New Bethel Baptist Church (Oak Ridge, Tennessee)

The National Institute for Computational Sciences (NICS) is funded by the National Science Foundation and managed by the University of Tennessee. NICS was home to Kraken, the most powerful computer in the world managed by academia. The NICS petascale scientific computing environment is housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), home to the world's most powerful computing complex. The mission of NICS, a member of the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE - formerly TeraGrid), is to enable the scientific discoveries of researchers nationwide by providing leading-edge computational resources, together with support for their effective use, and leveraging extensive partnership opportunities.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a federally funded research and development center in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1943, the laboratory is now sponsored by the United States Department of Energy and administered by UT–Battelle, LLC.Established in 1943, ORNL is the largest science and energy national laboratory in the Department of Energy system (by size) and third largest by annual budget. It is located in the Roane County section of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Its scientific programs focus on materials, nuclear science, neutron science, energy, high-performance computing, environmental science, systems biology and national security, sometimes in partnership with the state of Tennessee, universities and other industries. ORNL has several of the world's top supercomputers, including Frontier, ranked by the TOP500 as the world's most powerful. The lab is a leading neutron and nuclear power research facility that includes the Spallation Neutron Source, the High Flux Isotope Reactor, and the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences. Commissioned in 1944, the USS Oak Ridge is named after Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The Multiprogram Research Facility (MRF, also known as Building 5300) is a facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. It is used by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to design and build supercomputers for cryptanalysis and other classified projects. It houses the classified component program of the High Productivity Computing Systems (HPCS) project sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) was an experimental molten salt reactor research reactor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). This technology was researched through the 1960s, the reactor was constructed by 1964, it went critical in 1965, and was operated until 1969. The costs of a cleanup project were estimated at about $130 million. The MSRE was a 7.4 MWth test reactor simulating the neutronic "kernel" of a type of inherently safer epithermal thorium breeder reactor called the liquid fluoride thorium reactor. It primarily used two fuels: first uranium-235 and later uranium-233. The latter 233UF4 was the result of breeding from thorium in other reactors. Since this was an engineering test, the large, expensive breeding blanket of thorium salt was omitted in favor of neutron measurements. In the MSRE, the heat from the reactor core was shed via a cooling system using air blown over radiators. It is thought similar reactors could power high-efficiency heat engines such as closed-cycle gas turbines. The MSRE's piping, core vat and structural components were made from Hastelloy-N and its moderator was a pyrolytic graphite core. The fuel for the MSRE was LiF-BeF2-ZrF4-UF4 (65-29.1-5-0.9 mole %), the graphite core moderated it, and its secondary coolant was FLiBe (2LiF-BeF2), it operated as hot as 650 °C and operated for the equivalent of about 1.5 years of full power operation. The result promised to be a simple, reliable reactor. The purpose of the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment was to demonstrate that some key features of the proposed molten-salt power reactors could be embodied in a practical reactor that could be operated safely and reliably and be maintained without excessive difficulty. For simplicity, it was to be a fairly small, one-fluid (i.e. non-breeding) reactor operating at 10 MWth or less, with heat rejection to the air via a secondary (fuel-free) salt.

The X-10 Graphite Reactor is a decommissioned nuclear reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Formerly known as the Clinton Pile and X-10 Pile, it was the world's second artificial nuclear reactor (after Enrico Fermi's Chicago Pile-1), and the first designed and built for continuous operation. It was built during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project. While Chicago Pile-1 demonstrated the feasibility of nuclear reactors, the Manhattan Project's goal of producing enough plutonium for atomic bombs required reactors a thousand times as powerful, along with facilities to chemically separate the plutonium bred in the reactors from uranium and fission products. An intermediate step was considered prudent. The next step for the plutonium project, codenamed X-10, was the construction of a semiworks where techniques and procedures could be developed and training conducted. The centerpiece of this was the X-10 Graphite Reactor. It was air-cooled, used nuclear graphite as a neutron moderator, and pure natural uranium in metal form for fuel. DuPont commenced construction of the plutonium semiworks at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge on February 2, 1943. The reactor went critical on November 4, 1943, and produced its first plutonium in early 1944. It supplied the Los Alamos Laboratory with its first significant amounts of plutonium, and its first reactor-bred product. Studies of these samples heavily influenced bomb design. The reactor and chemical separation plant provided invaluable experience for engineers, technicians, reactor operators, and safety officials who then moved on to the Hanford site. X-10 operated as a plutonium production plant until January 1945, when it was turned over to research activities, and the production of radioactive isotopes for scientific, medical, industrial and agricultural uses. It was shut down in 1963 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965.

