The Oak Ridge National Laboratory
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 มี.ค. 2022
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1:55 - Chapter 1 - Manhattan project
4:45 - Chapter 2 - History
8:55 - Chapter 3 - Charles Varnadore
10:55 - Chapter 4 - Recent projects
13:25 - Chapter 5 - Waste leaks & 3d - printed reactors
Thank you kindly
I have worked there before, my mother retired from there and my stepfather still works there. I was born in Knoxville. I can see NORAD from where I live now. It was great to see you do a video of a big part of my life, as I am a huge fan of yours and all of your content and I am a subscriber of many of your channels. Thank you Simon, this was awesome
At 6:35 you stated that in 1964 JFK pitched a program to the UN. Unfortuately, JFK was assinated in Dallas in 1963.
Yep, scrolled down for this. Zombie JFK on the other hand...
Just down the road from Oak Ridge, TN over a billion gallons of toxic coal ash waste broke through the levees at TVA destroying acres of roads, homes, and farm area. Locals (including myself) call it the 'Kingston Coal Ash Disaster'. It happened in 2008 in what is now considered Harriman, TN due to city lines being redrawn.
Another Eastern Tennessean here? Hell yeah.
Man spent so much on those 5 gallon jugs of water from back then, was living with my grandmother at the time and she couldn't chance any of that for years
Largest industrial disaster in the US to date and yet most people have never heard of it
Aye east tn gang
Checking in from Vonore
Thank you Simon. In just the past week or two alone, we've gone from learning about London's sewers, to the Convair F-106, to Thrust SSC, and now to Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Fantastic (and impressive) variety, and always interesting topics. My only complaint is I can't keep up with all of it!
Fantastic spread
Thank you :)
Suggestion: Supercomputers! Maybe a focus on the current few fastest... or those with the best stories?
You left out Big Ed’s pizza. One of the best things about Oak Ridge, albeit it’s in town, and not the laboratory
"it was being collected in a protective basin" is a real fancy way to say we put bucket under it
Maybe the April Fools line is when it was mentioned JFK pitched the nuclear powered desalination plants in 1964. Hmmm.
I caught that too and immediately thought, "how the hell did he do that when he was already dead?"
As is I listen intently, you stated that JFK was present at a 1964 meeting! How is this possible since he died in Dallas on November 22 the previous year?
Yes! I used to live half a mile from there. Thank you for listening to suggestions!!
Awesome video! My grandpa worked at the Y12 nuclear division there for most of his career. The whole construction of the lab and town had to be done in secret, so the stories are bonkers
Suggestion: 3D printing, from its early stages to how it's being used now from 3D food printers to 3D printed construction materials and the military uses for 3D printers.
Grandpa worked at the Neutron Spallation Source there and Grandma on calutrons. I got to visit the X-10 reactor there a couple years back (part of a public tour), pretty interesting place.
I was at ORNL for several years at OLCF with Physical Sciences Directorate. It was one of the best times if my life. Once COVID stuff is over I advise anyone visiting the Smoky Mountains or Knoxville to spend a day at Oak Ridge and tour whatever they’ve got open on the labs complex. You have to set it up in advance, clear a security check and be a US Citizen, but it’s worth it if you like big science.
My brother lives in Maryville. We were just riding his two Harleys through The Smokeys, and through Oak Ridge. I saw a bank named “Enrichment Bank”. The double entendre didn’t slip past me.
I got to go to x10 on a self guided tour in ‘81.
No can do now. Except thu AMSE
I think this is the first project you've covered that I've been to. I went to Oakridge to work on Summit right before it was brought online.
What did you do to your line manager to make them angry enough to send you there?
Thanks for doing the Oakridge video. I think you can get another video. The building of Oakridge. 70,000 people brought there and in 1941 and 42, few new why. THE SECERCT CITY . That was a mega project.
Rick Perry had no idea what he was looking at
So true. During the primaries Perry wanted to abolish the DOE. Trump made him head of DOE. Pick the dumbest person and make him the leader.
America is so mismanaged.
I was pleasantly surprised to find this video genuine on April Fool’s Day… guess my paranoia played me for a fool this time around.
