
the Holifield Heavy Ion Research Facility completed in 1980.
INFORMATION ACCELERATION
The aircraft nuclear propulsion project, together with the reactors
and particle accelerators developed to support it, generated
immense quantities of scientific data that required rapid analysis.
This need stimulated Laboratory interest in electronic computers,
which became available during the 1940s.
In 1947, Weinberg created a Mathematics and Computing Section
within the Physics Division under the direction of Alston
Householder, a mathematical biophysicist from the University of
Chicago, who in 1948 converted the section into an independent
Mathematics Panel to manage the Laboratory's acquisition of
computers.
Before 1948, complex, multifaceted computations at the Y-12 and
K-25 plants were done on electric calculators and card programming
machines. Because of its participation in the nuclear aircraft
project, the Laboratory obtained a matrix multiplier to solve
linear equations. At the Laboratory's urging, the AEC also leased
Harvard University's early Mark I computer. Householder and
Weinberg insisted that the Laboratory should also acquire its own
"automatic sequencing computer" to be used by staff scientists
doing difficult computations for the nuclear aircraft project. The
computer, they contended, could also serve to educate university
faculty and researchers visiting the Laboratory. When purchased, it
became the first electronic digital computer in the South.
Householder and the Laboratory's leadership were familiar with the
pioneering work of Wigner's friend, John von Neumann, who had
pursued experimental computer development near the end of the war
for the Navy. Admiral Lewis Strauss thought the Navy needed
computers to aid in weather forecasting, vital to ships at sea.
With his urging, the Navy in 1946 sponsored fabrication of the
first von Neumann digital computer at Princeton University. After
considering Raytheon and other commercial computers, the Laboratory
and Argonne National Laboratory decided to build their own von
Neumann-type computers, tailored specifically to solve nuclear
physics problems. Laboratory engineers assisted Argonne during the
early 1950s in design and fabrication of the Oak Ridge Automatic
Computer and Logical Engine. Its name was selected with reference
to a lyrical acronym from Greek mythology--ORACLE, defined as "a
shrine in which a deity reveals hidden knowledge."
Assembled before the development of transistors and microchips, the
ORACLE was a large scientific digital computer that used vacuum
tubes. It had an original storage capacity of 1024 words of 40 bits
each (later doubled to 2048 words). The computer also contained a
magnetic-tape auxiliary memory and an on-line cathode-tube plotter,
a recorder, and a typewriter. Operational in 1954, for a time the
ORACLE had the fastest speed and largest data storage capacity of
any computer in the world. Problems that would have required two
mathematicians with electric calculators three years to solve could
be done on the ORACLE in 20 minutes.
Householder and the Mathematics Panel used the ORACLE to analyze
radiation and shielding problems. In 1957, Hezz Stringfield and
Ward Foster, both of the Budget Office, also adopted the ORACLE for
more mundane but equally important tasks--annual budgeting and
monthly financial accounting. As one of the last "homemade
computers," the ORACLE became obsolete by the 1960s. The Laboratory
then purchased or leased its mainframe computers from commercial
suppliers. From the initial applications of the ORACLE to nuclear
aircraft problems, computer enthusiasm spread like lightning
throughout the Laboratory, and in time, use of the machines became
common in all the Laboratory's divisions.
PARTICLE COUNTING
Scintillation spectrometers and multichannel analyzers were other
machines that benefited from--and contributed to--the Laboratory's
involvement with the nuclear aircraft project and its related
studies of atomic particle behavior and radiation damage.
In 1947, German scientists observed that some crystals emitted
flashes of light when struck by radiation beams and that the
intensity of the flash was proportional to the radiation's energy.
By 1950, a scientific team at the Laboratory led by P. R. Bell
devised an improved scintillation spectrometer to measure the
number and intensity of light flashes emanating from crystals
exposed to radiation. Electronic recording of these measured
flashes by multichannel analyzers permitted complete and rapid
analysis of particle and gamma-ray energies.
Bell's group later converted the scintillation spectrometer into a
medical pulse analyzer and developed a "scintiscanner" and an
electronic probe to assist physicians using radioisotopes to locate
tumors without surgery. In 1956, Bell's team received funding from
the AEC to continue this work, and they formed a Medical
Instruments Group in the Laboratory's Thermonuclear Division at the
Y-12 Plant, where they primarily investigated fusion energy. Later,
they incorporated electronic computers in medical scanners to
improve diagnostic techniques. Commercial versions of the machines
they invented became common at major medical centers throughout the
world.
RADIATION DAMAGE
Prolonged exposure to radiation often alters the properties of
solid materials and compromises their structural integrity. Thus,
the success of the Laboratory's nuclear airplane project depended
in part on understanding the potential impact of radiation on solid
materials. This understanding was essential in determining how to
protect materials from radiation and in developing new materials
that were radiation-resistant. Such concerns lifted the importance
of solid-state research throughout the Laboratory in the early
1950s.
The first step towards a Solid State Division was taken in 1950
when a Physics of Solids Institute was established under the
direction of Douglas Billington. Formed by joining the Solid State
Section of the Physics Division with the Radiation and Physical
Metallurgy Section of the Metallurgy Division, institute
researchers occupied a new laboratory built south of the Graphite
Reactor. In 1952, the institute became the Solid State Division,
and its primary mission was to obtain basic scientific knowledge
about radiation damage processes in materials.
"Inasmuch as a thorough understanding of the normal behavior of
solids is necessary for a complete understanding of effects induced
by nuclear radiation in metals and other solids," Billington
declared, "studies in related solid-state fields are being carried
out in conjunction with the radiation effects experiments." One
notable discovery, made by Mark Robinson and Ordean Oen, was the
theoretical prediction of the "ion channeling" phenomenon, in which
charged particles move undisturbed for long distances between the
layers of atoms in a solid. This prediction was quickly followed by
experimental programs at laboratories throughout the world,
including ORNL, to study the channeling effect and to use it in
research involving ion scattering and ion implantation.
