Qualla: Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Oak Ridge National Laboratory: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ENERGY.GOV, Public domain. In 1942, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers quietly purchased isolated farmland in eastern Tennessee, displaced families, and erected fences. Behind those fences, a secret city rose from nothing. The Clinton Engineer Works -- part of the Manhattan Project -- needed a place to produce plutonium, and this ridge-and-valley terrain between the Clinch River and Black Oak Ridge offered something essential: isolation. By 1943, the Clinton Laboratories were operational, housing the X-10 Graphite Reactor where Enrico Fermi and his colleagues built the world's second self-sustaining nuclear reactor and the first designed for continuous operation. That wartime urgency planted the seed for what would become Oak Ridge National Laboratory, today the largest science and energy national laboratory in the Department of Energy system, sprawling across 18 square kilometers of a 150-square-kilometer federal reservation in Roane County.

Image: ENERGY.GOV | Public domain

Oak Ridge National Laboratory: The Secret City's Reactor

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oak Ridge National Laboratory, CC BY 2.0. The X-10 Graphite Reactor's mission was blunt: convert natural uranium into plutonium for the atomic bomb. Fermi's team had already achieved the first self-sustaining chain reaction at the Chicago Pile-1 in December 1942, and the X-10 scaled that breakthrough into a machine that ...

Image: Oak Ridge National Laboratory | CC BY 2.0

Oak Ridge National Laboratory: Machines That Think at the Speed of Light

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit doe-oakridge, Public domain. Oak Ridge has chased the frontier of computing since 1953, when it partnered with Argonne National Laboratory to build ORACLE -- the Oak Ridge Automatic Computer and Logical Engine -- with 2,048 words of memory and an addition speed of 590 microseconds. The ambition only accelera...

Image: doe-oakridge | Public domain

Oak Ridge National Laboratory: Neutrons, Isotopes, and the Invisible World

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oak Ridge National Laboratory, CC BY 2.0. Two facilities at Oak Ridge peer into matter at scales invisible to the eye. The High Flux Isotope Reactor, which went critical in 1965, provides the world's highest constant neutron flux -- a stream of subatomic particles that scientists use to probe the internal structure of ma...

Image: Oak Ridge National Laboratory | CC BY 2.0

Oak Ridge National Laboratory: From Diesel Engines to Deep Space

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oak Ridge National Laboratory, CC BY 2.0. The laboratory's reach extends far beyond nuclear physics. Between 2002 and 2008, ORNL partnered with Caterpillar Inc. to develop CF8C Plus, a new stainless steel alloy with added manganese and nitrogen that withstands extreme temperature fluctuations in diesel engines -- better ...

Image: Oak Ridge National Laboratory | CC BY 2.0