New Construction

ORNL Breaks Ground on a New Computational Sciences Building

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory began construction of a new 300,000 sq.ft. laboratory and office building. Approximately 170,000 sq.ft. will house the Center for Computational Sciences with a new 40,000 sq.ft. computer center and office space for 350 staff members.

Artist's drawing of the Computational Sciences Building (blue) and the Joint Institute for Computational Sciences (green)

The computer center will provide state-of-the-art facilities for modern high-performance computers. Features include a three-foot high raised floor with a cable management system installed under the floor, up to six megawatts of power for the computers with separate power systems for the cooling and the rest of the building and facilities for both air and water cooling of computers. Additional laboratories in the building will support scientific visualization, geographic information systems, intelligent computing systems, computer science, data communications and both quantum and optical computing.

The Computational Sciences Building will become the primary data networking hub for ORNL with terminations of ESnet, a Qwest Lamda Services link to Atlanta to connect to Internet 2, and the main fiber loop connecting ORNL with the other DOE facilities in Oak Ridge.

Construction began in March 2002 with completion expected in June 2003.

Construction Webcam

• From a PC:
  http://www.ccs.ornl.gov/construction/public_html/main.htm updates every 15 minutes,
  http://www.ccs.ornl.gov/construction/public_html/ss.htm updates every hour
• From a Mac or Unix (or if you have trouble with the links above):
  http://www.ccs.ornl.gov/construction/public_html/main_mac.htm

CSB Construction Update: October 3, 2002

View from atop the 6000 area silo

Night view		View from old lab entrance
		View from White Oak Avenue

Construction Journal (previous highlighted images)