X-10 Graphite Reactor X-10 Graphite Reactor The X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, formerly known as the Clinton Pile and X-10 Pile, was the world's second artificial nuclear reactor (after Enrico Fermi's Chicago Pile-1), and the first designed and built for continuous operation. It was built during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project. While Chicago Pile-1 demonstrated the feasibility of nuclear reactors, the Manhattan Project's goal of producing enough plutonium for atomic bombs required reactors a thousand times as powerful, along with facilities to chemically separate the plutonium bred in the reactors from uranium
Aqueous homogeneous reactor hoped to design liquid-fuel reactors that would dispense with the costly destruction and processing of solid fuel elements. The formation of gas bubbles in liquid fuels and the corrosive attack on materials (in uranyl sulfate base solutions), however, presented daunting design and materials challenges. Enrico Fermi advocated construction at Los Alamos of what was to become the world’s third reactor, the first homogeneous liquid-fuel reactor, and the first reactor to be fueled by uranium enriched in uranium-235. Eventually three versions were built, all based on the same concept. For security purposes these reactors were given the code name "water boilers".