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 S50 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)