X-10 – The Clinton Laboratories

In December 1942, University of Chicago physicists demonstrated that the newly discovered element plutonium could be made using a pile of uranium and graphite blocks. As the United States government responded to Germany’s effort to develop a weapon of unprecedented scale, it built a much larger device called the Graphite Reactor at X-10 in Bethel Valley, 15 miles southwest of here, as part of the Manhattan Project. With Nobel Laureates Enrico Fermi and Arthur Compton present, the Graphite Reactor began making isotopes on November 4, 1943, including the quantities of plutonium urgently needed to design the separation processes for the huge production reactors in Hanford, Washington, which produced the fuel for the second nuclear weapon that helped end World War II. Martin Whitaker was the laboratory’s first director, and Eugene Wigner, later a Nobel Prize winner in physics, became research director in 1946. In 1947, the Army transferred the Manhattan Project facilities to civilian control under the Atomic Energy Commission, beginning a new research mission for what became known first as the Clinton National Laboratory and later as Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The laboratory’s research program then grew steadily, due in part to mouse biology studies of radiation and Clifford Shull’s pioneering work in neutron science. Over the next half-century, hundreds of scientific discoveries and inventions at ORNL established it as one of the world’s great centers of scientific research, with unique capabilities in neutron science, nanophase materials, and high-performance computing. Operated today for the Department of Energy, X-10 evolved from its wartime Manhattan Project role into a modern mission addressing national scientific challenges in energy, environment, and national security.

Oak Ridge, Tennessee · United States