ĭuring the war, advanced research for the government was managed at the site by the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory. The city of Oak Ridge was established by the Army Corps of Engineers as part of the Clinton Engineer Works in 1942 on isolated farm land as part of the Manhattan Project. In 1934, the Freel Farm Mound Site, an archaeological site and burial mound of the Late Woodland period was excavated. Workers in 1943 loading uranium slugs into the X-10 Graphite Reactor (now a National Historic Landmark) The total area of the reservation 150 square kilometres (58 sq mi) of which the lab takes up 18 square kilometres (7 sq mi). There are five campuses on the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge reservation: the National Laboratory, the Y-12 National Security Complex, the East Tennessee Technology Park (formerly the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant), the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education, and the developing Oak Ridge Science and Technology Park, although the four other facilities are unrelated to the National Laboratory. As of 2021 there is a staff of 5,700 working at ORNL, around 2,000 of whom are scientists and engineers, and an additional 3,200 guest researchers annually. Oak Ridge National Laboratory is managed by UT–Battelle, a limited liability partnership between the University of Tennessee and the Battelle Memorial Institute, formed in 2000 for that purpose. The lab is a leading neutron and nuclear power research facility that includes the Spallation Neutron Source, the High Flux Isotope Reactor, and the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences. ORNL has several of the world's top supercomputers, including Frontier, ranked by the TOP500 as the world's most powerful. Its scientific programs focus on materials, nuclear science, neutron science, energy, high-performance computing, systems biology and national security, sometimes in partnership with the state of Tennessee, universities and other industries. It is located in the Roane County section of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Įstablished in 1943, ORNL is the largest science and energy national laboratory in the Department of Energy system (by size) and third largest by annual budget. Founded in 1943, the laboratory is now sponsored by the United States Department of Energy and administered by UT–Battelle, LLC. Oak Ridge National Laboratory ( ORNL) is a federally funded research and development center in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, United States.

Oak ridge national laboratory