Because research showed that some radiation-induced defects in
metals move at room temperatures and below, it was necessary to
produce these defects in samples at very low temperatures and to
study them while they were "frozen-in" at the low temperatures.
Such experiments, which were a tour de force for the Laboratory,
were performed first at the Graphite Reactor and later at the Bulk
Shielding Reactor by Tom Blewitt, Ralph Coltman, Tom Noggle,
Charles Klabunde, and Jean Redman. The samples were placed in or
very close to the reactor core. To keep the samples at low
temperatures as the reactor operated, refrigerators with extreme
cooling capabilities were required; fortunately large refrigerators
that had been built for early work on the hydrogen bomb had become
surplus and were available for this work. Sample temperatures down
to 3 degrees Kelvin were ultimately obtained, and experiments in
which the samples' dimensional changed, electrical resistivity, and
stored energy were measured provided very important information on
defect production by radiation and on defect removal as the sample
temperatures were raised.
Important early radiation damage investigations on semiconductor
materials were performed by Jim Crawford, John Cleland, and J. C.
Pigg. The electrical properties of semiconductors are very
sensitive to small numbers of defects, and these experiments were
an important tool in establishing models of radiation damage and in
understanding the changes in electrical properties caused by
defects. Other important early radiation damage investigations
included experiments by Fred Young, Jr., and Leslie Jenkins to
study the chemical properties of metal surfaces. These experiments
determined the effects of radiation on various chemical processes,
such as oxidation. Results from the various radiation-damage
experiments were important to the nuclear airplane project and to
other types of reactor programs throughout the world, and members
of the Solid State Division quickly gained international
recognition for their research.
Researchers in the Biology Division shared a concern for radiation
effects. Their focus was not inert solid materials but living
cells. The nuclear plane project boosted this research as well,
because calculating the sensitivity of cells to radiation would
help determine the amount of shielding that would be necessary to
protect passengers from potential radiation. This knowledge, in
turn would have a direct effect on the design of the airplane.
Like so many other aspects of the nuclear plane project, this
research had ramifications beyond its immediate goals. For
example, Laboratory biologists learned that nucleoproteins, present
in living cell nuclei and essential to normal cell functioning, are
sensitive to ionizing radiation. Paper chromatography and
ion-exchange methods used to separate compounds, Laboratory
researchers reasoned, could help scientists and medical researchers
measure and gauge this sensitivity.
After applying ion-exchange chromatography to separation of fission
products and starting the Laboratory's radioisotopes program, Waldo
Cohn used the same technique to separate and identify the
constituents of nucleic acids. From this work came the discovery
with Elliott Volkin that ribonucleic acid (RNA) has the same
general structure as deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), a concept that
had a fundamental impact on molecular biology, virology, and
genetics.
OF MICE AND MAMMALS
By 1949, 10,000 mice were housed in ORNL's renovated facilities at
the Y-12 Plant. Research on mice, led by the Biology Division's
William and Liane Russell, was designed to advance understanding of
radiation effects on mammals.
According to William Russell, mice are used for genetic studies
because they have few diseases, can be fed and maintained
economically, reproduce rapidly, and have the same essential organs
as humans. Liane Russell's 1950 survey of the gestation period of
mice to examine their sensitivity to radiation yielded valuable
information about critical periods during embryo development. She
showed that radiation-induced changes of cells were more likely to
occur during gestation. Largely because of her discovery of the
greater radiation sensitivity of embryos, women have been cautioned
about X-ray examinations during pregnancies. Harbor, Maine. They
expected Oak Ridge to be a backward community with minimal social
and cultural opportunities. The Biology Division had an
international clientele, however, and Liane Russell was surprised
by the extent to which the world beat a path to Oak Ridge and the
Laboratory. The Russells became renowned for taking their
international guests on mountain hiking trails. They later played
key roles in the creation of the Big South Fork National River
Recreation Area, a wilderness preserve just north of Oak Ridge.
TECHNOLOGY SCHOOL
Just as the Biology Division had an international reputation, the
Oak Ridge School of Reactor Technology (ORSORT) established in 1950
enjoyed national prestige. ORSORT was the reestablished version of
the original reactor training school of 1946-47. Because reactor
technology was security-sensitive and could not be taught in
universities, the AEC, with considerable support from Captain
Rickover and the Navy, sponsored this school for outstanding
engineers and scientists. Frederick VonderLage, the school's first
director, was a former Navy officer who had taught physics at the
Naval Academy. The faculty included Laboratory staff, and the
school's text consultant was Samuel Glasstone, who published
several overviews of nuclear reactor technology.
The 50 members of the school's first class in 1950 came from the
AEC, government contractors, and the armed services; the second
class came largely from industries needing personnel trained in
reactor engineering and operations; later, college graduates
planning to work in the nuclear industry were accepted. Students
took courses in reactor technology that covered reactor neutron
physics, radiation damage, reactor materials, chemical separations
processes, and experimental reactor engineering. They spent a year
in Oak Ridge and supplemented their classroom training with
part-time research assignments at the Laboratory. After two
semesters, students would load fuel into the movable assembly in
the Bulk Shielding Reactor, plotting the power output curve as fuel
was added and the flux increased. They then compared the onset of
critical mass with their predictions. Later, they spent a summer
investigating specific problems, often analyzing a reactor design
under consideration by the AEC and then submitting a thesis on its
feasibility.
