On December,1942 Dr. Enrico Fermi was the first person to succeed on controling the nuclear chain reaction with a natural uranium device moderated with graphite. Fermi made the process of using the Chicago Pile which was the first demonstration reactor. On August 1945 the U.S. bombed Japan with two atomic bombs. This happened when President Harry S. Truman was the president. The first is atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6 and the second atomic bomb was dropped three days later, August 9, on Nagasaki. Both of the bombs killed over 130,000 people and killed thousand more people because of the poisoning from the bombs for several months. After this all happened, the Japan surrendered to the U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs The Atomic Energy Act of 1946. This act is when the civilians gets controll\ over the bombs. The Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy is also being made at this time to monitor the growth and actions of the industry. The Atomic Energy Commission started working on a report investigating peaceful uses of nuclear energy at October 1947. President Dwight Eisenhower starts The Atoms For Peace program December 1953. Eisenhower proposed the creation of an international agency, devoted to developing peaceful nuclear technologies. Eisenhower spoke that he is taking the use of nuclear materials away from soldiers, and letting people who's going to use it in peaceful ways. Like researching, examing, etc. The first major amendment to the 1946 Atomic Energy Act was made when Eisenhower gave the civilian nuclear energy progam a higher or further access to nuclear technology at August1954. The Atomic Energy Commission announced a cooperative program between the federal governement and the nuclear power industry to develop power plants. On July Arco, Idaho, with a population of 1,000, is the first U.S. town powered by nuclear energy. The town's energy was supplied by an experimental boiling-water reactor called the Borax III. On November an experimental breeder reactor about 50 miles west of Idaho Falls, Idaho, partially melts down during a test. The cause of the partial meltdown was caused to operator error. The Sodium Reactor Experiment at Santa Susana, California becomes the first civilian nuclear power unit to go on-line. The unit continued to generate power until 1966. President Eisenhower signs the Price-Anderson Act, which will protect private citizens, public utilities, and contractors from incurring financial hardship in the event of an accident at a nuclear power plant. At October the Windscale plutonium production reactor catches fire spreading approximately 20,000 curies of radioactive iodine thru Great Britain and northern Europe. At Shippingport, Pennsylvania the site of the first full-scale nuclear power plant in the U.S was held. The plant was able to generate 60 megawatts of electricity after reaching full power, 21 days after going on-line. On October 1959, Dresden 1 Nuclear Power Station, the first nuclear power plant in the U.S. to be built without any government funding, in Illinois achieves a self-sustaining nuclear reaction.
Two very important men in nuclear development. Henri Becquerel who founded radioactivity and Albert Einstein the genius.
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