It was the first US commercial reactor.ĭuring the last third of the 20th century, a general movement against nuclear power has risen based on the fear of a possible nuclear accident as well as the history of accidents at Three-Mile Island in Pennsylvania and at Chernobyl in the Soviet Union (now Ukraine). In 1957, the Shippingport Atomic Power Station (pictured above) opened in the USA. :( I am not a physicist, but atomic fission is when a large nuclide is bombarded with neutrons, splitting into smaller and smaller nuclei and more and more neutrons which produces a chain reaction. It could produce about 5 megawatts of electricity which is supplies to the utility grid. Nuclear fission Or the source of the infamous atomic bombs. It was the world’s first nuclear power plant. In 1954, the Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant opened in the USSR. After the war ended, scientists began investigating peaceful uses of nuclear energy. It yielded the world’s first nuclear bombs which were used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The codename for this work was the Manhattan Project. Shortly thereafter, a Hungarian scientist discovered that the process of splitting the atom, or fission, could generate lots of energy via a chain reaction in which the extra neutrons given off by each fission reaction strike other uranium atoms to cause them to split and continue to react.ĭuring World War II, the United States, Britain and Canada used fission to develop nuclear weapons for the war. Beginning with a single uranium nucleus, fission could not only produce substantial amounts of energy but could also lead to a reaction creating ever-increasing.

In 1938, two German scientists bombarded an atom’s nucleus with a neutron and split the atom. Nuclear Energy Brief History of Nuclear EnergyĬompared to other energy sources which have been used for centuries, nuclear energy is much newer.

Fission uranium 1938