Niki Nicholas
The Oak Ridge City Council will receive a briefing on the new Manhattan Project National Historical Park on Tuesday.
The briefing by Niki Nicholas, superintendent of the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, will be during a Tuesday evening work session on January 21. It will follow a special 6 p.m. City Council meeting for boards and commissions elections in the Oak Ridge Municipal Building Courtroom. (See the work session agenda here. See the special meeting agenda here.)
There will also be an orientation session next week for those interested in volunteering for the new park, which includes Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Hanford, Washington; and Los Alamos, New Mexico. That orientation session starts at 10 a.m. Thursday, January 21, at the Midtown Community Center at 102 Robertsville Road.
The new park was formally established on November 10, 2015, in a signing ceremony in Washington, D.C. The signing ceremony featured U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.
The Manhattan Project was a top-secret federal program to build the world’s first atomic bombs during World War II.
The new park includes four buildings in Oak Ridge: the Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the footprint of the former K-25 Building at East Tennessee Technology Park, and Building 9731 and Building 9204-3, or Beta-3, at Y-12 National Security Complex. ETTP, ORNL, and Y-12 are U.S. Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration sites.
The Alexander Inn, which is not a DOE building, is also eligible for inclusion in the park.
Learn more about the Manhattan Project National Historical Park here. It’s the nation’s 409th park and the first major federal effort to commemorate the Manhattan Project, considered one of the most significant scientific achievements of the 20th century.
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