Argonne National Laboratory is a

federally funded research and development center Federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) are public-private partnerships that conduct research and development for the United States Government. Under Federal Acquisition Regulationbr>§ 35.017 FFRDCs are operated by univers ...

in Lemont,

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash River, Wabash and Ohio River, Ohio rivers to its ...

, United States. Founded in 1946, the laboratory is owned by the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and energy production, the research and development of nuclear power, the military's nuclear w ...

and administered by UChicago Argonne LLC of the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

. The facility is the largest national laboratory in the

Midwest The Midwestern United States (also referred to as the Midwest, the Heartland or the American Midwest) is one of the four census regions defined by the United States Census Bureau. It occupies the northern central part of the United States. It ...

. Argonne had its beginnings in the

Metallurgical Laboratory The Metallurgical Laboratory (or Met Lab) was a scientific laboratory from 1942 to 1946 at the University of Chicago. It was established in February 1942 and became the Argonne National Laboratory in July 1946. The laboratory was established i ...

of the

, formed in part to carry out

Enrico Fermi Enrico Fermi (; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian and naturalized American physicist, renowned for being the creator of the world's first artificial nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1, and a member of the Manhattan Project ...

's work on

nuclear reactor A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a Nuclear fission, fission nuclear chain reaction. They are used for Nuclear power, commercial electricity, nuclear marine propulsion, marine propulsion, Weapons-grade plutonium, weapons ...

s for the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development program undertaken during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States in collaboration with the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. After the war, it was designated as the first national laboratory in the United States on July 1, 1946. In its first decades, the laboratory was a hub for peaceful use of

nuclear physics Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies atomic nuclei and their constituents and interactions, in addition to the study of other forms of nuclear matter. Nuclear physics should not be confused with atomic physics, which studies th ...

; nearly all operating commercial

nuclear power plants A nuclear power plant (NPP), also known as a nuclear power station (NPS), nuclear generating station (NGS) or atomic power station (APS) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power s ...

around the world have roots in Argonne research. More than 1,000 scientists conduct research at the laboratory, in the fields of

energy storage Energy storage is the capture of energy produced at one time for use at a later time to reduce imbalances between energy demand and energy production. A device that stores energy is generally called an Accumulator (energy), accumulator or Batte ...

and

renewable energy Renewable energy (also called green energy) is energy made from renewable resource, renewable natural resources that are replenished on a human lifetime, human timescale. The most widely used renewable energy types are solar energy, wind pow ...

;

fundamental research Basic research, also called pure research, fundamental research, basic science, or pure science, is a type of scientific research with the aim of improving scientific theories for better understanding and prediction of natural or other phenome ...

physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...

, and

materials science Materials science is an interdisciplinary field of researching and discovering materials. Materials engineering is an engineering field of finding uses for materials in other fields and industries. The intellectual origins of materials sci ...

;

environmental sustainability Sustainability is a social goal for people to co-exist on Earth over a long period of time. Definitions of this term are disputed and have varied with literature, context, and time. Sustainability usually has three dimensions (or pillars): env ...

;

supercomputing A supercomputer is a type of computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instruc ...

; and

national security National security, or national defence (national defense in American English), is the security and Defence (military), defence of a sovereign state, including its Citizenship, citizens, economy, and institutions, which is regarded as a duty of ...

. Argonne formerly ran 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, the two Idaho-based laboratories merged to become the

Idaho National Laboratory Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is one of the national laboratories of the United States Department of Energy and is managed by the Battelle Energy Alliance. Historically, the lab has been involved with nuclear research, although the labora ...

. Argonne is a part of the expanding

Illinois Technology and Research Corridor The Illinois Technology and Research Corridor is a region of commerce and industry located along Interstate 88 in the Chicago metropolitan area, primarily in Cook, DuPage, Kane, and DeKalb Counties. The corridor is home to the headquarters o ...

Fermilab Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located in Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle phys ...

, which is another USDoE National Laboratory, is located approximately away.

Overview

Argonne has five areas of focus, as stated by the laboratory in 2022, including scientific discovery in physical and life sciences; energy and climate research; global security advances to protect society; operating research facilities that support thousands of scientists and engineers from around the world; and developing the scientific and technological workforce.

History

Origins

Argonne began in 1942 as the

, part of the

at the

. The Met Lab built

Chicago Pile-1 Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1) was the first artificial nuclear reactor. On 2 December 1942, the first human-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was initiated in CP-1 during an experiment led by Enrico Fermi. The secret development of the react ...

