In order to build an atomic bomb, the Manhattan Project first needed to prove that a chain reaction would actually work the way they thought it would. How did the reactor lead to the first atomic bomb? After the war, scientists and equipment from the Metallurgical Laboratory were reorganized and directed to begin investigating peaceful uses of atomic energy, becoming the nation’s first national lab- Argonne National Laboratory. To celebrate, they drank Chianti wine out of paper cups, and many of those present signed the straw wrapper of the empty bottle.Īfter the experiment, the reactor was disassembled and transported to a more remote location in a forest preserve outside Chicago. According to those who were there, it was a slow and quiet process: Fermi directed the operators to slowly move the control rods, and their instruments clicked to record the neutron count.Īt 3:53 p.m., they recorded that a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was achieved for the first time ever. 2, 1942, a group of 49 scientists gathered to conduct the criticality test. What happened on the day of the first chain reaction? But everything has to be positioned at just the right angles to keep the reaction going.Įngineers can control the reaction by inserting rods made out of a substance that absorbs neutrons, which slows or stops the chain reaction. This is why it’s called a chain reaction. The way a nuclear reactor works is by arranging uranium in just the right positions to encourage neutrons from uranium to hit other uranium atoms and cause them to split and throw off more neutrons, which split other atoms. Some elements, like uranium, naturally throw off particles called neutrons as time goes by. How did the first nuclear reactor work?Ī nuclear reactor is designed to split atoms. The reactor itself, nicknamed “Chicago Pile-1” or CP-1 for short, was a 20-foot-tall pile of graphite blocks studded with hundreds of smaller blocks of uranium.Ĭrews worked round the clock for two weeks, purifying graphite and uranium, arranging the blocks in 57 layers of precise positions, and fitting holes for cadmium control rods. What did the first nuclear reactor look like? The mayor of Chicago and other elected officials were not notified. It’s debated whether the president of the University of Chicago, Robert Maynard Hutchins, knew the experiment was going to take place, though Compton said he did not tell him. It was originally planned to be built west of the city of Chicago, but construction difficulties slowed up progress, so Compton decided they would go ahead and build the reactor where many of the experiments had taken place up to that point-an old squash court underneath the abandoned Stagg Field football stands at the University of Chicago.
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Hundreds of people were recruited to “help the war effort,” though most were told very little about the details.Īfter a series of smaller experiments to prove the concept, work began on the reactor that would actually sustain the chain reaction. Arthur Holly Compton, a Nobel laureate and dean of the physical sciences at UChicago, and included the most eminent physicists, chemists and engineers of the time-including Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner. The Metallurgical Laboratory was led by Prof. Because Chicago had an existing population of top physicists and chemists, was centrally located far from both coasts, and had space and housing for the project, the nuclear reactor project was headquartered at the University of Chicago and code-named “the Metallurgical Laboratory.” The Project decided to consolidate this effort in one location. But one of the first things on the list was to learn whether it was possible to create and control a nuclear chain reaction at all.
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That kicked off the United States’ Manhattan Project, a top-secret scientific mission to learn how to split the atom and harness its power. Roosevelt, explaining that the discovery could be made into a powerful weapon, and that Nazi scientists likely had the tools to do so. In 1939, Albert Einstein and Leo Szilard co-wrote a letter to U.S. How did the first nuclear reactor come to be?Īs physicists came closer to understanding the nature of the atom in the 1930s, it became increasingly clear that a great deal of energy could be released by splitting atoms.
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