The school expanded during the 1950s, occupying a new building
completed by the Laboratory in 1952 and specializing in advanced
subjects not taught at universities. Under director Lewis Nelson,
the school in 1957 joined six universities in offering a standard
two-year curriculum. At the end of the decade, the first
international students enrolled. Five years later, the school
closed when university science and engineering programs became
equal to the task of providing this type of specialized
instruction. Of its 986 enrollees during the school's 15 years of
instruction, only 10 did not complete the course. Some of its
graduates became leaders in the nuclear industry.
FLYING HIGH
When Union Carbide assumed management of the Laboratory, the
Graphite Reactor was the only nuclear reactor on the Oak Ridge
Reservation.
By 1953, the Laboratory had three reactors operating, two nearing
completion, and others in various stages of planning and
development. In addition, it had high-speed computers, high-energy
cyclotrons, and Van de Graaff particle accelerators. Equally
important, the Laboratory had succeeded in assembling an aggressive
research staff that worked with a sense of urgency rivaling that of
the war years.
As the Laboratory expanded its reactor and shielding programs in
response to the nuclear aircraft project and acquired the Y-12
Plant's research organization in the early 1950s, administrative
realignment became necessary. Electronics experts from the Physics
Division, for example, moved into an Instrumentation and Controls
Division, and the Shielding group became a separate Neutron Physics
Division (renamed the Engineering Physics Division, and later the
Engineering Physics and Mathematics Division). The Mathematics
Section also became an independent division. Similar organizational
changes took place in chemistry, reactor technology, and other
Laboratory research pursuits.
By 1953, Laboratory personnel numbered 3600, more than double the
wartime peak; the staff was divided into 15 research and operating
divisions. "I am sometimes appalled by the size and scope of our
operation here," Weinberg admitted privately to Wigner. "It seems
that we have become willy-nilly victims, in a particularly
devastating way, of the big operator malady."
In response, Wigner advised Weinberg to appoint deputy and
assistant directors to assist central management. Weinberg accepted
the advice. John Swartout, director of the Chemistry Division,
became Weinberg's assistant director in 1950 and deputy director in
1955. For administrative functions, Swartout became "Mr. Inside,"
while Weinberg was "Mr. Outside." Other assistant directors of the
early 1950s included Elwood Shipley, Charles Winters, Robert
Charpie, Walter Jordan, Mansell Ramsey, Ellison Taylor, and George
Boyd.
"There is," observed Weinberg, "a hierarchy of responsibility in
which management on each level depends on the integrity and sense
of responsibility of the next level to do the job sensibly and
well." This line of responsibility from individual to group leader
to section chief to division director to assistant or associate
director to Laboratory director remained the prevailing
administrative framework within the Laboratory during the ensuing
decades.
The prime force behind Laboratory expansion during the early 1950s
ended in 1957, when Congress objected to continuing the costly
nuclear aircraft project in the face of supersonic aircraft and
ballistic missile development that made the nuclear aircraft
concept obsolete. In response to this congressional decision, the
Laboratory shelved its aircraft shielding and reactor prototype
investigations. In 1961, President John Kennedy canceled the
remainder of the nuclear aircraft project.
The scientific data gleaned from the aircraft project, however,
soon proved useful when the Laboratory undertook the design of a
molten-salt reactor for electric power production. William Manly,
a veteran of the nuclear aircraft program, later pointed out that
the knowledge gained in handling liquid metals and fused salts also
proved useful in design of nuclear generators and reactors for use
in space. As Laboratory metallurgist George Adamson summarized it,
"The program quite literally didn't get off the ground, but out of
it grew the base for the high-temperature materials technology
needed by NASA and in several industrial fields."
Although the nuclear aircraft project stalled, the Laboratory's
participation in efforts to apply nuclear energy to vehicle
propulsion continued briefly in consultation with the Maritime
Commission, which in 1957 built a nuclear-powered merchant ship.
The 21,000-ton ship, propelled by a pressurized-water reactor, was
a floating laboratory, demonstrating the feasibility of commercial
ships propelled by nuclear energy. At the Laboratory, a Maritime
Reactors group headed by Alfred Boch provided technical review of
the ship reactor design, while other Laboratory units assisted with
on-board health monitoring, environmental studies, and waste
disposal.
Completed in July 1959, the N.S. Savannah could remain at sea for
300,000 miles without refueling, proving the scientific and
engineering feasibility of such ships. Nuclear-powered ships,
however, could not compete economically with oil-fired vessels;
thus, the N.S. Savannah became the first and last U.S. ship of its
kind.
In the 1960s, the Laboratory became involved in nuclear power
studies for the national space program, and in the 1980s it studied
space reactors for the Strategic Defense Initiative. Despite these
efforts, it is fair to say that the Laboratory's work on the N.S.
Savannah marked the end of its nuclear transportation programs.
Postwar dreams of nuclear-powered trains, automobiles, aircraft,
and tractors ended, but the scientific findings that evolved from
these endeavors would find applications in other areas in the years
ahead.
SIDEBARS
DIRECTOR ALVIN WEINBERG: MR. ORNL
Alvin Weinberg's special gift is his ability to communicate, even
to inspire. The son of Russian emigrants who was trained in
mathematical biophysics at the University of Chicago, Weinberg, as
much or more than any other scientist of his generation,
communicated the meaning and intent of "Big Science," a phrase that
became commonplace among both scientists and policymakers.
A member of the wartime team of theoretical physicists at Chicago
headed by Eugene Wigner, Weinberg moved to Oak Ridge in 1945 and
served as director of the Physics Division before becoming
Laboratory research director in 1948 and Laboratory director in
1955. As a scientist, he coauthored the standard text on nuclear
chain reaction theory with Wigner. Weinberg also proposed the
development of pressurized-water reactors, which became the
standard for naval propulsion and for most commercial power
generation. A vigorous proponent of nuclear energy, he first
proposed the formation of the American Nuclear Society.
