Oak Ridge, Tennessee
| Oak Ridge, Tennessee | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Nickname : The Atomic City, The Secret City | |||
Location in Tennessee
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| Basic data | |||
| Foundation : | 1942 | ||
| State : | United States | ||
| State : | Tennessee | ||
| Counties : |
Anderson County Roane County |
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| Coordinates : | 36 ° 1 ′ N , 84 ° 16 ′ W | ||
| Time zone : | Eastern ( UTC − 5 / −4 ) | ||
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Inhabitants : - Metropolitan Area : |
29,330 (status: 2010) 698,030 (status: 2010) |
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| Population density : | 132.4 inhabitants per km 2 | ||
| Area : | 232.9 km 2 (approx. 90 mi 2 ) of which 221.6 km 2 (approx. 86 mi 2 ) is land |
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| Height : | 259 m | ||
| Postcodes : | 37830, 37831 | ||
| Area code : | +1 865 | ||
| FIPS : | 47-55120 | ||
| GNIS ID : | 1296156 | ||
| Website : | www.oakridgetn.gov | ||
Oak Ridge is a town in Anderson and Roane Counties , about 30 km west of Knoxville in the US state of Tennessee . In 2010 , Oak Ridge had 29,330 residents. The city is home to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory .
Oak Ridge is part of the Knoxville Metropolitan Statistical Area , the metropolitan area around the city of Knoxville .
geography
The city lies 259 m above sea level between ridges in the Valley and Ridge zone of the Appalachian Plateau . The Clinch River , which belongs to the Mississippi river basin over the Tennessee River and the Ohio , runs below the town and forms the boundary of the municipality in the southwest with a sharp turn.
Interstate Highway 40 runs along the southern outskirts in a west-east direction , from which Interstate Highway 75 branches off to the south at the level of the city . Tennessee State Routes 61 , 62, and 95 meet in the Oak Ridge metropolitan area . All other roads are subordinate country roads as well as inner-city connecting roads.
At the northeastern city limits is a junction of several railway lines of the Norfolk Southern Railway and the CSX Transportation .
The nearest airport is McGhee Tyson Airport, south of Knoxville .
history
Oak Ridge was founded in 1942 under the name Site-X as a factory settlement for the Manhattan Project . A maximum of 75,000 people were brought to the previously sparsely populated region in order to build the first atomic bomb in the greatest possible secrecy . Oak Ridge was responsible for the uranium enrichment and shared the tasks with the two other large locations of the Manhattan project: Hanford in Washington state and Los Alamos , New Mexico. Today Oak Ridge houses the Oak Ridge National Laboratory , the Y-12 National Security Complex and the disused K-25 plant, as well as the American Museum of Science and Energy .
The upper reaches of the Tennessee River was a very sparsely populated region in the eastern United States. Thanks to the work of the Tennessee Valley Authority since the 1930s, however, a lot of electricity was available. Another role is said to have played the origin of the chairman of the budget committee of the US Senate Kenneth McKellar, who came from Tennessee. Therefore, one of the locations for the atomic bomb project was chosen in the region. After the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States' entry into World War II , the decision to build the atomic bomb was made in 1943, and from the middle of the year the federal government bought around 240 km² within a few months or expropriated the previous owners.
In the region characterized by parallel chains of hills, the four villages of Elza, Robertsville, Scarboro and Wheat as well as the small settlements of Edgemoor, Bethel and East Fork with a total of around 3,000 inhabitants were previously located. They were almost completely removed. The four churches, the cemetery and the former schoolhouse of Scarboro have been preserved.
The city was designed and built according to plan. Initially designed for a population of 13,000, it grew to 75,000 within three years. At the height of the work, a house was completed every two minutes. The city was not shown on any map until 1949. In the region, the facilities were called Clinton Engineering Works , after the nearby town of Clinton . The scientists, workers and their families were not allowed to talk to outsiders about their work or where they lived. The mail was sent through post offices far away. According to their time, the residential areas were separated according to race . Initially, equivalent houses were intended for blacks, but when the settlement grew rapidly, they were added to the white part of the city before they moved in and instead primitive huts were built on the railway line for the black employees.
Due to the location in the profile of the landscape with the hills as a separation, the residents and the facilities should be protected from the consequences of a possible accident. The original city lies in a valley between the hills; In two other valleys and directly on the river there were a total of four, later only three plants: X-10 with the second nuclear reactor in the world, a graphite-moderated reactor for the production of plutonium and other materials and extensive laboratories for metallurgical research, as well as the multi-stage uranium Enrichment with K-25 for enrichment in the gas diffusion process and further enrichment in the Y-12 plant with calutrons . From 1944 to 1945, the first stage was the S-50 system with a thermal diffusion process . However, it only reached an enrichment level of 2% with high energy consumption and was therefore switched off again after less than a year.
