Naval Ordnance Laboratory
The Naval Ordnance Laboratory (NOL) was a facility in the White Oak area of Montgomery County, Maryland.
In 1944, acquisition, planning and construction work began at a 712-acre (2.88 km2) wooded site located at 10903 New Hampshire Avenue, Silver Spring, Maryland.
[1] Underwater Weapons Testing This 1960s-era postcard image shows the NOL Administration Building and an employee-built golf course as seen from New Hampshire Ave. After renovation for use by the FDA it still looks much the same, with "Naval Ordnance Laboratory" still carved in stone above the main entrance.
A total of 11 buildings,[2] connected by wide underground tunnels consisting of Administration and the main laboratory complex, which included corrosion and battery research among many other specialties.
Some building were large manufacturing facilities while others were very small (< 100 sq ft) housing a single scientist and his or her lab and office space.
The center of the building housed a 20' x 20' x 16' steel-lined reinforced concrete test chamber capable of containing an explosion equivalent to 50 pounds of TNT.
The U.S. Air Force's Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) currently (in 2010) operates the Hypervelocity Wind Tunnel 9.
[7] This facility, known simply as Tunnel 9, operates by blowing down hot, high-pressure nitrogen gas through one of several available axially-symmetric 12-meter-long De Laval nozzles, through a test section, and into a downstream vacuum sphere.
They are to be demolished during the continuing GSA conversion of the old NOL campus into the Federal Research Center at White Oak.
White Oak was still farmland, and the designers could not have predicted the phenomenal growth of the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC.
As years passed after the name change, fewer local residents understood the nature of the research being conducted on areas of the base.
This all changed suddenly on a Sunday afternoon, 28 June 1992, at about 1 pm when the contents of explosives storage magazine Building 355 exploded.
Approximately 5,000 lb (2,300 kg) of stored explosives detonated, shattering windows and rattling china in the nearby neighborhoods.
[10] A Wall Street Journal investigative project in 2013, "Waste Lands: America's Forgotten Nuclear Legacy," is deserving of attention.
If such a situation is found, the agency looks for evidence that the site was either satisfactorily cleaned up or that the risk of significant residual contamination was low.
BRAC '93 recommended dis-establishment, and the move of the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) from leased buildings in Crystal City, Virginia to White Oak.
White Oak boasted a nine-hole golf course, hundreds of acres of woods with abundant flora and fauna, and a pleasant suburban location with existing buildings, ample parking, good roads, shopping and housing.
[11] Minutes of the meetings of the Naval Surface Warfare Center-White Oak Restoration Advisory Board document the extensive environmental contamination of the site prior to transfer to GSA.
The Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Maryland Department of the Environment, the US Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health collaborated over more than ten years of clean-up involving hazardous chemicals, radioactive waste and explosives.
