Oak Ridge

Town in Anderson and Roane counties, east Tennessee, USA, on the Clinch River; population (2000) 27,400. The community was founded in 1942 as part of the Manhattan Project to develop an atomic bomb; the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (1943) manufactures plutonium for nuclear weapons. By the end of World War II, the town's population was more than 75,000. Ownership of the community passed to the residents in the late 1950s. Other industries produce radioactive pharmaceuticals, electronic instrumentation, and machines and tools.