In 1961 he chaired President John F. Kennedy's Panel of Science
Information, which produced a landmark report issued by the White
House. The report was entitled Science, Government, and
Information, but it has often been referred to as "The Weinberg
Report." Through this effort Weinberg fostered the communication of
science to technical and lay audiences.
His many publications, including the book Reflections on Big
Science, vividly articulated the issues associated with nuclear
energy and more broadly the relationships between technology and
society. Speaking eloquently on behalf of the national laboratories
and science, he coined phrases, such as "big science,"
"technological fix," "nuclear priesthood," and "Faustian bargain,"
which became embedded in the English language.
After leaving the Laboratory, Weinberg continued to influence
public scientific policy as director of the Office of Energy
Research and Development in President Richard Nixon's White House
and as director of the Institute for Energy Analysis. His interests
included "the second era" of nuclear energy, national defense, and
the greenhouse effect. In retirement, he has applied his
communication skills to editing the papers of Eugene Wigner and to
preparing his own memoirs. When asked where he obtained his great
skill and enormous drive to communicate, he attributed it not to
formal English classes but to working as editor of his high school
newspaper.
Although literally thousands of people have contributed
significantly to the success and prominence of the Laboratory,
Weinberg above all others guided the institution in directions
later to be recognized as vital to society. He was one of the first
to see and communicate the importance of exploring other research
areas besides nuclear science and technology at national
laboratories. Early biological studies at ORNL to quantify the
effects of radiation on human genetics contributed to the
acceptability of nuclear power. The introduction of environmental
studies using radioactive tracers to understand the impacts of
various energy systems on their surroundings became a major feature
of ORNL research in the 1960s. Energy conservation studies begun at
ORNL in the early 1970s were roundly criticized by industry.
Through all of this, Weinberg instilled in Laboratory staff a
desire to achieve high excellence as he asked friendly, but
penetrating, questions in all areas of research and development.
As indicated by his publications and speeches, Weinberg maintained
broad interests in issues of national and global importance. In
decade after decade, Weinberg's hand can be seen shaping the
programs of ORNL. Throughout his tenure as director, it can be
properly said that Alvin Weinberg and Oak Ridge National Laboratory
were one.
DEMOCRATIC RESPONSIBILITY
Just as the problem of individual responsibility looms as the
central problem in the carrying on of our way of life, so does the
same problem exist in the successful working of such an institution
as the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. When one considers that the
Laboratory is a bewildering and remarkable combination of private
industry, government, labor, and education institutions. . .ORNL is
in a small way a surprisingly apt replica of our country. . .things
which seem important in the operation of the Laboratory ought to be
important in the operation of our country.
"An institution such as ORNL, with its technical staff of 1200, is
already much too large to allow the central management to follow in
close detail the individual scientist's or engineer's daily doings.
Thus there is established necessarily a hierarchy of responsibility
in which management on each level depends on the integrity and
sense of responsibility of the next level to do the job sensibly
and well.
"At the top is the Atomic Energy Commission which, although
ultimately responsible for the operation of its laboratory, must
rely on the integrity and sense of responsibility of the Laboratory
management to spend its money wisely and not to ask for more money
than it needs. The central laboratory management must depend on the
division directors to carry out their jobs responsibly, to do what
ought to be done, to keep within their budgets, to insist on
excellence in work. The division directors must depend on section
chiefs, they on group leaders. And finally the ultimate
responsibility--the responsibility to get the job done well, and
cheaply, and relevantly--this rests squarely with the individual
scientist and technician and craftsman.
"In an organization as large as ours, there are always conflicts of
interest between groups, between divisions, between division and
laboratory, or on an even larger scale, between one AEC laboratory
and another. Sometimes Laboratory management must persuade
division directors that the interest of the individual must be
subjected to the interest of the group. In all cases it is an
appeal to the sense of responsibility which tempers loyalty to
one's group, or division, or laboratory, with concern about the
well-being of the higher organizational entityÉthis concern for
more than oneself, we have seen at the Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, pays off over and over again not only in terms of more
rapid advancement, higher pay, etc., but also in increased respect
with which the most mature segments of the scientific community
hold the individuals who have such a sense most keenly developed.
"The lesson in social responsibility which we learn in the
operation of our Laboratory, I think, has the greatest sort of
relevance for our country as a whole and for our way of life. These
are times when the essential strength of democratic capitalism as
opposed to authoritarian communism is being put to test. Nor is the
struggle one which will, in final analysis, be determined by
nuclear weapons. In the long run it will be won by the side which
provides a way of life that offers the most to its people."
Alvin Weinberg
1960
SMALL SCIENCE IN A BIG LABORATORY
Where are they? Where's George? Where's Mary Jane? That's a nice
picture of Charles, but where's Milton?" Do you have questions like
these? Don't feel bad, you're not alone. There's too little space
and too many memories. This brief history has to cover a lot of
years, a lot of people, a lot of accomplishments. And many of the
readers won't have your background.
The story has to have continuity to give them a chance to
understand what the Laboratory--what we--were all about. It must
concentrate on the big projects, the big science, the big bucks
that built the reactors, the pilot plants, Building 4500-North.
You'll find some smaller things in here. A neat physics experiment
by a couple of people. A new chemical element. Stuff like that. For
someone from outside--not you, Jim--for someone who thinks that the
Laboratory was mainly involved with bombs and reactors and
airplanes and a million mice--maybe there ought to be some
explanation about how the little stuff fits into the big picture.
And about how much of it there was.
It was all Big Science in the beginning. The Project. Get the pile
up, get out some plutonium. No time for anything that wasn't needed
for Hanford or Los Alamos. But, so much of what came up was new and
interesting. New radioisotopes. New problems in chemical
separation. Neutrons in unheard of numbers. Almost every practical
problem, solved or unsolved, revealed new physics or chemistry or
biology that ought to be studied as science, but had to be left
waiting until Hanford and Los Alamos and everybody else had what
they needed.