It was not until 1949 that Oak Ridge was announced and the city opened to the public under this name. From 1955, residents could buy their homes and land from the Atomic Energy Commission . In 1959, Oak Ridge was incorporated as a city and became a civil parish government.
After the September 11, 2001 attacks , security at Oak Ridge National Laboratory was greatly increased. The access road, which previously also accepted through traffic, has been included in the safety zone.
| Population development | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Census | Residents | ± in% | |
| 1960 | 27,169 | - | |
| 1970 | 28,319 | 4.2% | |
| 1980 | 27,662 | -2.3% | |
| 1990 | 27,310 | -1.3% | |
| 2000 | 27,387 | 0.3% | |
| 2010 | 29,330 | 7.1% | |
| 2012 estimate | 29,320 | -0% | |
| 1960–2000 2010 2012 | |||
Oak Ridge today
Research and the military play an essential role in the city to this day. The former X-10 plant was converted into the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in cooperation with the US Department of Energy and the University of Tennessee , Knoxville . Top international research with a focus on energy, metallurgy and environmental technology takes place here. The National Laboratory is also a location for supercomputers . The computer Titan from Cray in the ORNL was the fastest computer in the world at the end of 2012. In June 2018, Summit , the fastest computer in the world, was presented again in Oak Ridge. In order to take advantage of the cooperation, the National Security Agency has also set up a supercomputing location on the Laboratories' East Campus since 2006. The efficiency of the so-called Multiprogram Research Facility is unknown. It is believed that the hardware is optimized for special tasks, including the cryptanalysis of the widely used Advanced Encryption Standard .
K-25 has been decommissioned since 1987, is currently (as of 2010) being demolished and decontaminated , with the areas that have already been released being rented out as East Tennessee Technology Park . The former Y-12 plant is still active in the production of nuclear weapons as the Y-12 National Security Complex . It has been operated by Babcock and Wilcox in cooperation with the Bechtel Corporation since 2000 .
The city has a higher than average quota of academics. In 2000, 66% of Oak Ridge residents had attended college and 37.9% had a bachelor's degree or higher. In order to motivate highly qualified scientists to work in the region, diverse cultural offers were set up from the start. Oak Ridge still has its own symphony orchestra, professional ballet company, community theater and two museums. That vastly exceeds the cultural offerings in other cities of comparable size. One of the museums is the American Museum of Science and Energy , which is dedicated to energy research, particularly nuclear energy and the history of the city and the Manhattan Project.
Oak Ridge is twinned with Obninsk in the Russian Federation and Naka in the Japanese prefecture of Ibaraki . Both partner cities are important locations for nuclear research. The Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant was the first commercial nuclear power plant in the world and is in Naka of the JT-60 , a tokamak - fusion reactor , the world in which nuclear fusion research is leading.
sons and daughters of the town
- Walter Trice (1948–2009), backgammon player
- William McMichael Shepherd (born 1949), astronaut
- Charles Ergen (* 1953), entrepreneur
- Klaus Schüle (* 1963), German politician (CDU)
- Gore Verbinski (* 1964), director and screenwriter
- Elaine Hendrix (born 1970), actress
- Sarah Monette (* 1974), author
- Adam Wingard (* 1982), film director, screenwriter and film editor
- Ellen Reid (* 1983), composer and sound artist
- Megan Fox (born 1986), actress
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b American Fact Finder. Retrieved February 15, 2014
- ↑ Oak Ridge: The Role of TVA during WWII ( Memento of the original from July 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b Oak Ridge: Why Oak Ridge ( Memento of the original from July 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Oak Ridge: Before the War ( Memento of the original from May 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ City of Oak Ridge: About Oak Ridge ( Memento of the original from February 4, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Vincenl C. Jones: Manhattan - The Army and the Atomic Bomb , Center of Military History, United States Army, Washington, DC 1985, pp. 436, 441
- ^ Manhattan Project History: Clinton Engineer Works (Oak Ridge) S-50 Plant
- ↑ Oak Ridge: The Oak Ridge Story ( Memento of the original from May 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ US Decennial Census.Retrieved February 15, 2014
- ↑ State & County QuickFacts - Oak Ridge, Tennessee ( Memento of the original from January 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved February 15, 2014
- ↑ Oakridgetoday.com: Titan at ORNL now world's fastest supercomputer , November 12, 2012
- ↑ heise.de: US supercomputer "Summit" is the fastest computer in the world , June 9, 2018
- ↑ James Bamford: The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say) . In: Wired , March 15, 2012
- ↑ United States Census Bureau: Oak Ridge Census 2000 ( Memento of December 11, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 40 kB)
- ↑ East Tennessee Technology Park: Quality of Life ( Memento of the original from June 8, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Web links
- Official website
- Oak Ridge Convention and Visitors Bureau - with an extensive history of the city
- city-data.com - Oak Ridge, Tennessee