Enrico Fermi Builds the First Nuclear Reactor
Overview
On December 2, 1942, a group led by Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) built and started up the world's first man-made nuclear reactor. This was a test to prove that a nuclear reactor could be built, and it paved the way initially for nuclear reactors that would produce plutonium for the atomic weapon to be dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, just three years later. In the following decades, more nuclear reactors would follow, producing plutonium and tritium for more advanced nuclear weapons as well as electrical energy for tens of millions of people, radioactive pharmaceuticals for medical diagnoses and treatment, and much more.
Background
The first known nuclear reactor actually goes much further back than 1942. In fact, nearly two billion years ago in what was to become the nation of Gabon in West Africa, a lucky set of circumstances led to the formation of a natural nuclear reactor in a bed of rich uranium ore. Far from the precisely engineered machines that are built today, the Gabon reactor (also called the Oklo reactor for the part of Gabon in which it lies) was a legitimate nuclear reactor that seems to have operated intermittently for several tens of millions of years.
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