, the world's first

, under the stands of the University of Chicago sports stadium. In 1943, CP-1 was reconstructed as CP-2, in the Argonne Forest, a forest preserve location outside Chicago. The laboratory facilities built here became known as

Site A Site A was a research facility near Chicago where, during World War II, research on behalf of the Manhattan Project was carried out. Operated by the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory, it was the site of Chicago Pile-2, a reconstru ...

. On July 1, 1946, Site A of the "Metallurgical Laboratory" was formally re-chartered as Argonne National Laboratory for "cooperative research in nucleonics." At the request of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, it began developing nuclear reactors for the nation's peaceful nuclear energy program. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the laboratory moved west to a larger location in unincorporated

DuPage County DuPage County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of Illinois, and one of the collar counties of the Chicago metropolitan area. As of the 2020 census, the population was 932,877, making it Illinois' second-most populous county. Its county seat ...

and established a remote location in

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain states, Mountain West subregions of the Western United States. It borders Montana and Wyoming to the east, Nevada and Utah to the south, and Washington (state), ...

, called "Argonne-West," to conduct further nuclear research.

Early research

The lab's early efforts focused on developing designs and materials for producing electricity from nuclear reactions. The laboratory designed and built Chicago Pile 3 (1944), the world's first heavy-water moderated reactor, and the

Experimental Breeder Reactor I Experimental Breeder Reactor I (EBR-I) is a decommissioned research reactor and U.S. National Historic Landmark located in the desert about southeast of Arco, Idaho. It was the world's first breeder reactor. At 1:50 p.m. on December 2 ...

(Chicago Pile 4) in Idaho, which lit a string of four light bulbs with the world's first nuclear-generated electricity in 1951. The

BWR BWR or bwr may refer to: * Benedict–Webb–Rubin equation, an equation of state used in fluid dynamics * '' Black Warrior Review'', a non-profit American literary magazine based at the University of Alabama * Boiling water reactor, a type of lig ...

power station reactor, now the second most popular design worldwide, came from the BORAX experiments. The knowledge gained from the Argonne experiments was the foundation for the designs of most of the commercial reactors used throughout the world for electric power generation, and inform the current evolving designs of liquid-metal reactors for future power stations. Meanwhile, the laboratory was also helping to design the reactor for the world's first

nuclear-powered Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced b ...

submarine A submarine (often shortened to sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. (It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability.) The term "submarine" is also sometimes used historically or infor ...

, the U.S.S. ''Nautilus'', which steamed for more than and provided a basis for the United States'

nuclear navy A nuclear navy, or nuclear-powered navy, refers to the portion of a navy consisting of naval ships powered by nuclear marine propulsion. The concept was revolutionary for naval warfare when first proposed. Prior to nuclear power, submarines were ...

. Not all nuclear technology went into developing reactors, however. While designing a scanner for reactor fuel elements in 1957, Argonne physicist William Nelson Beck put his own arm inside the scanner and obtained one of the first

ultrasound Ultrasound is sound with frequency, frequencies greater than 20 Hertz, kilohertz. This frequency is the approximate upper audible hearing range, limit of human hearing in healthy young adults. The physical principles of acoustic waves apply ...

images of the human body. Remote manipulators designed to handle radioactive materials laid the groundwork for more complex machines used to clean up contaminated areas, sealed laboratories or caves. In addition to nuclear work, the laboratory performed basic research in

and

. In 1955, Argonne chemists co-discovered the elements

einsteinium Einsteinium is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Es and atomic number 99 and is a member of the actinide series and the seventh transuranium element. Einsteinium was discovered as a component of the debris of the first hydrogen bomb ...

and

fermium Fermium is a synthetic chemical element; it has symbol Fm and atomic number 100. It is an actinide and the heaviest element that can be formed by neutron bombardment of lighter elements, and hence the last element that can be prepared in macros ...

, elements 99 and 100 in the

periodic table The periodic table, also known as the periodic table of the elements, is an ordered arrangement of the chemical elements into rows (" periods") and columns (" groups"). It is an icon of chemistry and is widely used in physics and other s ...

1960–1995

In 1962, Argonne chemists produced the first compound of the inert

noble gas The noble gases (historically the inert gases, sometimes referred to as aerogens) are the members of Group (periodic table), group 18 of the periodic table: helium (He), neon (Ne), argon (Ar), krypton (Kr), xenon (Xe), radon (Rn) and, in some ...

xenon Xenon is a chemical element; it has symbol Xe and atomic number 54. It is a dense, colorless, odorless noble gas found in Earth's atmosphere in trace amounts. Although generally unreactive, it can undergo a few chemical reactions such as the ...