All these opportunities didn't go unnoticed. People talked about
them at lunch, stored them away in their minds, wrote little
paragraphs about them in research notebooks, even got out
memos-to-file or secret reports on this or that item that ought to
be looked at after the War. If they were still here to do it. Or
for someone else if they weren't.
Well, the War did end. And the Laboratory was still here, along
with many of the people and many of the memos-to-file. And some big
new things started up, and there were left over big Project things
still to do, and new people were brought in to fill in for the ones
that went away. These new people saw all the new things and they,
too, had ideas about what could be done with them. So, here were
all these people with new ideas set down in the midst of new
science and new technology in a laboratory that didn't any more
have a single big mission nor a clear idea about what it was
supposed to do. So, they all set about doing what they thought they
should do and making up reasons for doing it (beyond the fact that
it was fun and good science).
As long as the Manhattan Engineer District was in charge, money was
no problem. They were used to buying whatever the scientists said
they needed. After the AEC came along, there was at first still no
problem about funding, at least for the things that didn't require
a big chunk of capital money. The program monitors in Washington
were largely old Project people, and they understood the new
science and the new ideas. The first budget, at least the first one
to come down to the divisional level, was put together in a few
hours by setting down what each group was currently spending,
adding proportional amounts for the new things they wanted to do,
and putting in a little more for contingencies. It really took only
one afternoon in the Chemistry Division.
Now, where does all this fit into the background of overall
Laboratory development, into the reactors and the mice and the
politics that are the foreground of this history? The new ideas of
some of the people were part of the Laboratory's big technology,
such as reactors and fuel reprocessing. They joined right in with
the large groups devoted to such items and became part of the big
picture and got noticed in the history. They were still physicists
or chemists or biologists or whatever, but their goals were those
of their particular project.
Another large set of people had seen their future in some of the
science that underlay the technology: nuclear physics, separations
chemistry, radiation biology. Work in these fields found ready
acceptance from the Laboratory management and from the AEC, since
it was clearly important to any technology that might be developed.
So, these people set happily to work studying the radioactivity of
new isotopes, neutron cross sections of elements and isotopes,
solubility of uranium compounds at high temperatures, the mechanism
of the radiation decomposition of water, the effects of radiation
on Paramecium.
Many of these people moved back and forth between their
small-science research and the big projects, driven by their
changing interests and by the changing needs of the Laboratory. One
of the Laboratory's chief strengths was the existence of this cadre
of experienced, imaginative basic scientists who could be called on
to solve practical problems and who would respond enthusiastically.
They had been loyal to the Project and now they were loyal to the
Laboratory.
Another set of people had another kind of idea, one that could be
carried out only at the Laboratory but didn't really underlie any
of its technological interests. Probably foremost among these was
the distribution of radioisotopes. The Laboratory was a unique
source, in terms of production in the Graphite Reactor and the
ability to separate them into forms suitable for shipment and use.
Because its value transcended the Laboratory's interests, it became
a major effort, and this history naturally treats it as such in the
appropriate place. Other examples of work that could only be done
near the reactor included use of short-lived radioisotopes for
various kinds of research in chemistry and the study and use of
neutrons and other radiations from the reactor. Research being what
it is, many of these efforts and many of the kind underlying the
technology turned up related questions of scientific interest or
developed capabilities that were not necessarily related to the
original goals. They might no longer be supportive of the
particular interests of the Laboratory or might no longer require
the particular materials or facilities that had justified their
undertaking. Nevertheless, when they appeared to be good science,
the Laboratory supported them, and the AEC generally concurred.
These kinds of small science, carried out in groups of from one to
a dozen or so people, were characteristic of the Physics and
Chemistry Divisions and later of the Solid State Division. There
were also groups of similar size and origin in Biology, Metallurgy
and other divisions, but those divisions tended to be more
programmatic or thematic, and their accomplishments generally fit
more understandably into the main thread of the history.
All of this small science added up to a significant part of the
Laboratory. In a typical year between 1955 and 1968, about 35% of
the Laboratory's budget supported small science. That's where Henry
and John and Tony were. Perhaps incognito by necessity in this
history, but important to the Laboratory and remembered by those
who were there.
CLARENCE LARSON: THE RIGHT CHEMISTRY
Clarence Edward Larson, a former ORNL director, distinguished
himself both as a chemical engineer and leader of scientific
activities of vital interest to the United States.
A native of Minnesota who completed undergraduate work in chemistry
and chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota, he
received his Ph.D. degree in biochemistry in 1937 from the
University of California at Berkeley. While a graduate student, he
experimented with cyclotron-produced isotopes obtained from
cyclotron inventor Ernest O. Lawrence.
In 1937, Larson joined the Chemistry Department of the College of
the Pacific, later becoming department chairman. He continued
experiments using cyclotron-produced isotopes and, as a result of
this work, joined Lawrence in the Manhattan Project in 1942. His
responsibility was to solve the chemical problems associated with
electromagnetic separation of fissionable uranium-235 from the more
abundant nonfissionable uranium isotope. The calutrons used for
this process were designed and built under Lawrence's leadership.
One chemical problem was that the calutrons directed the uranium
beam against the walls of the steel-and-graphite receivers with
such energy that the uranium atoms buried themselves in the
stainless steel, greatly reducing the amount of enriched uranium
that could be recovered. Larson suggested that the embedded uranium
could be easily recovered from the receiver walls if they were
plated with copper. Lawrence liked the idea and demanded that
Larson assemble a team to copperplate the receivers and put the
process into operation in one day. "Fortunately," Larson said
recently, "the equipment was available and, on the next day, the
operations started successfully."