The Fission Product Pilot Plant, building 3515 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), was built in 1948 to extract radioactive isotopes from liquid radioactive waste. It was formerly known as the 'ruthenium-106 tank arrangement'. It is a relatively small facility; the task of extracting radioactive isotopes later took place at a number of specialised buildings nearby. References differ as to when the plant was built; 'radioactive waste management at ORNL' says that it was completed in 1957, the 1955 Annual Report has engineering drawings indicating that the building was fully designed in 1955, but other references suggest that there was a building on the site in 1948.

The High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) is a nuclear research reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, United States. Operating at 85 MW, HFIR is one of the highest flux reactor-based sources of neutrons for condensed matter physics research in the United States, and it has one of the highest steady-state neutron fluxes of any research reactor in the world. The thermal and cold neutrons produced by HFIR are used to study physics, chemistry, materials science, engineering, and biology. The intense neutron flux, constant power density, and constant-length fuel cycles are used by more than 500 researchers each year for neutron scattering research into the fundamental properties of condensed matter. HFIR has about 600 users each year for both scattering and in-core research. The neutron scattering research facilities at HFIR contain a world-class collection of instruments used for fundamental and applied research on the structure and dynamics of matter. The reactor is also used for medical, industrial, and research isotope production; research on severe neutron damage to materials; and neutron activation to examine trace elements in the environment. Additionally, the building houses a gamma irradiation facility that uses spent fuel assemblies and is capable of accommodating high gamma dose experiments. With projected regular operations, the next major shutdown for a beryllium reflector replacement will not be necessary until about 2023. This outage provides an opportunity to install a cold source in radial beam tube HB-2, which would give an unparalleled flux of cold neutrons feeding instruments in a new guide hall. With or without this additional capability, HFIR is projected to continue operating through 2040 and beyond. In November 2007 ORNL officials announced that time-of-flight tests on a newly installed cold source (which uses liquid helium and hydrogen to slow the movement of neutrons) showed better performance than design predictions, equaling or surpassing the previous world record set by the research reactor at the Institut Laue–Langevin in Grenoble, France.

The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) is an accelerator-based neutron source facility in the U.S. that provides the most intense pulsed neutron beams in the world for scientific research and industrial development. Each year, this facility hosts hundreds of researchers from universities, national laboratories, and industry, who conduct basic and applied research and technology development using neutrons. SNS is part of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is managed by UT-Battelle for the United States Department of Energy (DOE). SNS is a DOE Office of Science user facility, and it is open to scientists and researchers from all over the world.

Melton Hill Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Clinch River just south of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, United States. The dam is operated by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which built the dam in the early 1960s to extend the Tennessee Valley's continuous navigation channel up the Clinch as far as Clinton and to increase TVA's overall power-generating capacity. The dam impounds the 5,470-acre (2,210 ha) Melton Hill Lake, and is the only TVA tributary dam serviced by a navigation lock. The dam and associated infrastructure were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017. Melton Hill Dam was named for a knob atop nearby Copper Ridge where the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey installed a triangulation station in 1884.

