Celebrating six decades of outstanding scientific achievement… and beyond

2006 marks Argonne's 60th anniversary. Formally chartered on July 1, 1946, Argonne was the first national laboratory, a government-funded organization that applies academic research traditions to solving the nation's most pressing science and technology problems.

"Creating Argonne and the national laboratory system introduced a new era of scientific research in the public interest," says Argonne Director Robert Rosner. "The national laboratories have become centers where great minds and great research facilities are joined in pursuit of solutions to the nation's most complex scientific problems."

Argonne is a direct descendant of The University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory, part of the World War II Manhattan Project. At the Met Lab on Dec. 2, 1942, Enrico Fermi and his colleagues created the world's first controlled self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in a racquets court under the stands of The University of Chicago's Stagg Field. By the end of February 1943, Fermi's reactor had been moved to a new site in the Argonne Forest section of the Cook County Forest Preserve.

In 1946, the mission of the laboratory changed to focus on developing nuclear reactors for peaceful purposes and the lab was officially renamed Argonne National Laboratory In 1948, a new location near Lemont, Ill., became the laboratory's new home. Over the next 60 years, each decade saw the lab expand its research to include many other areas of science, engineering and technology.

1950s …

The fifties focused on research and development in reactor technology. Among the earliest reactors Argonne scientists designed was a pressurized-water submarine thermal reactor for the world's first atomic-powered submarine. In 1950, Argonne built and operated the first submarine reactor prototype. In January 1954, the USS Nautilus, the first atomic submarine, was launched. W ith virtually unlimited power, this class of submarines could remain under water for indefinitely long periods and travel at significantly faster speeds. The Argonne-designed reactor in the Nautilus lasted for 62,500 miles, including a dramatic crossing of the Arctic Ocean in 1958.

Experimental Breeder Reactor I (EBR-I) achieved many benchmarks during its 14 years of operation. It was the first nuclear reactor to produce usable amounts of electricity, lighting a string of four 150-watt bulbs on Dec. 20, 1951. In 1953, it was the first reactor to demonstrate the breeder principle — generating more new nuclear fuel than it consumed. It was the first, in November 1962, to achieve a chain reaction with plutonium and the first to demonstrate the feasibility of using liquid metals at high temperatures as a reactor coolant. EBR-I gained National Historic Landmark status in 1966.

Benchmark research in boiling water reactors began with a series of Boiling Reactor Experiments (BORAX) in 1953. In 1955, BORAX III produced enough electricity to light up the town of Arco, Idaho — the first time in history that any town had all its electricity provided by nuclear energy.

1960s …

The sixties continued with further developments in work related to the Experimental Breeder Reactor II, which operated from 1964 to 1994. This reactor was the first to demonstrate a closed nuclear fuel cycle. From 1965-69, 20,000 spent fuel pins were removed from the reactor core, processed at the reactor's Fuel Cycle Facility to remove some fission products, and recast and returned to the core as new fuel pins. Today, closing the nuclear fuel cycle is a key aspect of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) plans to develop economical, safe and proliferation-resistance nuclear power plants for the 21st century.

In 1963, Maria Goeppert Mayer became the second Argonne scientist to win a Nobel Prize in physics — founding director Enrico Fermi won in 1938. Goeppert Mayer was recognized for developing the nuclear shell model to explain how neutrons and protons within atomic nuclei are structured. She performed the work at Argonne in 1948.

Also in 1963 construction was completed for the Zero Gradient Synchrotron (ZGS), a 12.5 GeV proton accelerator built for high energy physics research. For the next 16 years, the ZGS would attract leading scientists from all over the nation to study the fundamental nature of matter and energy. Design, construction and operation of the ZGS helped establish Argonne's world-leading capabilities in accelerator physics and design, which enabled the later creation of the Advanced Photon Source, the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source and the Argonne Tandem-Linac Accelerator System, cutting-edge materials science and physics accelerators the laboratory operates today.

1970s …

This decade witnessed Argonne's involvement in environmental stewardship. With the advent of new environmental standards and policies in the early 1970s, the need arose for establishing documentation called Environmental Impact Statements. Starting in 1973, Argonne scientists began developing these statements for the Atomic Energy Commission and later, for DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This work continues today, with Argonne recognized as the preeminent laboratory in this field.