Another problem was to recover the uranium scattered all over the
calutron interiors. Because of the extremely corrosive conditions,
large amounts of impurities entered the solutions, making recovery
of the uranium difficult. It was known that uranium could be
precipitated selectively by hydrogen peroxide, but this recovery
system, says Larson, "was almost explosively unstable because of
the catalytic effects of the impurities." Recalling that many
unstable biological compounds can be prevented from decomposing if
subjected to frigid conditions, Larson devised double-walled
vessels containing a cooling system for the uranium precipitation
system. "This system," Larson says, "worked successfully throughout
the project. By fortunate coincidence both of these process
problems were solved by applying electrochemical and separations
techniques used in my graduate research."
In 1948, Larson became director of the Y-12 Plant, and in 1950 he
became director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Larson presided
over the Laboratory's $20-million expansion program involving
completion of nine new buildings, large-scale modification of four
buildings, and acquisition of space for ORNL activities at the Y-12
Plant. Under his administration, the Bulk Shielding Reactor, the
Homogeneous Reactor Experiment, and the Aircraft Reactor Experiment
began operation and the Tower Shielding Facility was completed for
the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Program. The Laboratory's first
large computer was installed, and an ORNL reactor exhibit received
rave reviews at the first "Atoms for Peace" conference in Geneva,
Switzerland.
In 1955, Larson left Oak Ridge to become vice president of the
National Carbon Division of Union Carbide Corporation. Later he
became deputy manager of corporate research there. In 1961, he
returned to Oak Ridge, where he served as president of Union
Carbide Nuclear Division until 1969. In this capacity, he oversaw
management of ORNL, the Y-12 Plant, and the Oak Ridge and Paducah
gaseous diffusion plants for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).
From 1969 through 1974 he was an AEC commissioner, the only person
from Oak Ridge to attain this position. In 1973, Larson was elected
to the National Academy of Engineering for "the development of
processes for recovery and purification of uranium and leadership
in nuclear plant design."
P.R. BELL: SCANNING THE FUTURE
Physicist P. R. Bell came to the Laboratory from the University of
Chicago in 1946. During the war, he had worked at the U.S.
government's radiation laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, which sought to improve the effectiveness of radar in
detecting aircraft and ships.
At the Laboratory, he led a scientific team that focused on
developing new instruments. The team sought to improve the
scintillation spectrometer, an electronic device for detecting and
recording small pulses of light, or scintillations, emitted by
phosphors when bombarded by radiation.
In the early 20th century, the United Kingdom's renowned scientist
Lord Rutherford visually counted scintillations in alpha particle
experiments. Visual methods were later replaced by the Geiger
counter. After World War II, scintillations were detected by
photomultiplier tubes, which were highly sensitive to light. In
this technique, phosphors were placed in the direct path of
radiation and the emitted light was converted into electric
signals. The signals were then amplified and registered as
electrical pulses with a circuit similar to that used in Geiger
counters.
Recognizing the potential value of this device for detecting and
measuring beta and gamma rays, Bell and his colleagues improved the
scintillation spectrometer, achieving notable success in developing
instruments that measured radiation levels and energies.
These improvements had practical applications not only for
radiation dosimetry but also for medical diagnosis. Bell and his
colleagues C. C. Harris and J. E. Francis, for example, modified
this radiation detector for use in locating brain tumors. The
detector highlighted trouble spots, making intrusive surgery
unnecessary for cancer detection.
Today, scanners based on Bell's improved device are an essential
tool of medical diagnosis used by doctors throughout the world to
locate cancerous tumors and examine the results of other internal
diseases. Bell's pioneering studies on the scintillation
spectrometer, and the improvements and adaptations that followed,
have prevented untold human suffering and extended millions of
lives.
RADIATION EFFECTS IN MATERIALS: CULTIVATED IN OAK RIDGE
The high state of development of the science and engineering of
irradiated materials is due in large part to the contributions of
the Laboratory. Three overlapping areas are covered by this
research: radiation effects, the development and radiation
characterization of materials for nuclear reactors, and the
production of new materials with properties that are applicable in
a variety of technologies.
In 1946 while at the University of Chicago, Eugene Wigner, first
suggested that neutron irradiation could displace atoms, causing
changes in materials properties. In short order, colleagues at the
Clinton Engineering Laboratories' Metallurgy Division carried out
experiments in the Graphite Reactor to confirm this hypothesis, but
it was not until the 1950s and 1960s that studies by the Solid
State Division staff at the Graphite Reactor, the Bulk Shielding
Reactor, and the Oak Ridge Research Reactor revealed the magnitude
and pervasiveness of radiation-induced changes.
In 1953, the Metallurgy Division began work on the aircraft
propulsion nuclear reactor. After irradiation of the
high-temperature structural alloy Inconel 600, ORNL scientists
measured extreme reductions in its ability to resist rupturing
under stress. It was later shown that helium produced by neutron
interactions with the alloy accumulated between the metal crystals,
leading to the poor performance. The problem was solved by alloying
Inconel 600 with titanium. This element effectively neutralized
boron, which was responsible for the helium-producing reactions.
Irradiation experiments on light-water-reactor pressure vessel
steels began at ORNL in the mid-1950s. At that time, it was unknown
if such steels could exhibit levels of fracture resistance high
enough to ensure the integrity of reactor pressure vessels after
they had been exposed to neutrons from the fuel core. Later
experiments involved the largest specimens ever irradiated (about
50 kg each), and demonstrated that high levels of post-irradiation
fracture resistance could be maintained. Extensive experiments have
also been carried out to investigate the effects of radiation on
embrittled materials.