, opening up a new field of chemical bonding research. In 1963, they discovered the hydrated electron. Argonne was chosen as the site of the 12.5 GeV Zero Gradient Synchrotron, a proton accelerator that opened in 1963. A

bubble chamber A bubble chamber is a vessel filled with a superheated transparent liquid (most often liquid hydrogen) used to detect electrically charged particles moving through it. It was invented in 1952 by Donald A. Glaser, for which he was awarded th ...

allowed scientists to track the motions of

subatomic particle In physics, a subatomic particle is a particle smaller than an atom. According to the Standard Model of particle physics, a subatomic particle can be either a composite particle, which is composed of other particles (for example, a baryon, lik ...

s as they zipped through the chamber; they later observed the

neutrino A neutrino ( ; denoted by the Greek letter ) is an elementary particle that interacts via the weak interaction and gravity. The neutrino is so named because it is electrically neutral and because its rest mass is so small ('' -ino'') that i ...

in a hydrogen bubble chamber for the first time. In 1964, the "Janus" reactor opened to study the effects of neutron radiation on biological life, providing research for guidelines on safe exposure levels for workers at power plants, laboratories and hospitals. Scientists at Argonne pioneered a technique to analyze the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...

's surface using

alpha radiation Alpha decay or α-decay is a type of radioactive decay in which an atomic nucleus emits an alpha particle (helium nucleus). The parent nucleus transforms or "decays" into a daughter product, with a mass number that is reduced by four and an atom ...

, which launched aboard the Surveyor 5 in 1967 and later analyzed lunar samples from the

Apollo 11 Apollo 11 was a spaceflight conducted from July 16 to 24, 1969, by the United States and launched by NASA. It marked the first time that humans Moon landing, landed on the Moon. Commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin l ...

mission. In 1978, the Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS) opened as the world's first superconducting accelerator for projectiles heavier than the electron. Nuclear engineering experiments during this time included the Experimental

Boiling Water Reactor A boiling water reactor (BWR) is a type of nuclear reactor used for the generation of electrical power. It is the second most common type of electricity-generating nuclear reactor after the pressurized water reactor (PWR). BWR are thermal neutro ...

, the forerunner of many modern nuclear plants, and Experimental Breeder Reactor II (EBR-II), which was sodium-cooled, and included a fuel recycling facility. EBR-II was later modified to test other reactor designs, including a

fast-neutron reactor A fast-neutron reactor (FNR) or fast-spectrum reactor or simply a fast reactor is a category of nuclear reactor in which the fission chain reaction is sustained by fast neutrons (carrying energies above 1 MeV, on average), as opposed to slow t ...

and, in 1982, the

Integral Fast Reactor The integral fast reactor (IFR), originally the advanced liquid-metal reactor (ALMR), is a design for a nuclear reactor using fast neutrons and no neutron moderator (a "fast" reactor). IFRs can breed more fuel and are distinguished by a nuclea ...

concept—a revolutionary design that reprocessed its own fuel, reduced its atomic waste and withstood safety tests of the same failures that triggered the

Chernobyl Chernobyl, officially called Chornobyl, is a partially abandoned city in Vyshhorod Raion, Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine. It is located within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, to the north of Kyiv and to the southwest of Gomel in neighbouring Belarus. ...

and Three Mile Island disasters. In 1994, however, the U.S. Congress terminated funding for the bulk of Argonne's nuclear programs. Argonne moved to specialize in other areas, while capitalizing on its experience in physics, chemical sciences and

metallurgy Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the ...

. In 1987, the laboratory was the first to successfully demonstrate a pioneering technique called plasma wakefield acceleration, which accelerates particles in much shorter distances than conventional accelerators. It also cultivated a strong

battery Battery or batterie most often refers to: * Electric battery, a device that provides electrical power * Battery (crime), a crime involving unlawful physical contact Battery may also refer to: Energy source * Battery indicator, a device whic ...

research program. Following a major push by then-director Alan Schriesheim, the laboratory was chosen as the site of the

Advanced Photon Source The Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory (in Lemont, Illinois) is a storage-ring-based high-energy X-ray light source facility. It is one of five X-ray light sources owned and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office ...

