nuclear-news

The News That Matters about the Nuclear Industry Fukushima Chernobyl Mayak Three Mile Island Atomic Testing Radiation Isotope

First nuclear reactor was secretly built under the University of Chicago

The Experimental Nuclear Reactor Secretly Built Under the University of Chicago  Chicago Pile-1, the first reactor to reach criticality, was built under a football field. Atlas Obscura, BY ERIC GRUNDHAUSER JULY 27, 2016 

ON DECEMBER 2, 1942, THE world’s first nuclear reactor was fired up in a subterranean squash court. But instead of a top-secret, sterile laboratory miles from civilization, the reactor went “critical” for the first time in a space directly beneath rows of football field bleachers at the heavily populated University of Chicago campus……. The small reactor was built at the University of Chicago as an arm of the infamous Manhattan Project, based in New York. At the head of the project was visionary Italian physicist Enrico Fermi………

Although there were risks to firing up an experimental nuclear reactor in a densely populated area, Fermi’s team chose to do it underneath the school’s disused football field because they wanted to use student labor to help assemble the atomic reactor. The University of Chicago had discontinued its football program in 1939, and the Stagg Field facilities were not longer in use, but more importantly, the former athletes had a lot more free time as well, and they made for a handy workforce……..

The Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1), as it came to be known was monolith made of carefully stacked graphite blocks, interlaced with cubes of uranium. Control rods made of cadmium were inserted to absorb any errant radiation from the reaction. It looked, from the outside, like not much more than a pile of black bricks.

Yet the radiation it produced had the potential to blanket the surrounding area with deadly radiation had anything gone wrong. …….
The project was top-secret, and only those who needed to know about it were alerted to the existence of the experimental reactor. Not even the mayor of Chicago was told of the project. “It would only be getting everybody excited,” says Kelly. “They probably figured, they wouldn’t have understood if they’d told him.”……. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-experimental-nuclear-reactor-secretly-built-under-the-university-of-chicago

January 1, 2018 - Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA

No comments yet.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

« Previous | Next »