The 1970s also saw Argonne develop prototypes for a new kind of neutron source for materials research – one based on an accelerator rather than a nuclear reactor. By the end of the decade, design was under way for the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source (IPNS). Based largely on components from the ZGS, shut down in 1979, the IPNS would become DOE's first scientific user facility.

1980s …

Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, Argonne scientists designed and built state-of-the-art facilities that enabled them to revolutionize the ways in which research is conducted. The IPNS was commissioned in 1981. Over its 25 years of operation, the facility has provided the nation's most reliable source of neutrons for the study of atomic arrangements and motions in liquids and solids — information key to developing new materials — and has hosted thousands of users from around the globe. IPNS research has cast new light on the basic biology behind Alzheimer's disease and discovered exotic new phenomena, such the first observation of water that does not freeze at temperatures near absolute zero.

In 1987, research at the IPNS made Argonne materials scientists the first to report the correct structure of yttrium-barium-copper oxide, the first high-temperature superconductor. These materials conduct electricity without loss when cooled by relatively inexpensive liquid nitrogen. Argonne was a leader in exploring the properties of these materials and developing practical applications. Argonne researchers were the first Americans to extrude wire made of high-temperature superconductor and worked in partnership with U.S. industry to develop processes for making flexible superconducting wire.

In 1984, Experimental Breeder Reactor II's unique combination of metal fuel and cooling in a pool of liquid sodium were shown to give the reactor unique passive safety characteristics. Historic tests that year demonstrated that this type of reactor will shut down without the aid of operators or safety systems when faced with conditions comparable to those that led to the nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

The Argonne Tandem-Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS) was dedicated in 1985. ATLAS was the world's first superconducting accelerator for particles heavier than the electron. As a national user facility, ATLAS has provided more than 55,000 hours of beam to the research community. Physicists from 94 institutions in the United States and 18 foreign countries have participated in experiments at the ATLAS during that time. Their research has contributed to a deeper understanding of the forces inside atomic nuclei, the basic structure of matter and the processes through which the natural elements are created in stars.

1990s …

Construction of cutting-edge facilities continued in the'90s. On March 26, 1995, scientists and engineers at Argonne's Advanced Photon Source (APS) entered a new era in X-ray research with the production of "first light" at the facility. In the decade since, more than 2,700 researchers annually have used the APS for research in materials science, bioscience, chemistry, geology, earth science and many other fields. Research at the APS was key to Abbott Laboratories' development of Kaletra, a world-leading drug for combating AIDS, and has contributed more than 1,000 protein structures to the Protein Data Bank, which houses the molecular structures of proteins and makes them available to researchers worldwide for developing new and improved medical diagnostics and treatments.

In 1998, the Advanced Powertrain Research Facility (APRF) began operations at Argonne. The first of its kind in the nation, the APRF is DOE's principal facility for assessing advanced and hybrid electric vehicle technologies for the FreedomCAR and Vehicle Technologies Program.

2000 to the present …

Taking computing into the new millennium, in 2002 the first link was connected in what would become the TeraGrid network, the fastest dedicated optical research network in the world. The first link connects Argonne with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Today, through the Computation Institute at The University of Chicago, Argonne leads the Grid Infrastructure Group for the TeraGrid.

Joining the ranks of Argonne Nobelists, Argonne scientist Alexei Abrikosov received the Nobel Prize in physics in October 2003 for his theories about the behavior of matter at temperatures near absolute zero.

In 2006, the Center for Nanoscale Materials began operations at Argonne as one of five national centers for research and development focused on materials in the size range of billionths of a meter. In the coming decades, these materials are widely expected to drive the creation of new technologies, products and industries to improve the nation's well-being.

Today, as Argonne enters it seventh decade of conducting research and development in the national interest, its mission focuses on five broad areas: basic science, scientific facilities, energy resources, environmental management and national security. The laboratory is planning major scientific initiatives to upgrade the Advanced Photon Source; to integrate energy, environment, and economic research for a more diverse, sustainable energy future; to develop an exotic beams facility to uncover the origins of heavy metals; to enable petascale computing that will revolutionize science; and to work closely with DOE's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership to close the nuclear fuel cycle.

"It's an exciting time to reflect on the history of the lab and the brilliance of the researchers and the breakthroughs that have been made at Argonne," says Rosner. "I'm dedicated to building on this rich history to help make the lab's next decades even brighter."