Thank you Simon!! I never heard of this place until a recruiter reached out to me to work here. It's such a cool place doing really amazing research, and full of some of the best people I have had the opportunity to work with.
You should do a geographics video on the Idaho National Labratory. They are the western counterpart to Oak Ridge, built and tested reactors for submarines and was the place where the first reactor accident happened when a reactor exploded and killed all three servicemen working on the reactor. Also powered Arco Idaho, the first town in the world to be powered by nuclear power.
Not his but…th-cam.com/video/J3znG6_vla0/w-d-xo.html
We lived in Arco when I was a small child. My father, Joe Alton, died, along with a coworker, when they were digging a hole and the dirt caved in on them in late 1977. He had left his home state of Michigan and lost contact with his family. I found them in 2018. They had been looking for him for 35 years, only to learn that he had been gone for 41 years. So sad.
@@delseywitt398 I'm sorry about that, it's dangerous work. Glad you got in contact with the family though, closure is always nice
I also grew up less than an hour away from it so I think it would be awesome to have a video done on it
Awesome. About to present at ORNL. Great to see a holistic historical summary of this fascinating lab. Thanks
If you ever used a computer in the 90s most of them had technology developed at oak ridge.
Best fifteen minutes I spend every night learning before going to sleep.
Having grown up just over the hill(s) in WNC, I have always been fascinated with what happens at this facility.
However, I had NO idea at ALL how massively monstrous the entire place is! 58 SQUARE MILES!!!!????? WHAT!!!!????
Mostly plutonium bunkers probably
@@engineeringvision9507 good chance
58mi squared is about 5 miles by 6 miles. Probably decided on originally as a security perimeter, and later kept as a good standoff distance for the public should anything radiologially bad happen (Chernobyl was a graphite core too...)
@@NullHand Nah. Not even security perimeter, not really. Deal with the military long enough and you learn that's just their way of future proofing. It's easier to ask for a huge land grant of empty land to do something now than ask for an extension 20-30-50 years down the line in case they need it. Stuff grows around military bases directly outside the line and they figured out over a century ago that it's mostly impossible to get a court order to move that stuff to expand a base. The fort system of the 1800s was a nightmare anytime they wanted to expand a base. So now days they just claim the largest area anyone will let them get away with just in case. It's how they get things like White Sands. Noone cared about New Mexico desert, so they got 3200sq miles of it. A ludicrous area. You can always tell what part of the US government started any particular project by land grant size.
I think that the giant Saudi projects are among the most daring, innovative, sustainable and distinguished in their idea, including:
1. NEOM projects, most notably: The Line Project, OXAGON Project, TROJENA Project, the largest solar chips project in the world, green hydrogen facilities projects Which may be the project that will save the Europe from global warming
( NEOM is like the city of science fiction, it is the city of dreamers)
2. The Qiddiya project to build the largest entertainment city in the world according to the latest designs and build the most exciting games to break 3 records (The site is associated with one of the most important geological features in the Arabian Peninsula ، Before Islam, Arab poets wrote many poems about the Najd plateau) (Saudi tourists are among the world’s most spenders on entertainment, and this will limit the travel of many Saudis abroad)
3. Al-Ula oases project with a unique design in one of the most important archaeological cities to build a tram linking the five oases to be the largest open museum in the world and provide a rich tourist experience by visiting these stations by establishing services in institutes, museums, academies, exhibitions, cafes, etc... that meet the needs of the tourist
Project title (Discover The Journey Through Time Masterplan, AlUla, North West Arabia
)
4. The unique Red Sea Islands project in its idea of benefiting from renewable and clean energy without affecting the environment for its sustainability and building very distinctive and innovative hotels in their designs The Amaala project will be parallel to the Red Sea Islands project in luxury hotel services in the field of health and recreation ، So that the two projects compete with the best international projects in island tourism
5. Al-Soudah Company’s project, which has completed the final design to make the city of Abha one of the most important tourist cities for nature lovers after studying the advantages of the most important and most beautiful tourist cities in the world ، And taking advantage of the relative advantages of the culture of the Asir region, which is characterized by Asir architecture, fine arts, folklore, etc.