In the 1970s the Metals and Ceramics Division (formally the
Metallurgy Division) received large infusions of funding for
research on the physical mechanisms underlying radiation effects
and the liquid-metal-cooled fast breeder reactor and the fusion
reactor. Burgeoning work in this field was a worldwide phenomenon,
and U.S. efforts were paralleled, by similar work in the Great
Britain, France, Germany, the Soviet Union, and Japan.
During this period in the Solid State Division, the emphasis was on
the fundamentals of calculating damage to materials caused by the
displacement of atoms by particle irradiation. Two theoretical
contributions to the field of damage production were developed at
ORNL. These are the damage production computer code MARLOWE and the
Norgett-Torrens-Robinson (NRT) standard method of calculating
damage production. MARLOWE is widely used today to obtain detailed
information about displacement production for a variety of
projectiles and materials. The NRT method is now the standard
through the world for obtaining the number of displacements per
atom for a given material and type of particle irradiation.
Today, the main efforts in radiation effects on materials are
centered in the Metals and Ceramics Division in groups led by Tim
Burchell, Lou Mansur, Randy Nanstad, and Arthur Rowcliffe. The
emphases in these groups are: radiation effects in carbon
materials, physical mechanisms of radiation effects, materials for
present-day light-water reactors, gas-cooled reactor pressure
vessels, and materials development for fusion reactors,
respectively. The Advanced Neutron Source will also benefit from
work in these groups.
The effects of neutron irradiation on carbon materials are being
investigated on two fronts. Shape changes, creep behavior, and
changes in mechanical, fracture, and thermal-physical properties
induced by neutron irradiation are being determined for several
nuclear graphites. Also carbon-carbon composites, a newer and
distinctly different class of carbon material, are of interest as
a potential structural material for high-temperature control rods,
and other reactor components.
Research into the physical mechanisms of radiation effects has
yielded principles for design of radiation-resistant materials as
well as prediction of their behavior in fission and fusion
reactors. Ion irradiation has also been used to develop new
materials and properties that are applicable to a variety of
advanced technologies unrelated to fission and fusion. In fact,
research into improving the surface, mechanical, and physical
properties of polymers received an R&D 100 award from
R&D Magazine recognizing it as one of the top 100 technological
developments in the nation in 1992.
The division's work on the development of materials for fusion
reactor systems has made it a key participant in the design of the
proposed International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor.
The largest single concern of the group dealing with radiation
effects centers on the relationship between the effects of
irradiation on embrittlement of commercial gas-cooled reactors and
the fracture toughness of reactor vessel materials. Researchers are
also evaluating the effects of radiation on components being
designed for the Advanced Neutron Source.
The main facilities at ORNL for experiments in radiation effects
are the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) for neutron irradiations
and the Multiple Ion Facility for charged particle irradiations.
The HFIR began operation in 1965 and continues today as a workhorse
for the basic, fusion, and pressure vessel programs. The Multiple
Ion Facility was built up for materials science research over the
past 20 years. It is unique in that it can be used to irradiate
materials with up to three ion beams simultaneously. Today it is
used heavily for experiments on the basic mechanisms of radiation
effects and for related work on ion beam treatment of materials.
Activity in radiation effects has always been broader than the
direct needs of nuclear technology. While nuclear materials is a
subfield of materials science and engineering, the capability to
irradiate materials can be viewed as a new dimension, like
temperature. Virtually all processes and properties can be affected
by irradiation. Even materials and properties can be created. With
this powerful tool, new insights into the fundamental behavior of
materials have also been gathered.
Irradiation of materials is at once a source of engineering
problems and a basis for unique capabilities for producing and
understanding new materials and properties. ORNL's extensive
capabilities for radiation effects research will serve well in the
design, construction, and operation of the Advanced Neutron Source.
This Reactor will make ambitious demands on our understanding of
the irradiation behavior of materials. It will also serve as an
irradiation test bed for materials that will benefit basic research
and the technologies of fission and fusion reactors of the next
century.
The RUSSELLS: A FAMILY AFFAIR
William Lawson (Bill) Russell and Liane Brauch (Lee) Russell, the
eminent husband-and-wife team who have studied mammalian genetics
for 45 years at ORNL's Biology Division, have much in common. Both
received the International Roentgen Medal, both earned Ph.D.
degrees in zoology and genetics from the University of Chicago, and
both worked at the Jackson Memorial Laboratory in Bar Harbor,
Maine, before coming to the Laboratory, where they have headed
genetics research in the Biology Division. Also, both were elected
to the National Academy of Sciences, one of only 11 couples so
honored.
Bill Russell, the former scientific director of the Mammalian
Genetics Section in the Biology Division and now an ORNL
consultant, is a native of Newhaven, England, with a B.A. degree in
zoology from Oxford University. Lee, head of the Mammalian and
Genetics Development Section of the Biology Division since 1975, is
a native of Vienna, Austria, with a B.A. degree in chemistry from
Hunter College in New York City.
In 1947, Bill wanted to leave Jackson Memorial Laboratory but would
only accept a new position if Lee were offered one, too. Alexander
Hollaender, director of the new Biology Division at Clinton
Laboratories, came through with such an offer, and Bill and Lee
came to Oak Ridge in November 1947 shortly after Jackson Memorial
Laboratory burned to the ground.
Bill's first achievement in Oak Ridge was to develop efficient and
reliable genetic methods to determine the rate at which mouse genes
are mutated by different types and levels of radiation. But, to do
this, he had to set up the Mouse House, a national resource that
contains more than a quarter million mice, for which he designed
cages, food containers, racks, and machines for washing bottles and
cages. Soon after experiments got under way, he found that the
mutation rate in the mouse was 15 times that in the fruit fly. As
a result, the National Council on Radiation Protection and
Measurements reduced the permissible levels for occupational
exposure to radiation.
