An interesting view of the demolition of the K-27 Building on May 2. Kind of looks like wartime bombing. (Department of Energy photo/Lynn Freeny)
Category Archives: History
Atomic basketball (1947)
Basketball was big in Oak Ridge during the 1940s. In fact, my mother, who worked for the Parks and Recreation Department during the World War II Manhattan Project, said she first saw my father at a basketball game in Oak Ridge. “He had nice legs,” she said. In this Dec. 28, 1947 photograph, the Oak Ridge Elks Club is playing a team from Maryville. (Department of Energy archives/Ed Westcott photo)
State posts fish advisory on Bear Creek
Decades after discharges from the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant polluted local waterways, the state has decided to post a do-not-eat-the-fish advisory on Bear Creek because of increasing public access to a lower stretch of the creek.
“Eating fish with elevated levels of mercury and PCBs is a risk Tennesseans can avoid,” Tisha Calabrese-Benton of the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation said in a statement released by the state agency. Continue reading
K-27 demolition moves ahead furiously; preparations underway for other Cold War facilities
Aerial view with some of the Poplar Creek Facilities in the foreground. Below is recent photo of K-27 demolition. (DOE/Lynn Freeny)
The post-Cold War cleanup is proceeding at a furious pace at an Oak Ridge site once home to the nation’s largest uranium-enrichment complex.
With K-27, the last of five gaseous diffusion plants, coming down quicker than expected and likely to be demolished before the year-end target date, the U.S. Department of Energy has started making preparations to tear down a bunch of other old buildings that once supported the nuclear program.
URS-CH2M Oak Ridge, DOE’s cleanup manager, has taken advantage of favorable weather conditions to accelerate the demolition of K-27, which ceased operations in 1964. The four-story, 383,000-square foot building is highly contaminated and equally deteriorated. Continue reading
Type B-1 House in early Oak Ridge
Type B-1 prefabricated house in 1940s Oak Ridge, above, with blueprint below. (Department of Energy archives)
The old Skyway Drive-in in Oak Ridge
The Skyway Drive-in was a fixture in Oak Ridge for decades, with a unique feature that allowed overnight residents in the Holiday Inn next door to watch movies from their room. This 1968 photo was taken by Department of Energy photographer Frank Hofffman.
Big tanks for 1940s radioactive waste
The early nuclear operations at X-10, which later became Oak Ridge National Laboratory, generated a lot of highly radioactive wastes. This July 7, 1943 photograph shows the construction of huge gunite tanks that were used for storage of those wastes. (Department of Energy archives/Ed Westcott photo)
Science bye-byes at ORNL accelerator
Physicists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory conducted a final series of experiments at the Tandem Electrostatic Accelerator earlier this spring, and Bill Cabage of lab’s public affairs staff summed up the event nicely with a bit of history and a report from the concluding ceremony.
Summertime (1959) in Oak Ridge
A group from Oak Ridge National Laboratory enjoyed an end-of-summer picnic in 1959 at Carbide Park. (ORNL archives)
Oak Ridgers support Obama’s trip to Hiroshima
It appears that President Obama’s planned trip to Hiroshima, Japan, is garnering support in Oak Ridge, where Manhattan Project facilities produced the enriched uranium for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II.
News Sentinel reporter Bob Fowler has the story.
Cold War romantic
This is a wonderful nighttime overview of Oak Ridge in November 1968. Double-click on pic to enlarge. (Department of Energy archives/Frank Hoffman photo)
What the heck is this?
The information attached to this photograph says it’s a recreation dancing class at Cedar Hill School in Oak Ridge. But it looks to me like a strange kind of sorority ritual, gymnasium hide-and-seek or something like that. Maybe readers can better inform me. Anyway, the photo was taken on Aug. 5, 1948. Double-click on pic to enlarge. (Department of Energy archives/ Lillian Stokes photo)
Los Alamos historian to speak
Heather McClenahan, executive director of the Los Alamos Historical Society, will be the guest speaker at the May 3 meeting of the Oak Ridge Heritage & Preservation Association. The meeting gets started at 7 p.m. at the Midtown Community Center, 103 Robertsville Rd., in Oak Ridge. Continue reading