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Argonne National Laboratory

Established	1946
Research Type	Research
Field of Research	Physical science Life science Environmental science Energy science Photon science
Director	Eric Isaacs
Location	Argonne, Illinois
Address	9700 S. Cass Avenue
Telephone	(630) 252-2000
Affiliations	United States Department of Energy University of Chicago Jacobs Engineering
Nobel Laureates	Enrico Fermi Maria Goeppert Mayer Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov
Website	anl.gov

Aerial view of Argonne National Laboratory

Argonne National Laboratory is the first science and engineering research national laboratory in the United States, receiving this designation on July 1, 1946.^[1] It is the largest national lab by size and scope in the Midwest. A multipurpose laboratory led by director Eric Isaacs^[2], Argonne maintains a broad portfolio in basic science research, energy storage and renewable energy, environmental sustainability, and national security. It is managed for the United States Department of Energy by UChicago Argonne, LLC, which is composed of the University of Chicago and Jacobs Engineering Group Inc.^[3] Argonne is a part of the expanding Illinois Technology and Research Corridor.

The lab is located on 1,700 acres (6.9 km²) in DuPage County, 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Chicago, Illinois, on Interstate 55, completely encircled by Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve. When it was first established it was known as the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory (Met Lab), and it was previously located within Red Gate Woods. Early in its history, the lab was part of the Manhattan Project, which built the first atomic bomb.

Argonne National Laboratory had a smaller facility called Argonne National Laboratory-West (or simply Argonne-West) in Idaho next to the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. In 2005, they merged together to become the Idaho National Laboratory. ^[4]

Overview

One of Argonne's famed white deer.

Argonne has five main areas of focus.^[5][6] These goals, as stated by the DOE in 2008,^[7] consist of:

• Conducting basic scientific research;
• Operating national scientific facilities;
• Enhancing the nation's energy resources;
• Developing better ways to manage environmental problems;
• Protecting national security.

Initiatives

• Hard X-ray Sciences - Argonne is home to one of the world’s largest high-energy light sources: the Advanced Photon Source (APS). Each year, scientists make thousands of discoveries while using the APS to characterize both organic and inorganic materials and even processes, such as how vehicle fuel injectors spray gasoline in engines.^[8]

Argonne's IBMBlue Gene/P supercomputer.

• Leadership Computing - Argonne maintains one of the fastest computers for open science, the IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer, and has developed system software for these massive machines. Argonne works to drive the evolution of leadership computing from petascale to exascale, develop new codes and computing environments, and expand computational efforts to help solve scientific challenges. For example, in October 2009, the lab announced that it would be embarking on a joint project to explore cloud computing for scientific purposes.^[9]

• Materials and Molecular Design and Discovery - Argonne scientists work to predict, understand, and control where and how to place individual atoms and molecules to achieve desired material properties. Among other innovations, Argonne scientists helped develop an ice slurry to cool the organs of heart attack victims,^[10] described what makes diamonds slippery at the nanoscale level,^[11] and discovered a superinsulating material that resists the flow of electric current more completely than any other previous material.^[12]

• Electrical Energy Storage - Argonne develops batteries for electric transportation technology grid storage for intermittent energy sources like wind or solar, and the manufacturing processes for these materials-intensive devices ^[13]. The lab has been working on advanced battery research and development for over 40 years.^[14] In the past 10 years, the lab has focused on lithium-ion batteries, and in September 2009, it announced an initiative to explore and improve their capabilities.^[15] Argonne also maintains an independent battery-testing facility, which tests sample batteries from both government and private industry to see how well they perform over time and under heat and cold stresses.^[16]

• Alternative Energy and Efficiency - Argonne develops both chemical and biological fuels tailored for current engines as well as improved combustion schemes for future engine technologies. The lab has also recommended best practices for conserving fuel; for example, a study that recommended installing auxiliary cab heaters for trucks in lieu of idling the engine.^[17] Meanwhile, the solar energy research program focuses on solar-fuel and solar-electric devices and systems that are scalable and economically competitive with fossil energy sources.^[18] Argonne scientists also explore best practices for a smart grid, both by modeling power flow between utilities and homes and by researching the technology for interfaces.^[19]

