Oak Ridge National Laboratory historians document 1979 as the turning point for the user-facility concept at Oak Ridge. That year, a change in Department of Energy policies opened facilities to outside collaborators. A government-owned building was constructed at ORNL for use by visitors to the Hollifield Heavy Ion Research Facility, but an additional building was required to provide lecture facilities, offices, laboratories, and administrative space appropriate for scientific visitors to the facility. An agreement was reached in June 1982 by UT, Vanderbilt, and the facility operator that established the Joint Institute for Heavy Ion Research. The purpose of the joint institute was to promote research and to build and operate a second building on land owned by the US government and under the control of the Department of Energy.
A lease of land was signed in June 1982, with the initial lease period being 25 years and the annual lease payment for the land being $208. Oak Ridge Associated Universities subsequently signed an agreement with UT to pay $44,000 for 480 square feet for its UNISOR project. The 1980-81 legislature appropriated $350,000 for construction, and $44,000 additional was provided by ORAU. Ground was broken in July 1982 for a 7,200-square-foot facility. Vanderbilt was to contribute $2,000 per year, and UT was to own, operate, and maintain the facility, including insuring the building and paying for necessary repairs and upgrades. Both Vanderbilt and UT assured the State Building Commission that no request for state funds for operation of the facility would be made.
The joint institute is housed in two buildings owned by UT adjacent to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility (formerly known as the Holifield Heavy Ion Research Facility). The joint institute has conference and research analysis facilities and a dormitory in which visiting scientists are housed as they do research requiring the Holifield accelerator.
In 1992 the Science Alliance (a university Center of Excellence linking UT and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory) was instrumental in persuading the Department of Energy to increase Holifield’s research capacity by converting it into the country’s first accelerator of radioactive nuclei. In 2008 a $500,000 facility expansion and an expansion to host a new international partnership were announced. The partnership, known as JUSTIPEN, serves as a bridge between top researchers in the United States and Japan who study exotic nuclei—a field with implications in nuclear energy, national security, and medicine. JUSTIPEN stands for Japan-US Theory Institute for Physics with Exotic Nuclei.