History
The federal research facility was established in 1949 as the "National Reactor Testing Station" (NRTS). In 1975, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was divided into the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The Idaho site was for a short time named ERDA and then subsequently renamed to the "Idaho National Engineering Laboratory" (INEL) in 1977 with the creation of the Department of Energy (DOE) under President Carter. After two decades as INEL, the name was changed again to the "Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory" (INEEL) in 1997. Throughout its lifetime, there have been more than 50 one-of-a-kind nuclear reactors built at the facility for testing; all but three are out of service.
On Feb. 1, 2005, Battelle Energy Alliance took over operation of the lab from Bechtel, merged with Argonne National Laboratory-West, and the facility name was changed to "Idaho National Laboratory" (INL). At this time the site's clean-up activities were moved to a separate contract, the Idaho Cleanup Project, which is managed by CH2M-WG Idaho. Research activities were consolidated in the newly named Idaho National Laboratory.
Read more about this topic: Idaho National Laboratory
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.”
—Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1870–1924)
“In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)