Home > Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Oak Ridge is a city located in Anderson and Roane Counties in eastern Tennessee, about 25 miles west of Knoxville. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 27,387. Oak Ridge houses the headquarters of IPIX. Its nicknames are the Atomic City and the Secret City. 1 History
Before 1942 the area which now comprises Oak Ridge was rural, including several farm communities: Robertsville , Edgemoor , East Fork , Elza , Bethel , Scarboro , and Wheat . These communities were by far overshadowed by their neighbors: Clinton, in Anderson County and Kingston, in Roane County.
The area was chosen by the federal government as a site for developing materials for the Manhattan Project in 1942. Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves, military head of the Manhattan Project, liked the area for several reasons. Its relatively low population made acquisition affordable, yet the area was accessible by highway, rail, and water. Because the area was partitioned by ridges and valleys, it provided some natural protection against disasters at the four industrial plants planned for producing materials for atomic bombs.
Beginning in late 1942 the United States Army Corps of Engineers began acquiring more than 60,000 acres (240 km˛) for the Clinton Engineer Works under authority of the Corps' Manhattan Engineer District. The K-25, S-50, and Y-12 plants were each built in Oak Ridge to separate Uranium-235 from Uranium-238. The X-10 laboratory was established as a pilot plant for production of plutonium. Because of the large number of workers recruited to the area for the Manhattan Project, the Army built a town for project workers. The time required for the project's completion caused the Army to opt for a relatively permanent establishment rather than a camp of enormous size. In addition to a city of more than 20,000 residents, temporary construction personnel swelled the wartime population of Oak Ridge to as much as 70,000.
The use of the atomic bombs against JapanJapan (, Nippon/Nihon literally "the origin of the sun") is a country in East Asia situated on a chain of islands east of the Asian continent on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean. The largest of these islands are, from north to south, Hokkaido , Honsh demonstrated to the people working at Oak Ridge for the first time just what they were working on. Two years after World War IIWorld War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the world's nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. The war was fough ended, Oak Ridge was shifted to civilian control, under the authority of the Atomic Energy Commission. In 1959 the town was incorporated, and a city manager and City Council form of government was adopted by the community rather than direct federal control. Three of the four major facilities created for the wartime bomb production are still standing today. K-25, where uranium was enriched by the gaseous diffusion process until 1985, is now being decomissioned and decontaminated. Y-12, originally used for electromagnetic separation of uranium, is still in use for nuclear weapons processing and materials storage. X-10, site of a test graphiteGraphite is one of the allotropes of carbon. See also allotropes of carbon. Unlike diamond, graphite is a conductor, and can be used, for instance, as the material in the electrodes of an electrical arc lamp. The pi orbital electrons delocalized across th reactor, is now the site of Oak Ridge National LaboratoryOak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL is a multiprogram science and technology national laboratory managed for the United States Department of Energy by UT-Battelle, LLC. ORNL is located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near Knoxville. Scientists and engineers at O. Oak Ridge's scientific heritage is explored in the American Museum of Science and Energy .
2 Geography
Oak Ridge is located at 35°59'18" North, 84°17'11" West (35.988230, -84.286312) 1The following is a list of sources used in the creation of Wikipedia articles on various geographic topics and locations, such as cities, counties, states, and countries. These sources are cited within the thousands of articles which link to this page..
According to the United States Census BureauThe United States Census Bureau (officially Bureau of the Census is a part of the United States Department of Commerce. Its mission is defined in the Constitution of the United States, which directs that the population be enumerated at least once every te, the city has a total area of 232.9 km˛ (89.9 mi˛). 221.6 km˛ (85.6 mi˛) of it is land and 11.3 km˛ (4.4 mi˛) of it is water. The total area is 4.86% water.