, a major X-ray facility which was completed in 1995 and produced the brightest X-rays in the world at the time of its construction.

Since 1995

The laboratory continued to develop as a center for energy research, as well as a site for scientific facilities too large to be hosted at universities. In the early 2000s, the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility was founded and hosted multiple

supercomputers A supercomputer is a type of computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instru ...

, several of which ranked among the top 10 most powerful in the world at the time of their construction. The laboratory also built the Center for Nanoscale Materials for conducting materials research at the atomic level; and greatly expanded its battery research and quantum technology programs. ''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once integrated WGN (AM), WGN radio and ...

'' reported in March 2019 that the laboratory was constructing the world's most powerful supercomputer. Costing $500 million, it will have the processing power of 1 quintillion

FLOPS Floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance in computing, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate measu ...

. Applications will include the analysis of stars and improvements in the power grid.

Initiatives

Mira - Blue Gene Q at Argonne National Laboratory

*Hard X-ray Sciences: Argonne is home to one of the world's largest high-energy light sources: the

(APS). Each year, scientists make thousands of discoveries while using the APS to characterize both

organic Organic may refer to: * Organic, of or relating to an organism, a living entity * Organic, of or relating to an anatomical organ Chemistry * Organic matter, matter that has come from a once-living organism, is capable of decay or is the product ...

and

inorganic materials An inorganic compound is typically a chemical compound that lacks carbon–hydrogen bonds⁠that is, a compound that is not an organic compound. The study of inorganic compounds is a subfield of chemistry known as ''inorganic chemistry''. Inorgan ...

and even processes, such as how vehicle

fuel injector Fuel injection is the introduction of fuel in an internal combustion engine, most commonly automotive engines, by the means of a fuel injector. This article focuses on fuel injection in reciprocating piston and Wankel rotary engines. All co ...

s spray gasoline in engines. *Leadership Computing: Argonne maintains one of the fastest computers for open science and has developed system software for these massive machines. Argonne works to drive the evolution of leadership computing from

petascale Petascale computing refers to computing systems capable of performing at least 1 quadrillion (10^15) floating-point operations per second (FLOPS). These systems are often called petaflops systems and represent a significant leap from traditional ...

to exascale, develop new codes and computing environments, and expand computational efforts to help solve scientific challenges. For example, in October 2009, the laboratory announced that it would be embarking on a joint project to explore

cloud computing Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

for scientific purposes. In the 1970s Argonne translated the ''

Numerische Mathematik ''Numerische Mathematik'' is a peer review, peer-reviewed mathematics journal on numerical analysis. It was established in 1959 and is published by Springer Science+Business Media. The journal is indexed by ''Mathematical Reviews'' and Zentralblatt ...

'' numerical linear algebra programs from

ALGOL ALGOL (; short for "Algorithmic Language") is a family of imperative computer programming languages originally developed in 1958. ALGOL heavily influenced many other languages and was the standard method for algorithm description used by the ...

to Fortran and this library was expanded into

LINPACK LINPACK is a software library for performing numerical linear algebra on digital computers. It was written in Fortran by Jack Dongarra, Jim Bunch, Cleve Moler, and Gilbert Stewart, and was intended for use on supercomputers in the 1970s and e ...

and

EISPACK EISPACK is a software library for numerical computation of eigenvalues and eigenvectors of matrices, written in FORTRAN. It contains subroutines for calculating the eigenvalues of nine classes of matrices: complex general, complex Hermitian, real ...

, by

Cleve Moler Cleve Barry Moler (born August 17, 1939) is an American mathematician and computer programmer specializing in numerical analysis. In the mid to late 1970s, he was one of the authors of LINPACK and EISPACK, Fortran libraries for numerical compu ...

, et al. *Materials for Energy: 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, described what makes diamonds slippery at the

nanoscale Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers (nm). At this scale, commonly known as the nanoscale, surface area and quantum mechanical effects become important in describing propertie ...

level, and discovered a superinsulating material that resists the flow of electric current more completely than any other previous material. *Electrical Energy Storage: Argonne develops batteries for

electric transportation technology An electric vehicle (EV) is a motor vehicle whose propulsion is powered fully or mostly by electricity. EVs encompass a wide range of transportation modes, including road vehicle, road and rail vehicles, electric boats and Submersible, submer ...

and

grid Grid, The Grid, or GRID may refer to: Space partitioning * Regular grid, a tessellation of space with translational symmetry, typically formed from parallelograms or higher-dimensional analogs ** Grid graph, a graph structure with nodes connec ...

storage for intermittent

energy Energy () is the physical quantity, quantitative physical property, property that is transferred to a physical body, body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of Work (thermodynamics), work and in the form of heat and l ...

sources like

wind Wind is the natural movement of atmosphere of Earth, air or other gases relative to a planetary surface, planet's surface. Winds occur on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heatin ...

solar Solar may refer to: Astronomy * Of or relating to the Sun ** Solar telescope, a special purpose telescope used to observe the Sun ** A device that utilizes solar energy (e.g. "solar panels") ** Solar calendar, a calendar whose dates indicate t ...