In 1952, as a result of Lee's studies of the vulnerability of early
embryos of irradiated mice, the Russells recommended that
physicians use diagnostic X rays on the pelvic regions of
childbearing women only during that part of the menstrual cycle
when pregnancy cannot occur.
In 1958, the Russells and Elizabeth Kelly discovered that the
mutation rate in mice exposed to chronic radiation (spread over
time) was between one-third and one-fourth the mutation rate in
mice exposed to acute radiation (delivered in a matter of minutes).
It was a significant finding because no dose-rate effect had been
found in fruit-fly studies and because it suggested that a genetic
repair mechanism corrects minor damage caused by low doses of
radiation. By the mid-1960s the Russells had proved that
sensitivity to radiation differs not only between mice and fruit
flies but also between male and female mice.
They then started a new area of investigation: determining the
genetic effects on mice of chemicals from drugs, fuels, and wastes.
In 1971, Bill and his associates published a paper recommending
that, based on mouse studies, the drug hycanthone should continue
to be used as a therapeutic drug for schistosomiasis, a
debilitating parasitic disease common in the Third World. In 1975,
Lee developed a fur-spot test for identifying chemicals likely to
be mutagenic in reproductive cells. In 1979, Bill found that the
laboratory chemical ethylnitrosourea (ENU) is the most potent
mutagen ever tested in mice, making it a prime tool for studying
mechanisms of mutagenesis.
In the 1980s, while continuing her research on the effects of
chemicals on mice, Lee enlarged her genetic studies on the nature
of mutational lesions caused by different treatments. Under her
leadership, her section has increased in scientific staff and moved
into areas of modern molecular genetics, including insertional
mutagenesis and targeted mutagenesis--techniques that alter random
or selected mouse genes. The research may unlock the secrets of
human DNA by locating specific genes responsible for specific
functions or malfunctions, such as diseased kidneys. DOE has
recently recognized the section's unique capability for adding to
the genome research effort.
In 1991, the international journal Mutation Research dedicated a
special issue to Bill on his 80th birthday. In their introduction,
the journal's editors stated, "No single person has contributed
more to the field of mammalian mutagenesis, and thus to genetic
risk assessment in man, than Dr. W. L. Russell." They might have
added that his accomplishments likely would have been half as
impressive without the scientific research conducted by his wife.
Together, the Russells have formed one of the most fruitful
collaborations in the annals of American science.
RICKOVER: SETTING THE NUCLEAR NAVY'S COURSE
He was blunt, had a knack for quick comebacks and, as an officer in
the U.S. Navy, subjected his prospective staff to grueling
interviews to determine their reactions under stress. He earned a
place in the history of nuclear technology, but never achieved his
goal of becoming a submarine skipper. He was the legendary Hyman G.
Rickover, who received a Congressional Gold Medal in 1959 "in
recognition of his achievements in successfully directing the
development and construction of the world's first nuclear-powered
ships and the first large-scale nuclear power reactor devoted
exclusively to production of electricity." His success, in part,
was rooted in his nuclear training at Oak Ridge.
In May 1946, Rickover received word that the Navy had selected him
to go to Oak Ridge to study nuclear engineering. His response was
to collect and study books on atomic physics, chemistry, and
mathematics. He also reviewed all Navy reports and memos on atomic
energy and learned that Navy physicist Ross Gunn had proposed using
nuclear energy to power submarines.
When he arrived at the Clinton Laboratories Training School, he
found four other Navy officers there. He gathered them together and
told them he had been assigned the task of preparing their fitness
reports, which are similar to performance appraisals. This bold
tactic, uncertified by his superiors, gave Rickover substantial
influence over the assignments and promotions of his peers. Using
this power, he then asked the officers to take detailed notes and
write definitive reports on specific topics. By getting the
officers to work for him, Rickover took the first step toward
developing a nuclear navy.
Theodore Rockwell, a former ORNL engineer, was a classmate of
Rickover in Oak Ridge and tells this story about the captain in his
recent book The Rickover Effect: How One Man Made A Difference:
The lecturer was Dr. Frederick Seitz, an eminent physics professor
who later became head of the National Academy of Sciences and
president of Rockefeller University. . . [Rickover] kept asking
simple, basic questions, making himself look pretty stupid and
getting a lot of knowing chuckles from the wiseacres. "I'm not
getting this. Would you please go over it again?" Rickover, the
silver-haired captain, would say. The prof asked condescendingly,
"Would you perhaps like to have us provide you with some tutoring
in the evenings?"
Not taking this as a putdown, the captain said merely, "I would
appreciate that very much, sir." So the tutoring class was in fact
set up, despite the chuckles, and I decided I could probably get
some good out of it myself. When I got to the tutoring class a
little late, I was surprised to see not only the captain but a
dozen or more of his classmates, including some of the chucklers,
all busily taking notes. Noting my startled look, the captain said,
"I guess I'm not the only dummy in the class. Just the only one
with the guts to admit it."
Rickover later worked with Alvin Weinberg, then ORNL's director of
research, both to establish the Oak Ridge School of Reactor
Technology (ORSORT), known locally as the Klinch Kollege of
Knuclear Knowledge, and to begin the design of the
pressurized-water reactor for submarine propulsion.
Graduates of the one-year program in nuclear science and technology
were awarded the degree of Doctor of Pile Engineering, allowing
them to write D.O.P.E. after their names. ORSORT turned out 100
graduates a year, many of whom became leaders in the nuclear
industry.
In 1958, the first commercial nuclear power plant in the United
States, the Shippingport plant in Pennsylvania, began operating,
and the first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus, sailed submerged
from Hawaii to England by way of the North Pole. Rickover's
leadership and his nuclear knowledge from Oak Ridge played a major
role in these historic achievements, earning him the sobriquet
father of the nuclear navy.
(keywords: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, history)
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Date Posted: 2/22/94 (ktb)