Some less-often-told tales from ORNL's colorful past.
"This wonderful old reactor." Veterans celebrated the Graphite Reactor's 50th anniversary in 1993.
Presidential visit, 1992: George H.W. Bush visited ORNL to sign a CRADA.
When Tiger Teams prowled: Tom Row spearheaded the controvers...
The 'greatest Oak Ridger' makes some crisp observations about the nuclear contract, science and government, genteel poverty, getting fired, his friend and mentor Eugene Wigner and the Friendship Bell.
A recollection of what transpired the morning the Graphite Reactor reached criticality.
ORNL’s beginnings as an East Tennessee-located national laboratory have their roots in Chicago. That’s where the Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi (1938) and a host of physicists and engineers constructed CP-1, the first nuclear reactor: a “pile” of graphite blocks and control mechanisms in a disused squash court at Stagg Field on the University of Chicago campus.
A discussion of the history of the Manhattan Project, focusing largely on the project’s military director, Gen. Leslie B. Groves, and the scientific director, Robert Oppenheimer, keynoted ORNL’s observance of its 80th anniversary.
The Advanced Neutron Source was to be ORNL's next hallmark research reactor, but the project did not go forward. Instead, an accelerator-based neutron source was proposed.
As ORNL and its historic landmark Graphite Reactor mark their 80th year, another of the Lab's storied nuclear reactors is seeing a milestone birthday: The Oak Ridge Research Reactor, situated in the oldest part of the Lab campus, first went critical 65 years ago, in March 1958.