The George Jones Memorial Baptist Church, also known as the "Wheat Church," is a historic church building at the former site of the community of Wheat in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, United States. It is the only structure remaining from Wheat, a rural Roane County community that was dissolved in 1942 when the United States government assumed ownership of the land for the Manhattan Project. Founded in 1854 as a United Baptist congregation by 26 members of the Sulphur Springs Church of Christ, it was established in Wheat in the northern part of Roane County. Originally named the "Mount Zion Baptist Church," it changed its name to "George Jones Memorial Baptist Church" in 1901, after a local minister who had donated most of the land for the community. In the same year, the congregation built a new building, which remains today.The church is considered a good example of a rural vernacular church building. It is a three-bay, rectangular plan brick building with wood cladding, a square bell tower, and a standing-seam metal roof. There are two rooms in its interior, an anteroom and the sanctuary, separated from one another by a waist-high partition. A 1½ acre cemetery is located west of the church.The George Jones church served not only as a religious facility, but also as a community gathering place for Wheat residents. When Wheat was vacated by the federal government in 1942 as part of the Manhattan Project, the George Jones Memorial Baptist Church was abandoned with the rest of the community. All other Wheat buildings have been demolished. As the only pre-1942 building remaining in what was once Wheat, the church is the location of annual reunions of former residents.The church is east of the K-25 site and a short distance north of State Route 58, from which it is visible. It is located on the old Wheat Road, a gravel road (accessible from Blair Road (SR 327)) that follows the historical roadbed of a one-time local thoroughfare. The church building and the road are owned and maintained by the U.S. Department of Energy. Motorized travel on the road is limited to government vehicles, but the road is open to pedestrians and bicycles as a public greenway trail.George Jones Memorial Baptist Church was one of six Oak Ridge properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. This listing reflects its significance as the only existing physical remnant of the Wheat community, a physical representation of rural life in the area in the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century, and an example of vernacular church architecture.

Wheat was a farming community in Roane County, Tennessee. The area is now in the city of Oak Ridge. The earliest settlers moved into the area in the late 18th century. However, it was not until 1846 that the area was established as the community of Bald Hill. The name was changed to Wheat in 1880, when a post office was opened and the community took the name of its first postmaster, Frank Wheat. The first settler with the surname of Wheat and the recognized founding father of the town is Levi Henderson Wheat, born in Virginia between 1770 – 1780. Levi is first shown on a tax record within Roane County, Tennessee in 1805. On Nov 14, 1814, a “tract of land being in the 3rd Civil District, on the waters of Paw Paw Creek, consisting of 146 acres is conveyed to Levi Wheat from Jason Matlock for the sum of $200”. Levi Wheat worked the land as a farmer, married three times, and bore a total of 18 children. Levi served in the War of 1812 as a Private under Captain John McKamy’s Company of East Tennessee Militia, Colonel E Booth’s Regiment. Levi Henderson Wheat died prior to April 20, 1849, the date of his estate probate, in Roane County, Tennessee. Early farming residents included John Henry and Elizabeth Inman Welcker. They owned Laurel Banks plantation on the Clinch River from the early 19th century until c. 1840. Records from the time show that the Welckers were active in the purchase and sale of slaves. George Hamilton Gallaher purchased the property in the 1840s, and it is now referred to as the Gallaher-Stone Plantation. The Wheat Community African Burial Ground (AEC #2) and Gallaher-Welcker Cemetery (AEC #1) still survive. The African Burial Ground was long forgotten, but the site was found in 2000 by Will Minter and was cleaned up and marked by U.S. Department of Energy personnel and volunteers. At least some of those buried in the African Burial Ground are believed to have been part of the Gallaher-Stone Plantation; a monument to those held in slavery is on the cemetery grounds.Wheat eventually included several churches, a seminary/college, several stores, a gas station and a Masonic lodge. Poplar Creek Seminary, founded in 1886 by a Presbyterian minister, later became Roane College. In 1908, the college transferred ownership of the building to Wheat High School. The community of Wheat was dissolved, and residents displaced, in 1942 when the United States government purchased the land as part of the Manhattan Project. Most of the site remains in federal government ownership, managed by the United States Department of Energy. The George Jones Memorial Baptist Church is the only Wheat building still standing. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Crawford Presbyterian Church building was torn down for a highway construction project. The cemeteries of both churches are maintained and are still used for burials of former Wheat residents and family members. The Wheat community, including former residents and their families, holds a "homecoming" reunion at the George Jones Church every year on the first Sunday in October.

The Y-12 National Security Complex is a United States Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration facility located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It was built as part of the Manhattan Project for the purpose of enriching uranium for the first atomic bombs. It is considered the birthplace of the atomic bomb. In the years after World War II, it has been operated as a manufacturing facility for nuclear weapons components and related defense purposes. Y-12 is managed and operated under contract by Consolidated Nuclear Security, LLC (CNS), which is composed of member companies Bechtel National Inc., Leidos Inc., Orbital ATK, Inc, and SOC LLC, with Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. as a teaming subcontractor. CNS also operates Pantex Plant in Texas.