6. The downtown Jeddah project, which started the rapid demolition operations to rebuild Jeddah according to the latest engineering designs and take advantage of the advantages of Hijazi architecture as a landmark that distinguishes the city of Jeddah from other cities in the world and building a civilized city that competes with the most beautiful cities in the world
7.Diriyah project: which aims to be the largest cultural city in the world and be a major tourist and cultural attraction ، Which has hosted international sports tournaments such as Formula E and the World Boxing Cup, etc. Its political symbolism is that it is the first capital of the Saudi state in 1744 AD ، The project focused on the shape of the old city in the Najdi urban style
8.The King Abdulaziz Road Project in Makkah to improve the quality of life for the people of Makkah and a main goal for Makkah to receive about 30 million pilgrims and pilgrims annually.
9. Knowledge Economic City of the Madinah : creating an exciting and dynamic urban district offering the largest and most diverse shopping, dining and entertainment venue in the globally significant pilgrimage destination.
10. King Abdullah Economic City project / to be a major logistic center for ports between the three continents and a center for exports of industries from the industrial cities ، It is the fifth largest industrial city in the world
11. King Abdullah Financial District Project: It will have the Saudi Stock Exchange and Capital Market Authority. The KAFD will be an important financial center in the Middle East. However, KAFD will not only be a financial center. It will have areas where people live, offices, and educational and recreational facilities. The King Abdullah Financial District is estimated to be worth about $7.8 billion (US).
Projects that were influential or completed, will affect the economy
1. The Tapline pipeline and its impact on the urbanization of the Bedouins in the Arabian Peninsula
2. Railways of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf
3. The reason for stopping the King Salman sea bridge project between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which will link the continents of Asia and Africa
4.The reason for stopping the Jeddah Tower
This is a perfect mega project!!!
Been there... it's incredibly huge compared to Brookhaven National Lab, which I live less than 5 minutes from. Seeing the pile was really interesting. What's interesting - and odd- is that there's a school close to the lab with the tradition atom symbol on the front. Not something you expect to see on the front of a school... unless that was Idaho.
Naw, it is Oakridge. Nuclear symbol is on the public schools in Oakridge. As a LABORER I helped demo AND helped Build OakRidge HighSchool. When the Principle gave a tour, they invited: Mayor, Police Chief, Fire Chief, my Friend Bill, and he brought Me. From DitchDigger to ViP alongside the City's Leaders
There are guided tours of parts of the facility, including a furnished 1940s house like the hundreds used to house employees during the Manhattan Project. There's also a museum with a lot of cool and interesting stuff, though last I heard it was being handed over to a civilian company to run... hopefully they're taking good care of it...
I suggested Oh great a couple times in the comments. I was hoping it'd be more about the building of Oakridge. In the forties. My grandparents were relocated there.. I grew up there as a child.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the home of our nation's first thorium fission reactor. Thorium fission, specifically thorium LFTR reactors, are safe nuclear reactors because they cannot melt-down, and they do not require pressurized water for cooling. But this technology was set aside because our military industrial complex demanded plutonium for the Cold-War. Plutonium is produced through uranium fission, not thorium LFTR fission
I live in Oak Ridge, TN. We were called the secret city.
great town, loved the 4 months I lived there
Nice I live down the road from there
I actually work here as a software engineer.:) It’s pretty awesome.
Hell yeah finally something in my neck of the woods
I was conceived around the time of the defeat of Japan. In these last 20 years, I've become a voracious reader and viewer of all WWII issues. Some of that has to do with the Manhattan Project and subsequent nuclear issues.
Fun fact: The plutonium generated at the Hanover, Washington was delivered to Los Alamos via an ambulance.
As a LABORER ($7/hr) I helped demo AND helped Build OakRidge HighSchool. When the Principle gave a tour, they invited: Mayor, Police Chief, Fire Chief, my Friend Bill, and he brought Me. From DitchDigger to ViP ($0/hr) alongside the City's Leaders ($100k+/yr). Funny they wanted my input, but that actually makes sense smh
Wow, not a laborer, but a LABORER. Impressive.
