Ground broken at ORNL for Advanced Testbed and Operations Learning Laboratory

On June 3, Brandon Williams, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, was at Oak Ridge National Laboratory to break ground on the Advanced Testbed and Operations Learning Laboratory (ATOLL).

The planned 21,000-square-foot facility, which is scheduled to be completed in mid-2028, will play an important role in the development of workforce expertise and capabilities aimed at monitoring foreign weapons-grade uranium production activities.

Joining Williams at the ground-breaking ceremony for the nonproliferation facility were ORNL Director Stephen Streiffer; Moe Khaleel, ORNL associate laboratory director for national security sciences; William Wheeler, ORNL site office manager; and Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R., Tenn.).

Deterring adversaries: ATOLL is being built with support from the NNSA Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation's Nonproliferation Stewardship Program (NSP). Established in 2020, the program provides "nonproliferation-relevant science and technology opportunities through a modernized facility infrastructure."

Speaking at the ceremony, Williams said, "It takes a weapons program to know a weapons program. At NNSA, we deter adversaries by being experts in atomic science and weapons production, and the investment in ATOLL strengthens our understanding of both."

Fleischmann remarked on DNN's essential role in the nation's "deterrence architecture," saying, "the Advanced Testbed and Operations Learning Laboratory being built here at ORNL will provide the cutting-edge scientific facilities needed to perform critical nonproliferation missions, as the ability to monitor foreign nuclear production and weapons activities is essential to our national defense and extended deterrence commitments."

NSP policy brief: Construction of ATOLL advances the goals of a policy brief for the NSP that was published in 2024. In that paper, three "execution pillars" are identified for the program: infrastructure, science and technology environments, and workforce. These pillars are described as "work[ing] together to enable mission relevance, as shaped by stakeholder input, and technical objectivity, such that the workforce being developed has critical nonproliferation skills through experiential work activities that address nonproliferation mission-relevant questions or gaps."

The paper also states that the NSP's "metric of success is workforce development, which is accomplished through the development of expertise employing hands-on experiences with modern test beds, along with associated analytical and modeling/simulation tool development and use."

For the full scope of the NSP to be addressed, the brief concludes, "expanded investment is required."