Six national laboratories joined hands to design and build one
of the world's most complex facilities. At 2:04 p.m. on April
28, 2006, an operator tapped a key stroke that for the first
time produced neutrons at the Spallation Neutron Source. With
this seemingly simple procedure, Oak Ridge began the journey to
become the world's foremost center for neutron science. More
important, the event reasserted American leadership in a field
that for two decades had been conceded to the European
scientific community. The unique partnership that led to this
historic milestone is a critical chapter in the SNS story. The
Spallation Neutron Source could not have been built at Oak Ridge
National Laboratory without an unprecedented level of
collaboration with five Department of Energy national laboratory
partners. Quite simply, no American laboratory, including ORNL,
possessed the depth of expertise required to design an
accelerator-based facility on the scale of the SNS. The solution
lay in fashioning a partnership that in