Oak Ridge National Laboratory was completed, later renamed to "Oak Ridge National Laboratory". The site was chosen for the X-10 Graphite Reactor, used to show that plutonium can be created from enriched uranium. Enrico Fermi and his colleagues developed the world's second self-sustaining nuclear reactor after Fermi's previous experiment, the Chicago Pile-1. The X-10 was the first reactor designed for continuous operation. After the end of World War II the demand for weapons-grade plutonium fell and the reactor and the laboratory's 1000 employees were no longer involved in nuclear weapons. Instead, it was used for scientific research. In 1946 the first medical isotopes were
Nuclear power in the United States Low-Power Reactor Number One in Idaho Falls in January 1961 and a partial meltdown at the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan in 1966. In his 1963 book "Change, Hope and the Bomb", David Lilienthal criticized nuclear developments, particularly the nuclear industry's failure to address the nuclear waste question. J. Samuel Walker, in his book "", explains that the growth of the nuclear industry in the U.S. occurred in the 1970s as the environmental movement was being formed. Environmentalists saw the advantages of nuclear power in reducing air pollution, but were critical of nuclear technology on other grounds. They