Never found a big mistake in one of Simon's videos. At 6:30 he says that President Kennedy pitched an idea at a conference in 1964. JFK was assassinated on Nov. 22 1963.
The uranium used in the Manhattan project and other nuclear research was from Canada.
Live in Oakridge. There's more underground here than anyone could ever believe.Also a lot of the roads and names of towns and the fenced in government facility in Stranger Things we're inspired by this place. Eat your heart out area 51.
Good video 👍
Back in the day when it was racing the Hanford Lab to see who could refine the first material for the atom bombs it had the code name S-30.
While I can’t say exactly what goes on up river at ORNL proper, I can attest to the validity of the craziest fishing stories from down river of ORNL. I’ve fished rivers, lakes, seas and oceans in the past, but I’ve never caught a three eyed bass anywhere but down river of ORNL 😂
I lived near Oak Ridge during the 90's it was unreal how many excuses people would make for the reckless behavior that happened.
What reckless behavior ?
I’m about 15 minutes from Oak Ridge the place has a lot of local rumors specifically alien experimentation. The security company I work for contracts security for the installation whenever you get posted there it is very secretive and you aren’t briefed on the job details until you go through extensive background checks.
Cool Vid.
I live a few hours from ORNL and we have a big industrial customer in Clinton (the town just outside of it) and let me tell you, the thrift / second hand stores are flipping amazing
Saw a broken Geiger.
Baught a broken Geiger!
I know you guys are taking a break on bridges, but I’m just here to give you a friendly reminder that the 7 mile bridge in the Florida Keys exist and should be done 😬
No discussion on Y-12, the fact that all nuclear material comes out of ORNL for the US (nuclear power, weapons commission and decommissioning). Not bad for a bunch of hillbillies. Why no mention of Gallaher?
Or the mention of purposeful exposure of employees to Beryllium in the 90s?
How about a MegaProjects on the development of supercomputers, with a SideProjects on the most powerful/famous/largest supercomputers?
Please do a project on SwRI, the Southwest Research Institute.
They have projects going on covering many facets of science.
recommending him another acronym with an R in it just seems a little cruel lol
I believe that a most extraordinary opportunity was overlooked at Oakridge with the groundbreaking work carried out by Alvin Weinberg and his team. Having invented a compact light water reactor (LWR) for submarines, logic suggested that this technology could be scaled up for Domestic power generation. Alvin Weinberg did not agree instead he favored revolutionary Liquid Fuel Thorium Reactors (LTFR). This technology has many advantages over LWR reactors including - inherent failsafe design - no pressure containment required - fuel dissolved in molten salts no need for expensive pellets - nuclear fuel is mainly used up in the reaction - little nuclear waste produced - reactors of this type can be compact and modular - does not produce byproducts that can be used in nuclear weapons (when Thorium is the fuel used) - Thorium is relatively common fertile material - this reactor concept has been built and tested in the 50s and 60s - the natural running temperature is around 600C-800C great for converting water to steam to drive turbines or better still use liquid CO2 turbines - this type of reactor will shut down safely if there are power cuts or leaks (where the salt freezes in contact with cooler air). I could go on but if only this technology had been taken seriously by the American administration, we would have a relatively cheap source of reliable energy, instead all the research is now open source and being developed by the Chinese government?
I absolutely love all your videos but I have 1 question about this video. How could JFK give a speech to the UN in 1964 when he was assassinated in 1963?
Shout out from Oakridge.
I've worked with some folks from there, they're a pretty cool bunch!
that's the same impression I was left with after my very brief stint working there.
I live about 2 hours east of oak ridge and I have always been told it would be a strike point if a war ever broke out.
If the site has anything to do with the nuclear industry, rest assured it will be among the first targeted. This applies to Russian installations as well.
Please tell us about the Ekronoplan
One interesting point is ONL is the only facility in the country that can incinerate nuclear waste.
