Sweeping out the Van de Graaff accelerator in the early days
Sweeping out the Van de Graaff accelerator in the early days. As a Center of Excellence for Nuclear Physics, TUNL has relied on countless hands like these for 60 years — and counting. (Duke University Archives)

Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory is Self-Sustaining at Sixty

Margo Lakin, Trinity Communications

Quietly tucked behind Physics on West Campus, an unassuming concrete building conceals one of Duke’s best-kept secrets. The brutalist austerity and lack of signage reveal little, yet beneath its asphalt parking lot sprawls a subterranean warren of thick-walled rooms that have borne witness to 60 years of nuclear physics research.

TUNL building facade then and now
While the landscape around TUNL has changed over 60 years, the work inside remains constant. (left: Duke University Archives; right: Margo Lakin/Trinity Communications)

This hidden network is the Triangle Universities Nuclear Laboratory, TUNL for short, the brainchild of experimental nuclear physicist Henry W. Newson. 

Joining the Department of Physics in 1948, Newson brought a career built upon milestones of the Manhattan Project. At Duke, he spent nearly two decades helping lay the groundwork for what would become TUNL. With support from the United States Atomic Energy Commission, and in close partnership with colleagues at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill (UNC) and North Carolina State University (NC State), he helped transform a shared vision into a consortium of laboratories whose influence on nuclear physics research endures today. 

Collaboration defined TUNL from the beginning, with Duke, UNC and NC State forming the original tripartite. North Carolina Central University (NCCU), long connected to TUNL through faculty and student involvement, formally joined in 2018.

A look inside the Van de Graaff Accelerator
A look inside the Van de Graaff Accelerator. (Duke University Archives)

Today, TUNL is a Department of Energy (DOE) Center of Excellence for Nuclear Physics — one of only four in the country — and grants roughly 8% of all U.S. doctorates in experimental nuclear physics yearly. For professor of Physics and TUNL’s interim director (and former director from 2006-2016) Calvin R. Howell, success boils down to two components: a shared mission among the consortium and a solid community. 

“The shared mission is straightforward — explore the frontiers of nuclear physics while educating the next generation of experimental physicists,” he explains, “and fulfilling that mission demands not only expertise but also a suite of highly specialized facilities.”