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<p>OAK RIDGE — Building the world's first full-scale uranium enrichment factory — a 45-acre monster that was the biggest industrial structure in the world at the time — took 18 months amid the race for the first atomic bomb.</p> <p>Six decades later, federal authorities think they finally have a handle on just how long it will take to clean up and tear down the long-shuttered relic of the Manhattan Project: About 15 years.</p>

Nuclear Secrets Allegedly Stolen From Tenn. Lab First On WNBC.com POSTED: 10:12 am EDT July 19, 2007 UPDATED: 10:50 am EDT July 19, 2007 NEW YORK -- WNBC.com's Jonathan Dienst has learned a contract worker is accused of stealing nuclear secrets from the Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee. Investigators said the worker wanted to sell the secrets to a "foreign country." Investigators are calling the theft a serious breach of security at one of the country's most important nuclear research labs. Officials said there was serious concern the documents could have fallen into the hands of enemy states or...

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 8 — A cyber attack reported last week by one of the federal government’s nuclear weapons laboratories may have originated in China, according to a confidential memorandum distributed Wednesday to public and private security officials by the Department of Homeland Security. Security researchers said the memorandum, which was obtained by The New York Times from an executive at a private company, included a list of Web and Internet addresses that were linked to locations in China. However, they noted that such links did not prove that the Chinese government or Chinese citizens were involved in the attacks....

A "sophisticated cyberattack" has been detected at Oak Ridge National Laboratory over the last several weeks, and authorities suspect the hackers are based in China. The breach might have compromised the personal information of thousands of visitors to the lab, according to a communiqué sent to employees. The intrusion is under active investigation by multiple agencies. FBI and Department of Homeland Security officials tell ABC News they believe the attacks originated in China with Chinese entities probing U.S. systems. Investigators have not been able to determine whether the attacks came from government or private entities in China. The statement, from...

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory has warned that its computer systems have been infiltrated by one or more hackers who skirted system's security to gain access to personal information on the lab's visitors. The information was then used in a phishing scheme that attempted to convince victims to open a malicious e-mail attachment. The lab has not commented on the attackers' suspected motives Hackers have penetrated an upper layer of data at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), a multiprogram science and technology lab managed for the U.S. Department of Energy by UT-Battelle. Scientists and engineers at ORNL work to...

Former labor leader Carl "Bubba" Scarbrough is pleading guilty this morning to molesting a teenage boy in the sauna at Fort Sanders Health and Fitness Center in West Knoxville in June 2005. The plea in Knox County Criminal Court comes after newly filed court records indicate the 13-year-old boy might not be Scarbrough's only victim. In a stunning set of records filed in Knox County Criminal Court by Assistant District Attorney General Willie Lane, witness after witness recount Scarbrough allegedly spied on them in either a fitness center shower or sauna while masturbating. "Surely, he's not doing what I think...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (AP) - A driver ran a checkpoint at a nuclear weapons plant early Monday and crashed into a barrier, then fled on foot, authorities said. Guards at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, a primary storehouse for bomb-grade uranium, said the man "appeared to be impaired in some way" when they stopped him around 5 a.m. at a security checkpoint near a rear entrance, spokesman Bill Wilburn said. They asked him for identification, but the man hit the gas and drove through the checkpoint, then crashed into security barriers a short distance away, Wilburn said. "When he hit...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (AP) - A driver ran a checkpoint at a nuclear weapons plant early Monday and crashed into a barrier, then fled on foot, authorities said. Guards at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, a primary storehouse for bomb-grade uranium, said the man "appeared to be impaired in some way" when they stopped him around 5 a.m. at a security checkpoint near a rear entrance, spokesman Bill Wilburn said. They asked him for identification, but the man hit the gas and drove through the checkpoint, then crashed into security barriers a short distance away, Wilburn said. "When he hit...

A former maintenance worker at the East Tennessee Technology Park pleaded not guilty in federal court Thursday to charges of attempting to sell potentially sensitive components used for uranium enrichment to the French government. Roy Lynn Oakley, 67, of Harriman, faces a two-count indictment charging that he stole pieces of equipment from October 2006 to Jan. 26, 2007 at the Oak Ridge site, for the purpose of selling them. More seriously, he is charged with offering the material to France “to injure the United States and secure an advantage to a foreign nation.” He is free on $25,000 bond and...

Officials from the Tennessee Department of Transportation are now evaluating a sinkhole that opened up Monday evening on Pellissippi Parkway. Its in the southbound lanes of Pellissippi, just south of where the Parkway merges with Oak Ridge Highway. The hole looks to be about four feet wide on the surface, but a TDOT geologist says its at least 25 feet across, and goes under both southbound lanes. He says it was caused by water eroding the limestone. Crews will work all night to get that sinkhole filled, but they likely won't be finished by the morning commute, and it may...