This town could have been the real world role model for the TV-Show "Eureka"
Tv is fakeandgay
Where is the part about the hadron collider???
show of hands, any of us USA folk ever refer to Oak Ridge as anything other than Oak Ridge? its cute that the Euros try to put a TLA (three letter acronym) on stuff.... but c'mon man! ya overdoin it just a tad! and that poke about "strange priority list", you should see the steps required by the folks who pioneered "nuclear safety" at "ORNL", its not that the deactivation is being put on a back burner, its just takes that long for Federal and State approvals for the transit routes AFTER the materials involved are rendered "safe" which takes a considerable amount of time and materials!
Covering the ORNL here, wonder if covering one of its siblings INL (Idaho National Laboratory) is on the docket? As they focus on nuclear research.
0:12 that picture looks strange. Almost like that lady is a bobblehead..
6:28. Kennedy could not have given speeches in 1964, he died in 1963.
Love your videos and subscribe to all of your channels. Spotted a minor error in this one though. Around the 6:30 mark you state that Kennedy pitched the water desalination idea to a UN conference in 1964. While he may have been instrumental in developing the proposal, he was assassinated in Nov. 1963 so, either, he presented it in 1963 or, it was presented on his behalf in 1964. I always trust your team's research so, I'm certain this was just an oversight.
> I always trust your team's research
Big mistake. These videos are for entertainment only.
Oh hey, my high school chemistry teacher worked there for a while!
Do a video DARPA next!
I always assumed this place was scientifically led by the Oak Ridge Boys. They seem like scientists.
Imagine living a hop, skip, and jump over the hills from Oak Ridge during the Cold War and Cuban missile crisis with air raid drills once a month. After they found out about EMP we had to walk home from school during drills as busses supposedly wouldn’t run but I think they were primitive enough not to be affected.
I live, as the crow flys, about 10 miles away in Knoxville…I have many friends who work there
You forgot to tell that Richard Feynman was highly involved in the design of the uranium refinement facilities.
I have an interesting idea for a video. The Salt Lake City temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Building that in the place and time it was built was an astounding and VERY mega project!
And if that isn't big enough, the sisemic upgrade is!
Plus the history of how they got there, and what happened while they worked on it. Wow.... PTSD inducing just HEARING about it! I almost can't imagine LIVING it!
I’m 15 minutes from the plant, I hope Putin doesn’t plan on doing the which finger should I use to push the button on the nukes . No war . Good video as usual.
JFK couldn’t have ‘pitched the Water for Peace’ idea in 1964, since he died in 1963.
Silver But copper at that time was primarily used in shell casings during the war. So they came up with the idea of using silver as a substitute and there was only one place they knew to get that much silver; the West Point Bullion Depository vault where all the U.S. Treasury silver was stored. Nichols met with Daniel Bell, the Undersecretary of the Treasury Department, on August 4, 1942 to submit a request to borrow 6,000 tons of silver from the depository.
Hub Pages MELVIN PORTEROCT 12, 2015
Wth are you talking about
@@SonOfAdolf An interesting factoid about the Manhattan Project, nothing more.
The CD was invented by Philips, in the Netherlands by the way...
10:46 Wait, just reporting "my colleague was using materials unsafely" even counts as whistleblowing?? It's a ridiculously minor thing to even bother retaliating over, especially when such safety precautions are necessary for the basic accuracy and efficacy of the actual science (completely apart from the safety for the scientsts). What happened to the colleague he complained about? It seems more probable for that guy to contaminate his new offices when he was moved rather than his bosses, honestly. Or someone else with a personal grudge - it would be very easy for someone working there to do.
It would have been quite an achievement for JFK to have pitched an idea to a U.N. conference in 1964 (6:35) since he was killed on Nov 22, 1963.
I have another nuclear mega project for you... The Idaho National Laboratory. It is the site of the largest collection of nuclear reactors on Earth in addition to the first nuclear reactor to produce electricity, and the prototype for the reactor to power the world's first nuclear submarine. Every bit as interesting as ORNL!