• Nuclear Energy - Argonne generates advanced reactor and fuel cycle technologies that enable the safe, sustainable generation of nuclear power. Argonne scientists develop and validate computational models and reactor simulations of future generation nuclear reactors.^[20] Another project studies how to reprocess spent nuclear fuel, so that waste is reduced up to 90%.^[21]

• Biological and Environmental Systems - Understanding the local effect of climate change requires integration of the interactions between the environment and human activities. Argonne scientists study these relationships from molecule to organism to ecosystem. Programs include bioremediation using trees to pull pollutants out of groundwater;^[22] biochips to detect cancers earlier;^[23] a project to target cancerous cells using nanoparticles;^[24] soil metagenomics; and a major climate change research project, ARM.^[25]

• National Security - Argonne develops security technologies that will prevent and mitigate events with potential for mass disruption or destruction. These include sensors that can detect chemical, biological, nuclear and explosive materials;^[26] portable Terahertz radiation ("T-ray") machines that detect dangerous materials more easily than X-rays at airports;^[27] and tracking and modeling the possible paths of chemicals released into a subway.^[28]

User facilities

Argonne's Center for Nanoscale Materials.

Argonne builds and maintains scientific facilities that would be too expensive for a single company or university to construct and operate. These facilities are used by scientists from Argonne, private industry, academia, other national laboratories and international scientific organizations.

• Advanced Photon Source (APS) – a national synchrotron X-ray research facility which produces the brightest x-ray beams in the Western Hemisphere.^[29]

• Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM) – a user facility located on the APS which provides infrastructure and instruments to study nanotechnology and nanomaterials. The CNM is one of five U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Nanoscale Science Research Centers.^[30]

• Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS) – ATLAS is the world's first superconducting particle accelerator for heavy ions at energies in the vicinity of the Coulomb barrier. This is the energy domain suited to study the properties of the nucleus, the core of matter and the fuel of stars.^[31]

• Electron Microscopy Center (EMC) – one of three DOE-supported scientific user facilities for electron beam microcharacterization. The EMC conducts in situ studies of transformations and defect processes, ion beam modification and irradiation effects, superconductors, ferroelectrics and interfaces. Its intermediate voltage electron microscope, which is coupled with an accelerator, represents the only such system in the United States.^[32]

Argonne's Advanced Photon Source facility

• Argonne Leadership Computing Facility – Provides leadership-class computing resources, including computer time, resources and data storage, to the scientific community. Argonne is home to Intrepid, an IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer, recently ranked the second most energy-efficient supercomputer of its class by Green500^[33] and ranked the eighth-fastest supercomputer worldwide.^[34]

• Structural Biology Center (SBC) – The SBC is a user facility located off the Advanced Photon Source X-ray facility, which specializes in macromolecular crystallography. Users have access to an insertion-device, a bending-magnet, and a biochemistry laboratory. SBC beamlines are often used to map out the crystal structures of proteins; in the past, users have imaged proteins from anthrax, meningitis-causing bacteria, salmonella, and other pathogenic bacteria.^[35]

• Transportation Research & Analysis Computing Center (TRACC) – a facility which uses high-performance computing to analyze and create data and visual models for a variety of transportation issues, including crashworthiness, aerodynamics, combustion, thermal management, weather modeling and traffic simulation.^[36]

• Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility (ARM) – Argonne is one of nine national labs which contribute to the ARM program, designed to research global climate change. Argonne oversees ARM operations and manages a meteorological data-gathering site in Oklahoma and a mobile data-gathering facility.^[37]

Educational and community outreach

A student checks out Argonne's Gyro Wheel at the Open House.

Argonne welcomes all members of the public age 16 or older to take guided tours of the scientific and engineering facilities and grounds. Tours last about two and a half hours. For children under 16, Argonne offers a range of hands-on learning activities suitable for K-12 field trips and scout outings. The laboratory also hosts educational science and engineering outreach for schools in the surrounding area.