, as well as the manufacturing processes needed for these materials-intensive systems. The laboratory has been working on advanced battery materials research and development for over 50 years. In the past 10 years, the laboratory has focused on

lithium-ion batteries A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery that uses the reversible intercalation of Li+ ions into electronically conducting solids to store energy. Li-ion batteries are characterized by higher specific energy, energy ...

, and in September 2009, it announced an initiative to explore and improve their capabilities. 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. *Alternative Energy and Efficiency: Argonne develops both

chemical A chemical substance is a unique form of matter with constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Chemical substances may take the form of a single element or chemical compounds. If two or more chemical substances can be combin ...

and

biological Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, and distribution of ...

fuel A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy as thermal energy or to be used for work (physics), work. The concept was originally applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chem ...

s tailored for current engines as well as improved

combustion Combustion, or burning, is a high-temperature exothermic redox chemical reaction between a fuel (the reductant) and an oxidant, usually atmospheric oxygen, that produces oxidized, often gaseous products, in a mixture termed as smoke. Combustion ...

schemes for future engine technologies. The laboratory 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. Meanwhile, the

solar energy Solar energy is the radiant energy from the Sun's sunlight, light and heat, which can be harnessed using a range of technologies such as solar electricity, solar thermal energy (including solar water heating) and solar architecture. It is a ...

research program focuses on solar-fuel and solar-electric devices and systems that are scalable and economically competitive with

fossil energy A fossil fuel is a flammable carbon compound- or hydrocarbon-containing material formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the buried remains of prehistoric organisms (animals, plants or microplanktons), a process that occurs within geolog ...

sources. Argonne scientists also explore best practices for a

smart grid The smart grid is an enhancement of the 20th century electrical grid, using two-way communications and distributed so-called intelligent devices. Two-way flows of electricity and information could improve the delivery network. Research is main ...

, both by modeling power flow between utilities and homes and by researching the technology for interfaces. *Nuclear Energy: Argonne generates advanced reactor and fuel cycle technologies that enable the safe, sustainable generation of

nuclear power Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by ...

. Argonne scientists develop and validate computational models and reactor simulations of future generation

nuclear reactors A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a fission nuclear chain reaction. They are used for commercial electricity, marine propulsion, weapons production and research. Fissile nuclei (primarily uranium-235 or plutonium-2 ...

. Another project studies how to reprocess

spent nuclear fuel Spent nuclear fuel, occasionally called used nuclear fuel, is nuclear fuel that has been irradiated in a nuclear reactor (usually at a nuclear power plant). It is no longer useful in sustaining a nuclear reaction in an ordinary thermal reactor and ...

, so that waste is reduced up to 90%. *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 Bioremediation broadly refers to any process wherein a biological system (typically bacteria, microalgae, fungi in mycoremediation, and plants in phytoremediation), living or dead, is employed for removing environmental pollutants from air, wate ...

using

tree In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, e.g., including only woody plants with secondary growth, only ...

s to pull

pollutant A pollutant or novel entity is a substance or energy introduced into the environment that has undesired effect, or adversely affects the usefulness of a resource. These can be both naturally forming (i.e. minerals or extracted compounds like oi ...

s out of

groundwater Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and Pore space in soil, soil pore spaces and in the fractures of stratum, rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available fresh water in the world is groundwater. A unit ...

; biochips to detect cancers earlier; a project to target

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving Cell growth#Disorders, abnormal cell growth with the potential to Invasion (cancer), invade or Metastasis, spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Po ...

ous cells using

nanoparticle A nanoparticle or ultrafine particle is a particle of matter 1 to 100 nanometres (nm) in diameter. The term is sometimes used for larger particles, up to 500 nm, or fibers and tubes that are less than 100 nm in only two directions. At ...

s; soil

metagenomics Metagenomics is the study of all genetics, genetic material from all organisms in a particular environment, providing insights into their composition, diversity, and functional potential. Metagenomics has allowed researchers to profile the mic ...