Kennedy would have had difficulty proposing anything to anybody in 1964
Body of water on Edgemore Road on your way to Oakridge they got signs up that says don’t eat the fish. Lol lol also I think it says no swimming, not sure what you’re going to find in the water. Lol
ironic, theres a huge job there now i live 3hrs from it, local union has the work, consolidating 5 bldgs to 1, yes there downsizing, local sheetmetal workers 5 union has some of the work
For best results sample the multiverse with care. 8:14
6:20 talks about JFK talking to the UN in 1964 but he was killed in November of 63-
In the last decade there was a somewhat 'famous' experiment that took place which involved firing a beam of energy at a 'mirror' in hopes of reacting with the supposed adjacent universes.
Not really as Hollywood as it sounds.
Experimental physics is WAY behind theoretical physics.
Mostly because math is much cheaper than high energy lab setups like CERN.
Case in point is gravitational waves. Theorized a century ago, they were only recently observed by....
Firing lasers at mirrors.
Side project idea: The Liberty Memorial in Kansas City built after ww1 I believe all with donations.
I still have an irradiated dime encased in plastic from the Museum of Atomic Energy there in the early 60s- or rather my nephew has it.
And you didn't mention how close it was to Huntsville which is the Rocket City of America. I know a lot of people came from there to Huntsville.
I'm afraid you butchered the Manhattan Project History of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) by conflating the three sites in Oak Ridge at the time, and attributing that work to ORNL. In reality, Clinton Labs, the progenitor of ORNL, was a small site that was managed from Y-12 during the Manhattan Project. Several of the historic photos you attribute to ORNL / Clinton Labs were actually of the much larger Y-12 or K-25 sites.
Oak Ridge was by far the largest of the Manhattan Project sites, and was an administrative center for the project (General Nichols, the primary deputy for General Leslie Groves, had his office at the Y-12 site). Operations at Oak Ridge were split among three sites: Y-12, K-25, and X-10. Y-12 contained the electromagnetic enrichment plant and the administrative offices for the Oak Ridge area. K-25 contained the gaseous diffusion enrichment plant (a fourth project, the S-50 thermal diffusion plant, was co-located on the K-25 site, next to the K-25 power house). X-10 was the home of Clinton Labs (the precursor to Oak Ridge National Laboratory) and held the graphite reactor and ancillary facilities that served as a pilot plant for the Hanford plutonium production plant. Per "The New World, 1939/1946, A History of The United States Atomic Energy Commission, Volume I" by Richard G. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson, Jr, the Manhattan-era costs for the K-25 and Y-12 sites were each near half a billion dollars (in 1945 dollars), while the Clinton Laboratories costs were a mere $27 million.
Through the WWII years Clinton Labs / ORNL never had any significant role in uranium enrichment - that was done at Y-12 and K-25. ORNL did play a major role in developing the methods used in Hanford to produce plutonium. After the war, it was determined that the gaseous diffusion method (used at K-25) was far superior to the electromagnetic enrichment (Calutrons) used at Y-12, and Y-12 transitioned to uranium chemistry (converting UF6 from the diffusion plant to uranium metal and recovery of uranium scrap of all forms) and fabrication of uranium components for weapons and reactor programs, a role that Y-12 still actively fills. Most of the Calutron production buildings at Y-12 were shut down in 1945 and 1946, but two calutron buildings remained open, used for the separation of a wide variety of isotopes. A decade or two after the end of WWII ORNL took over the management of the isotope enrichment facilities located at Y-12. ORNL ran them for a number of years until they were finally shut down.
Why are you bothering? This lot put a pretty low priority on research.
Fun fact: Stuxnet was tested at Oak Ridge.
Since the Shadow Brokers released all kind of cyber warfare tools on the Internet, I suspect every nuclear lab has or will be a target of these very weapons. Good job NSA!
I think there is a real life Iron Man suit hidden over there, lol.
Ah finally something thats near me
A fallout game would be fun around this area
RONL.... glad i am not the only one who occasionally botches that one...nice!!
Manhattan Project began in 1942, not 1939.
PhD is not "post doctoral." It is doctoral.
Yee to the Haw. Powerful Senator Al Gore, Sr. Brought this to Tennessee.
Ornl actually really is pretty cool I work their it's it's some cool stuff
Bruh how do you manage to jugle 12 different channels and have time to try out all the sponsored stuff you get???
I don't think Kennedy pitched anything in 1964
can i play warzone on Summit?