Argonne scientists and engineers help advance science, engineering, and mathematics education in the United States by taking part in the training of nearly 1,000 college graduate students and post-doctoral researchers every year as part of their research and development activities.

Directors

Over the course of its history, 11 eminent scientists have served as Argonne Director:

• 1946-1956 Walter Zinn
• 1957-1961 Norman Hilberry
• 1961-1967 Albert V. Crewe
• 1967-1973 Robert B. Duffield
• 1973-1979 Robert G. Sachs
• 1979-1984 Walter E. Massey
• 1984-1996 Alan Schriesheim
• 1996-1998 Dean E. Eastman
• 2000-2005 Hermann A. Grunder
• 2005-2008 Robert Rosner
• 2009-present Eric Isaacs

Argonne in modern media

Significant portions of the 1996 chase movie Chain Reaction were filmed in the Zero-Gradient Synchrotron ring room and the former Continuous Wave Deuterium Demonstrator laboratory.[1]

Notable staff

• Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov
• Rodney Cotterill
• Enrico Fermi
• Walter E. Massey
• Maria Goeppert Mayer
• Gilbert Jerome Perlow

See also

• Canadian Penning Trap Spectrometer
• Gammasphere
• Track Imaging Cherenkov Experiment

External links

• Argonne National Laboratory Official Argonne website
• Argonne News News releases, media center
• Argonne Experts Guide Experts for the media
• Photo repository Photography for public use

Coordinates: 41°42′33″N 87°58′55″W / 41.709166°N 87.981992°W / 41.709166; -87.981992

Manhattan Project Sites Hanford Engineer Works · Oak Ridge National Laboratory · Los Alamos National Laboratory · Berkeley Radiation Laboratory · Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory · Trinity Test Site · Project Alberta · Ames Laboratory · Dayton Project Administrators Vannevar Bush · Leslie Groves · J. Robert Oppenheimer · Franklin D. Roosevelt · Harry S. Truman Scientists Hans Bethe · Arthur Compton · Enrico Fermi · Richard Feynman · Klaus Fuchs · Ernest Lawrence · Emilio G. Segrè · Glenn T. Seaborg · Leó Szilárd · Edward Teller · Chien-Shiung Wu Related articles Timeline · History of nuclear weapons · Nuclear weapons and the United States · S-1 Uranium Committee · Chicago Pile-1 (Nuclear Energy) · X-10 Graphite Reactor · Y-12 National Security Complex · Operation Alsos · Smyth Report · 509th Operations Group · Fat Man · Little Boy · Enola Gay · Bockscar · The Great Artiste · Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (debate) See also: All articles in the Manhattan Project category

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Municipalities and communities of DuPage County, Illinois County seat: Wheaton Cities Aurora‡ | Batavia‡ | Chicago‡ | Darien | Elmhurst | Naperville‡ | Oakbrook Terrace | St. Charles‡ | Warrenville | West Chicago | Wheaton | Wood Dale Villages Addison | Bartlett‡ | Bensenville‡ | Bloomingdale | Bolingbrook‡ | Burr Ridge‡ | Carol Stream | Clarendon Hills | Downers Grove | Elk Grove Village‡ | Glendale Heights | Glen Ellyn | Hanover Park‡ | Hinsdale‡ | Itasca | Lemont‡ | Lisle | Lombard | Oak Brook | Roselle‡ | Schaumburg‡ | Villa Park | Wayne‡ | Westmont | Willowbrook | Winfield | Woodridge‡ Townships Addison | Bloomingdale | Downers Grove | Lisle | Milton | Naperville | Wayne | Winfield | York Unincorporated communities Eola | Medinah Footnotes ‡This populated place also has portions in an adjacent county or counties

Notes

References

• Argonne National Laboratory, 1946-96. Jack M. Holl, Richard G. Hewlett, Ruth R. Harris. University of Illinois Press, 1997. ISBN 9780252023415.