Argonne National Laboratory

Argonne National Laboratory, research center, based in Argonne, Ill., 27 mi (43 km) SW of downtown Chicago, with other facilities at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, 50 mi (80 km) W of Idaho Falls, Idaho. Founded in 1946 by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission for research and development in nuclear energy, it now operates under an agreement involving the U.S. Department of Energy and the Univ. of Chicago. Much of its multidisciplinary basic research involves the use of radiation as a tool in the physical and life sciences. Recent foci have included developing new pharmaceuticals and technical devices, and studying the operation of adhesives and fertilizers.

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Argonne National Laboratory is one of the United States Department of Energy's oldest and largest science and engineering research national laboratories and is the largest in size in the Midwest (approximately twice the area of the nearby Fermilab, which hosts the world's second-highest-energy particle accelerator). The laboratory is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC, which is composed of the University of Chicago, Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., and BWX Technologies, Inc. (BWXT). It is located on 1,700 acres (6.9 km²) in DuPage County, 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Chicago, Illinois, on Interstate 55. 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 on the lab was part of the Manhattan Project, which built America's first atomic bomb.

Argonne currently has five main areas of focus. Argonne's focus on these areas is meant to fulfill several governmental responsibilities in the hopes of benefiting the society at large.

Conducting basic scientific research to further scientists' understanding of the world we live in. Argonne conducts basic experimental and theoretical scientific research in the physical, life, and environmental sciences.
Building and maintaining scientific facilities that would be too expensive for a single company or university, for the use of scientists from Argonne, private industry, academia and other national laboratories, and other nations. Facilities include the Advanced Photon source, the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source, and the Argonne Tandem Linear Accelerator System.
Argonne is one of the advanced centers for the study and research of energy technologies. Argonne is working to develop and evaluate advanced energy techniques and sciences.
Researching and developing solutions to certain environmental problems. Argonne attempts to manage and solve the nation's environmental problems and to promote environmental stewardship in a scientific context.
Contributing to national security by applying expertise in the nuclear fuel cycle, biology, chemistry, and systems analysis and modeling. Projects include developing highly sensitive instruments and technologies to detect chemical, biological, and radioactive threats and identify their sources.

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. To help fulfill this end, Argonne National Laboratory was recently the facility awarded to receive the IBM Blue Gene/P. The Blue Gene/P is predicted to be the first supercomputer to operate at a speed faster than one petaflop.

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.