Energy's largest science and energy laboratory.Managed since April 2000 by a partnership of theUniversity of Tennessee and Battelle, ORNL wasestablished in 1943 as a part of the secret ManhattanProject to pioneer a method for producing andseparating plutonium. During the 1950s and 1960s,ORNL became an international center for the study ofnuclear energy and related research in the physical andlife sciences. With the creation of DOE in the 1970s,ORNL's mission broadened to include a variety ofenergy technologies and strategies. Today the laboratory supports the nation with a peacetime science andtechnology mission that is just as important as, but very different from, its role during the Manhattan Project.