; and a user facility for the

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement User Facility (ARM User Facility) is a multi-laboratory United States Department of Energy scientific user facility used for national and international global climate research efforts. The ARM User Facility ...

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

research project. *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; portable

Terahertz radiation Terahertz radiation – also known as submillimeter radiation, terahertz waves, tremendously high frequency (THF), T-rays, T-waves, T-light, T-lux or THz – consists of electromagnetic waves within the International Telecommunicat ...

("T-ray") machines that detect dangerous materials more easily than X-rays at airports; and tracking and modeling the possible paths of chemicals released into a subway.

User facilities

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. *

(APS): a national synchrotron X-ray research facility which produces the brightest

X-ray An X-ray (also known in many languages as Röntgen radiation) is a form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than those of ultraviolet rays and longer than those of gamma rays. Roughly, X-rays have a wavelength ran ...

beams in the

Western Hemisphere The Western Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth that lies west of the Prime Meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the 180th meridian.- The other half is called the Eastern Hemisphere. Geopolitically, ...

. *

Center for Nanoscale Materials The Center for Nanoscale Materials is one of five Nanoscale Science Research Centers the United States Department of Energy sponsors. The Center is at Argonne National Laboratory location in Lemont, Illinois. The Center for Nanoscale Materials at ...

(CNM): a user facility located on the APS which provides infrastructure and instruments to study

nanotechnology Nanotechnology is the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers (nm). At this scale, commonly known as the nanoscale, surface area and quantum mechanical effects become important in describing propertie ...

and

nanomaterials Nanomaterials describe, in principle, chemical substances or materials of which a single unit is sized (in at least one dimension) between 1 and 100 nm (the usual definition of nanoscale). Nanomaterials research takes a materials science ...

. The CNM is one of five U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Nanoscale Science Research Centers. * Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS): ATLAS is the world's first superconducting

particle accelerator A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel electric charge, charged particles to very high speeds and energies to contain them in well-defined particle beam, beams. Small accelerators are used for fundamental ...

for heavy ions at energies in the vicinity of the

Coulomb barrier The Coulomb barrier, named after Coulomb's law, which is in turn named after physicist Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, is the energy barrier due to electrostatic interaction that two nuclei need to overcome so they can get close enough to undergo a ...

. This is the energy domain suited to study the properties of the nucleus, the core of matter and the fuel of stars.

Centers

*The Advanced Materials for Energy-Water Systems (AMEWS) Center is an Energy Frontier Research Center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. Led by Argonne National Laboratory and including the

and

Northwestern University Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...

as partners, AMEWS works to solve the challenges that exist at the interface of water and the materials that make up the systems that handle, process and treat water. * 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. *Biology Center (SBC): The SBC is a user facility located off the Advanced Photon Source X-ray facility, which specializes in

macromolecular crystallography A macromolecule is a "molecule of high relative molecular mass, the structure of which essentially comprises the multiple repetition of units derived, actually or conceptually, from molecules of low relative molecular mass." Polymers are physi ...

. 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

protein Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residue (biochemistry), residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including Enzyme catalysis, catalysing metab ...

s; in the past, users have imaged proteins from

anthrax Anthrax is an infection caused by the bacterium '' Bacillus anthracis'' or ''Bacillus cereus'' biovar ''anthracis''. Infection typically occurs by contact with the skin, inhalation, or intestinal absorption. Symptom onset occurs between one ...

meningitis Meningitis is acute or chronic inflammation of the protective membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, collectively called the meninges. The most common symptoms are fever, intense headache, vomiting and neck stiffness and occasion ...

-causing bacteria,

salmonella ''Salmonella'' is a genus of bacillus (shape), rod-shaped, (bacillus) Gram-negative bacteria of the family Enterobacteriaceae. The two known species of ''Salmonella'' are ''Salmonella enterica'' and ''Salmonella bongori''. ''S. enterica'' ...

, and other

pathogenic bacteria Pathogenic bacteria are bacteria that can cause disease. This article focuses on the bacteria that are pathogenic to humans. Most species of bacteria are harmless and many are Probiotic, beneficial but others can cause infectious diseases. The nu ...

