Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is one of the national laboratories of the United States Department of Energy and is managed by the Battelle Memorial Institute. Historically, the lab has been involved with nuclear research, although the laboratory does other research as well. Much of the current knowledge of nuclear reactor behavior was discovered at what is now Idaho National Laboratory. John Grossenbacher, a former INL director, said, "The history of nuclear energy for peaceful application has principally been written in Idaho". The present facility resulted from the 2005 merger of two neighboring laboratories, the National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, and the Idaho site of the western branch of Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne-West).
Various organizations have built more than 50 reactors at what is commonly called "the Site", including the ones that gave the world its first usable amount of electricity from nuclear power and the power plant for the world's first nuclear submarine. Although many are now decommissioned, these facilities are the largest concentration of reactors in the world.
