The Atomic Energy Commission contacted President Brehm in 1948 and requested the services of technical personnel as consultants to aid in developing a management program for a herd of Hereford cattle that had been accidentally exposed to the effects of the first atomic bomb explosion in July 1945 near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The owner of the herd contacted the AEC when cattle developed open sores where radioactive dust had fallen on their backs. The AEC purchased the herd and transported it to Oak Ridge.
In May 1948 UT signed a contract, through the Agricultural Experiment Station and the AEC, to establish a cooperative program at a five-thousand-acre Oak Ridge site, with the Scarboro school building serving as headquarters for the research effort. The project dealt initially with the exposed cattle and performed a variety of studies on the impact of exposure of animals and plants in the food chain to radioactive materials, as well as studies of soils. (Alamogordo Cow 52, the last survivor of the famous herd, produced 16 consecutive live calves before her death in late 1964. Her calves had a good record of performance and weight gain.) In 1950 UT signed a contract with Catlett Construction Company for $115,514 to expand the Scarboro school facilities to provide offices and laboratories and to provide a nutrition barn to house animals used in atomic experimentation. The Atomic Energy Commission funded the expansion.
This unique program, which ended in 1980 as the Department of Energy shifted its national priorities, was highly successful, and the information and studies done are thoroughly documented and published. The studies and some of the scientists who created them were contacted for advice when a meltdown of a nuclear reactor occurred at Chernobyl in 1986. In 1981 the Comparative Animal Research Laboratory (CARL), so named in 1973, was placed under the aegis of Oak Ridge Associated Universities, dealing with the effects and metabolism of toxic compounds related to energy production.