. *The Network Enabled Optimization System (NEOS) Server is the first network-enabled problem-solving environment for a wide class of applications in business, science, and engineering. Included are state-of-the-art solvers in integer programming, nonlinear optimization,

linear programming Linear programming (LP), also called linear optimization, is a method to achieve the best outcome (such as maximum profit or lowest cost) in a mathematical model whose requirements and objective are represented by linear function#As a polynomia ...

stochastic programming In the field of mathematical optimization, stochastic programming is a framework for modeling optimization problems that involve uncertainty. A stochastic program is an optimization problem in which some or all problem parameters are uncertain, ...

, and complementarity problems. Most NEOS solvers accept input in the AMPL modeling language. *The Joint Center for Energy Storage Research (JCESR) is a consortium of several national laboratories, academic institutions, and industrial partners based at Argonne National Laboratory. The mission of JCESR is to design and build transformative materials enabling next-generation batteries that satisfy all the performance metrics for a given application. *The Midwest Integrated Center for Computational Materials (MICCoM) is headquartered at the laboratory. MICCoM develops and disseminates interoperable

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

, data, and validation procedures to simulate and predict properties of functional materials for

energy conversion Energy transformation, also known as energy conversion, is the process of changing energy from one form to another. In physics, energy is a quantity that provides the capacity to perform Work (physics), work (e.g. lifting an object) or provides ...

processes. *The ReCell Center is a national collaboration of industry, academia and national laboratories, led by Argonne National Laboratory, working to advance recycling technologies along the entire battery life cycle. The center aims to grow a sustainable advanced

battery recycling Battery recycling is a recycling activity that aims to reduce the number of batteries being disposed as municipal solid waste. Batteries contain a number of heavy metals and toxic chemicals and disposing of them by the same process as regula ...

industry by developing economic and environmentally sound recycling processes that can be adopted by industry for

lithium-ion A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery that uses the reversible Intercalation (chemistry), intercalation of Li+ ions into electronically Electrical conductor, conducting solids to store energy. Li-ion batteries are c ...

and future battery chemistries.

Educational and community outreach

Argonne welcomes all members of the public age 16 or older to take guided tours of the scientific and engineering facilities and grounds. For children under 16, Argonne offers hands-on learning activities suitable for K–12 field trips. The laboratory also hosts educational science and engineering outreach for schools in the surrounding area. Argonne scientists and engineers take 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, 14 individuals have served as Argonne Director:

In media

Significant portions of the 1996 chase film ''

Chain Reaction A chain reaction is a sequence of reactions where a reactive product or by-product causes additional reactions to take place. In a chain reaction, positive feedback leads to a self-amplifying chain of events. Chain reactions are one way that sys ...

'' were shot in the Zero Gradient Synchrotron ring room and the former Continuous Wave Deuterium Demonstrator laboratory.

Notable staff

Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov (; June 25, 1928 – March 29, 2017) was a Soviet, Russian and AmericanAlexei A. AbrikosovAutobiography Nobelprize.org, the official website of the Nobel Prize, 2003 theoretical physicist whose main contributions are ...

* Khalil Amine *

Paul Benioff Paul Anthony Benioff (May 1, 1930 – March 29, 2022) was an American physicist who helped pioneer the field of quantum computing. Benioff was best known for his research in quantum information theory during the 1970s and 80s that demons ...

* Charles H. Bennett * Sandra Biedron * Margaret K. Butler *

David Callaway David James Edward Callaway is a biological nanophysicist in the New York University School of Medicine, where he is professor and laboratory director. He was trained as a theoretical physicist by Richard Feynman, Kip Thorne, and Cosmas Zachos, a ...

* Yanglai Cho * George Crabtree * Seth Darling * Harold B. Evans * Paul Fenter *

Stuart Freedman Stuart Jay Freedman (January 13, 1944 – November 10, 2012) was an American physicist, known for his experiment testing Bell's inequality proposed to him by John Clauser at the University of California, Berkeley as well as for his contributions ...

* Ian Foster *

Wallace Givens James Wallace Givens, Jr. (December 14, 1910 – March 5, 1993) was a mathematician and a pioneer in computer science. He is the eponym of the well-known Givens rotations. Born the son of two teachers in Alberene, Virginia (a small town near Cha ...

Raymond Goertz Raymond C. Goertz (March 12, 1915 – June 4, 1970) was an American mechanical engineer and an early pioneer in the field of robotics, specifically remote-controlled robots (see telepresence). In 1949, while working for the Atomic Energy Commis ...

