The Nashville Connection

In some respects, the most important SNS partner was the state of Tennessee. In January 2000, the Tennessee General Assembly rushed through legislation in 16 days that provided the SNS a critical $28 million sales tax exemption on construction materials that kept the project viable. The state also appropriated $8 million to construct the Joint Institute for Neutron Sciences, shared with the University of Tennessee and located adjacent to the SNS. Owned by the University of Tennessee on land deeded from the Department of Energy, the facility will provide office and laboratory space for joint UT-ORNL faculty, visiting scientists and engineers from universities, industrial firms, and the international community. Governor Phil Bredesen, himself a physicist, has pledged $10 million in recurring funds, matched by UT-Battelle, to hire a cadre of world-class researchers to lead the institute.

The Joint Institute for Neutron Sciences will attract the best neutron talent in the world to interact with the resident staff, students, and user communities in Oak Ridge. Modern computational, communication, and networking services will encourage interactive science and video teleconferencing and provide data acquisition and analysis capabilities for resident scholars and their colleagues around the world.

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