Oak Ridge X-10: 1946- Neutron Science and Nuclear Power

US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

The X-10 Graphite Reactor is located on the secure grounds of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). In-person visitation is only authorized via guided tours.

Text at the top of this panel reads,“Clifford Shull and Ernest Wollan pioneer neutron scattering studies of the structure of crystalline materials, demonstrating that neutrons can be used to probe the nature and structure of matter. Shull would win the Nobel Prize in physics in 1994 for this work. Today, with reactor- and accelerator-based sources of neutrons, ORNL is the world’s foremost neutron scattering center.”

To the right is a photograph of Wollan and Shull in a laboratory, both in suits as one leans over some equipment and the other makes notes.

Below text reads,“1947. The discovery of the element promethium (atomic number 61) is announced. Promethium was first produced and characterized by Jacob Marinsky, Lawrence Glendenin, and Charles Coryell. It was isolated from by-products of uranium fission at the Graphite Reactor in 1945.”

To the left are portraits of Marinsky and Glendenin.Next down on the panel text reads,“1948. Loigan Emlet uses electricity produced by the Graphite Reactor to operate a small engine. This is the first demonstration that heat from a reactor can be used to produce electricity.”

To the right is a photograph of a man adjusting a mechanism with a flywheel connected by a belt to a smaller wheel.

At the bottom of the panel is a photograph of a building made of five Quonset huts attached side-by-side, their curved roofs meeting where the buildings join to form long trough stretching away from us. Text reads,“The reactor facilities could accommodate 36 experiments simultaneously for neutron irradiation. Piston rings and cylinder liners were irradiated to study wear. Seeds were irradiated in tunnels to study radiation-induced mutations in biological specimens. Insects and animals were exposed to radiation to estimate radiation effects on humans.”