In the summer of 1991, radioactive giant frogs from Oak Ridge roamed the Tennessee hills, looming over tall buildings and terrorizing livestock and the public. At least this was the story that made its way into the supermarket tabloids, which took an actual wildlife-related event at ORNL and ran wit...
Steve Stow dispels popular myths about Clinton Laboratory's liquid radioactive waste disposal in the 1940s.
Stow, a retired geoscientist and environmental spearhead at ORNL, explained recently to Friends of ORNL in his lecture, titled "And Some of the Cowboys Wore White Hats: Disposal of Liquid N...
Tom Row found himself as ORNL's point person for a controversial campaign in 1989, when "Tiger Teams" descended on DOE facilities with a mission to enforce regulations pertaining to environment, safety and health.
James Watkins, the secretary of Energy and retired Navy admiral who had been chief ...
The Tower Shielding Facility is located on the perimeter of the Oak Ridge Reservation on a road blocked by a locked gate. It's still one of ORNL's more conspicuous landmarks because the two towers, from which a small nuclear reactor was at times suspended, can be glimpsed from nearby Interstate 40.
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Over its three-quarters of a century history ORNL has employed many people in the area. It stands to reason several families have contributed more than one member to the Lab's work force -- in some cases multiple generations of the same families. This year's 75th Anniversary planners asked staff mem...
Sunday, Nov. 4, 2018, is the 75th anniversary of the Graphite Reactor, as it came to be known, reaching criticality for the first time on a morning in 1943. The Graphite Reactor is the first nuclear reactor facility built as such -- its predecessor, where the first controlled nuc...
The year 1993 marked the 50th anniversary of the Graphite Reactor's startup, on Nov. 4, 1943. A good number of Manhattan Project veterans were still around at the time, and ORNL invited them to a luncheon and ceremony at the Lab.
Former Director Alvin Weinberg, in fact, was still spry enough to p...