OAK RIDGE - If Tennessee's Atomic City ever becomes a terrorist battleground, the protective forces will bring plenty of firepower to the fight. Grenade launchers and Gatling guns. Machine guns galore. Armored vehicles equipped for warfare. In the past few months, the government has seriously upgraded armaments and related technologies to counter the latest terrorist threats. "If the bad guys are stupid enough to hit a nuclear facility, you've got to think they'll be well-outfitted," said Jean "John" Burleson, general manager of Wackenhut Services, the security contractor at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant and other federal facilities. Oak Ridge guards...

OAK RIDGE - Oak Ridge National Laboratory's newest computer is purring like a cat, and maybe that's to be expected. It is, after all, a part of the lab's "Jaguar" system, a Cray XT4 supercomputer that's reported to be the nation's fastest machine for open scientific research. Sixty-eight new cabinets for Jaguar arrived here from Cray's manufacturing center in Wisconsin late last year and were installed on the second floor of the National Center for Computational Sciences. "It's going through the acceptance testing," Thomas Zacharia, the associate lab director of scientific computing, said during a visit earlier this week. "It's...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., -- U.S. scientists say estimates of higher plant respiration due to global warming may be overstated by not considering their ability to adjust to conditions. A team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory suggests about 9 percent more carbon will be stored in plants and soil with the acclimation of plants included in the model. While the amount is relatively small compared with different climate-carbon simulations, the authors note the acclimation phenomenon should not be ignored. "This is carbon that might otherwise be released to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and...

The sign out front said "Saddam Hussein's Nuclear Mastermind." Inside, Mahdi Obeidi, former head of Iraq's centrifuge program for uranium enrichment, told more than 200 people, including Department of Energy employees, that he wants to help stop one of humanity's greatest nightmares - global weapons of mass destruction. "We cannot afford one mistake," Obeidi said. "Everybody should be concerned." Obeidi, who emigrated to the United States in 2003, spoke on Wednesday morning at the Pollard Auditorium at Oak Ridge Associated Universities. His visit was sponsored by the Oak Ridge Office of Counterintelligence and funded by the U.S. State Department, according...

Tennessee authorities: "We are searching door to door" "We have not yet looked at the security video from the parking lot"

  Search Help Registration  |  Contact Us  |  Site Map  |  Alerts  |  Archives  |  Subscribe to the Paper Published August 7, 2005 | Email this page to a friendWatch and listen as Secret City residents share their memories | View a slide show of Oak Ridge in the '40sShare your own memories of Oak Ridge | Read all stories and learn more about the plant and its buildings Hear from residents who worked and lived in the Secret City during World War II View a slide show of images from Oak Ridge during the 1940s Share your own memories of life in Oak Ridge during World War II...

Citizen Soldiers for the Atomic Bomb Needs you to show your support for the veterans and a strong national defense at the Oak Ridge, Tennessee Y-12 Plant on August 6. For the past 20+/- years, OREPA has openly committed treason and mockery of our veterans and country at the entrance of the plant which manufactured the uranium that fueled 'little boy' who was dropped on Hiroshima. The peaceniks are hoping to close the plant via INTERNATIONAL LAW and leave US defenseless in a world dominated by terrorism and Communism. It will do your patriotic soul good to come out and...

With this quote from the Bagavad-Gita, Oppenheimer summoned in the nuclear age at 5:30 in the morning at the Trinity Site in New Mexico. The yield of code name Gadget was estimated to be equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT - 2,000 B-29s worth of explosives. A quote from Brigadier General T.F. Farrell regarding the blast - "The effects could well be called unprecedented, magnificent, beautiful, stupendous, and terrifying. No man-made phenomenon of such tremendous power had ever occurred before. The lighting effects beggared description. The whole country was lighted by a searing light with the intensity many times that...

OAK RIDGE — A federal inspection found that Oak Ridge guards routinely worked excessive overtime and, in some instances, received less training than recommended for high-security nuclear installations. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General released the report today. The IG reviewed the Oak Ridge training program because of an allegation that a security police officer had received credit for training never received. The report said that allegation was confirmed and that an inspection turned up a number of other shortcomings. However, Wackenhut Services Inc., the government’s Oak Ridge security contractor, hotly disputed the IG findings. "We train...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sixteen illegal immigrants gained access last year to one of the most sensitive weapons sites in the country, according to a report issued Monday by the Department of Energy's inspector general. The inspector general's investigation found the illegal immigrants were construction workers on jobs at the Y-12 National Security Complex near Knoxville, Tennessee. The workers used "false documents" and "gained access to the ... site on multiple occasions," the report said. The report details how the workers, apparently using fake green cards, were able to obtain access badges.