Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Oak Ridge, TN

Oak Ridge is a city spanning Anderson and Roane counties in eastern Tennessee, about 25 miles northwest of Knoxville, and part of the Knoxville metropolitan area.

The city was established in 1942 as a secret Manhattan Project production site, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers acquired roughly 60,000 acres of Clinch River valley farmland.

Oak Ridge's nicknames - the Atomic City, the Secret City, and the City Behind a Fence - recall its wartime years, when the town was surrounded by a fence with seven guarded gates and its work was kept secret.

By 1945 Oak Ridge's population had swelled to about 75,000, which made it at the time the fifth-largest city in Tennessee.

The Y-12, K-25, and S-50 plants were built in Oak Ridge to separate the fissile isotope uranium-235 from natural uranium, while the X-10 site became Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Because copper was scarce during the war, the Y-12 plant's electromagnet coils were wound with 14,700 tons of silver bullion borrowed from the U.S. Treasury.

The name Oak Ridge was chosen by project employees in 1943 and formally adopted in 1949, and the city was incorporated in 1959.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory, established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, is today the largest U.S. Department of Energy science and energy laboratory, and the Y-12 National Security Complex still operates in the city.

In 2016 the chemical element tennessine was named for Tennessee in recognition of the role Oak Ridge and other institutions in the state played in its discovery.

The 2020 census counted 31,402 residents in Oak Ridge, up from 29,330 in 2010.