* Maury C. Goodman * Kawtar Hafidi *Morton Hamermesh * Cynthia Hall * Katrin Heitmann *

Caroline Herzenberg Caroline Stuart Littlejohn Herzenberg (born March 25, 1932) is an American physicist. Biography Caroline Herzenberg was born Caroline Stuart Littlejohn to Caroline Dorothea Schulze and Charles Frederick Littlejohn on March 25, 1932, in East Orang ...

* Paul Kearns * Harold Lichtenberger *

Maria Goeppert Mayer Maria Goeppert Mayer (; ; June 28, 1906 – February 20, 1972) was a German-American theoretical physicist who shared the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physics with J. Hans D. Jensen and Eugene Wigner. One half of the prize was awarded jointly to Goeppe ...

William McCune William Walker McCune (December 17, 1953 – May 2, 2011) was an American computer scientist and logician working in the fields of automated reasoning, algebra, logic, and formal methods. Biography He was best known for the development of the Ot ...

Joël Mesot Joël François Mesot (born 31 August 1964) is a Swiss physicist and academic. He is currently the President (education), President of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, also known as ETH Zurich. Biography Mesot was born in Gen ...

* Carlo Montemagno *

José Enrique Moyal José Enrique Moyal (‎; 1 October 1910 – 22 May 1998) was an Australian mathematician and mathematical physicist who contributed to aeronautical engineering, electrical engineering and statistics, among other fields.Ann Moyal, ''Maverick M ...

* Gilbert Jerome Perlow *

Stephen Turnham Pratt Stephen Turnham Pratt is a senior chemist and Argonne Distinguished Fellow (awarded 2019). He is the theme lead for CSE’s Fundamental Interactions Theme and the group leader for the Gas-Phase Chemical Dynamics group. From September 2022 until ...

Lloyd_Quarterman Lloyd Albert Quarterman (May 31, 1918 – July 1982) was an American chemist working mainly with fluorine. During the Second World War, he was one of the first six African American scientists and technicians on the Manhattan Project. Life Bor ...

Aneesur Rahman Aneesur Rahman (24 August 1927 – 6 June 1987) was an Indian-born American physicist who pioneered the application of computational methods to physical systems. His 1964 paper on liquid argon studied a system of 864 argon atoms on a CDC 3600 ...

*John P. Schiffer * Luise Meyer-Schützmeister *

Rolf Siemssen Rolf Hendrik Siemssen (15 March 1933 – 29 January 2021) was a Dutch-Germanvan der Woude, p. 33 nuclear physicist. He was a professor of experimental nuclear physics at the University of Groningen between 1971 and 1998. Siemssen was director of t ...

* Dorothy Martin Simon * Lynda Soderholm * Marius Stan * Rick Stevens * Valerie Taylor * Marion C. Thurnauer * Carlos E.M. Wagner * Kameshwar C. Wali * Larry Wos *

Cosmas Zachos Cosmas K. Zachos (; born 1951) is a theoretical physicist. He was educated in physics (undergraduate A.B. 1974) at Princeton University, and did graduate work in theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology (Ph.D. 1979 ) under t ...

* Daniel Zajfman * Nestor J. Zaluzec

Notes

References

* ''Argonne National Laboratory, 1946–96''. Jack M. Holl, Richard G. Hewlett, Ruth R. Harris.

University of Illinois Press The University of Illinois Press (UIP) is an American university press and is part of the University of Illinois System. Founded in 1918, the press publishes some 120 new books each year, thirty-three scholarly journals, and several electroni ...

, 1997. . * ''Nuclear physics: an introduction''. S.B. Patel. New Age International Ltd., 1991. . * ''Summary of Nuclear Chemistry Work at Argonne'', Martin H. Studier, Argonne National Laboratory Report, Declassified June 13, 1949.

External links

Argonne National Laboratory
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for Argonne National Laboratory presentations
Argonne News
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Open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

and commercially available

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

in or near the "shrink-wrap" phase
Photo repository
��Photography for public use * Historical Argonne National Laboratory reports digitized by the

TRAIL A trail, also known as a path or track, is an unpaved lane or a small paved road (though it can also be a route along a navigable waterways) generally not intended for usage by motorized vehicles, usually passing through a natural area. Ho ...

project, hosted a
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{{Authority control United States Department of Energy national laboratories Federally Funded Research and Development Centers Buildings and structures in DuPage County, Illinois Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certified buildings Lemont, Illinois Nuclear research institutes Supercomputer sites University of Chicago Tourist attractions in DuPage County, Illinois Argonne National Laboratory people 1946 establishments in Illinois