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Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1) was the world's first artificial nuclear reactor.On 2 December 1942, the first human-made self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was initiated in CP-1 during an experiment led by Enrico Fermi.
Enrico Fermi (Italian: [enˈriːko ˈfermi]; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian and naturalized American physicist, renowned for being the creator of the world's first artificial nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1, and a member of the Manhattan Project.
The FERMIAC employed the Monte Carlo method to model neutron transport in various types of nuclear systems. Given an initial distribution of neutrons, the goal of the process is to develop numerous "neutron genealogies", or models of the behavior of individual neutrons, including each collision, scattering, and fission.
Fermi's goal was to determine critical mass necessary to sustain neutron generation. Fermi defined the reproduction factor k for assessing the chain reaction, with a value of 1.0 denoting a sustained chain reaction. In September 1941, Fermi's team was only able to achieve a k value of 0.87.
Meanwhile, the Sodium Reactor Experiment, which suffered a partial meltdown in 1959 for almost exactly the same reasons as Fermi, is not mentioned at all. [72] Fermi 1 remains a touchstone for anti-nuclear activists, who marked the 50th anniversary of the event in 2016 by characterizing it as "the narrow aversion of a cataclysmic disaster." [68]
In 1934, Enrico Fermi published his classic paper describing the process of beta decay, in which the neutron decays to a proton by creating an electron and a (as yet undiscovered) neutrino. [75] The paper employed the analogy that photons , or electromagnetic radiation, were similarly created and destroyed in atomic processes.
The discovery of the neutron by James Chadwick in 1932 created a new means of nuclear transmutation. Enrico Fermi and his colleagues in Rome studied the results of bombarding uranium with neutrons, and Fermi concluded that his experiments had created new elements with 93 and 94 protons, which his group dubbed ausenium and hesperium.
The X-10 Graphite Reactor is a decommissioned nuclear reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.Formerly known as the Clinton Pile and X-10 Pile, it was the world's second artificial nuclear reactor (after Enrico Fermi's Chicago Pile-1) and the first intended for continuous operation.