The Sound of Science

A sickly mouse in a 1940s lab at Oak Ridge National Laboratory didn’t look like a breakthrough. But that unexpected mutation — known as scurfy — would eventually help unlock one of the immune system’s most important secrets.

In this episode of the Sound of Science, we trace the decades-long journey from ORNL’s early mammalian genetics program to the discovery of FOXP3, the gene that directs development of regulatory T cells — the immune system’s natural “brakes.” Featuring Nobel Prize winner Mary Brunkow, this story draws a throughline from post–World War II radiation studies at ORNL to modern breakthroughs in autoimmune disease and cancer immunotherapy.

From the world’s first continuously operating nuclear reactor to today’s next-generation designs, Oak Ridge National Laboratory has helped shape nuclear energy from its very beginning. Now, as electricity demand surges — driven in part by AI and data centers — nuclear energy is once again in the spotlight. This episode traces the arc of nuclear innovation: from the Graphite Reactor and Molten Salt Reactor Experiment to Kairos Power’s Hermes demonstration reactor now under construction in Oak Ridge. Along the way, we explore how ORNL’s expertise in molten salt technology, TRISO fuel and advanced manufacturing is helping make nuclear reactors safer, faster to build and more adaptable for the future.

By the early 1990s, Oak Ridge National Laboratory had transformed into a scientific institution with a diverse research portfolio that went well beyond its nuclear roots in the Manhattan Project. But despite this success, the lab was entering a period of uncertainty. Its facilities were showing their age and there were questions about the national labs' role in a post-Cold War world. In this episode, you’ll hear how ORNL evolved to become the modern research complex we know today. You’ll also hear about how these changes positioned the lab to tackle today’s scientific challenges.

In the first part of our 80th anniversary series, you heard how the Manhattan Project helped end World War II with the development and use of the world’s first nuclear weapons. The success of this top-secret endeavor ushered in a new era of nuclear science. The expertise used to build the atomic bombs was applied in peacetime to a range of nuclear-inspired research. This research would spawn significant advances in existing fields like chemistry and materials science, and establish completely new ones like neutron scattering and health physics. In this episode, we'll explore the lab's growth and evolution in the decades that followed the war.

As you heard in the last episode, Oak Ridge National Laboratory is celebrating its 80th anniversary. The lab was born out of the Manhattan Project, a top-secret mission that would bring an end to World War II with the production of the world’s first nuclear weapons. Clandestine sites across the country worked unique pieces of the puzzle that would become the atomic bomb. While sites in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington, studied and produced the material for the weapons, scientists in Los Alamos, New Mexico, were focused on the design and assembly of the bomb. Those efforts in Los Alamos were led by renowned physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer – a name that should sound particularly familiar this summer. Oppenheimer was the Manhattan Project mastermind behind the atomic bomb, and now his story is the focus of a new blockbuster film based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. As part of the 80th celebration, Kai Bird recently visit ORNL and joined us for a discussion on the legacy of Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project.