Oak Ridge

American  

noun

1. a city in E Tennessee, near Knoxville: atomic research center.

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Oak Ridge Cultural  

1. A city in Tennessee, where uranium for the atomic bomb (see also atomic bomb) was produced during World War II. Since that time, the government has maintained a variety of nuclear research facilities in Oak Ridge. (See also Manhattan Project.)

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Example Sentences

Elographics, a company spun out of the government-funded Oak Ridge National Laboratory by physicist George Samuel Hurst, showcased an advanced touch-screen computer system.

From The Wall Street Journal • May 16, 2026

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and carried out using facilities at Florida State University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

From Science Daily • Jan. 12, 2026

Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, concludes that “current AI systems can technically perform approximately 16% of classified labor tasks.”

From MarketWatch • Jan. 6, 2026

Nvidia worked with more than a dozen different quantum companies, including IonQ, Quantinuum and Infleqtion, and a number of national labs, including Sandia National Laboratories, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Fermi Laboratory, on the effort.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 28, 2025

That approach had raised Oak Ridge from an unpopulated valley in remote Tennessee; when national security hung in the balance, as it did now, who would begrudge a few hundred thousand kilowatts?

From "Big Science" by Michael Hiltzik