Chicago Pile-1 final uranium slugs. Chicago Pile-1 Chicago Pile-1 (CP-1) was the world's first 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. The reactor's development was part of the Manhattan Project, the Allied effort to create atomic bombs during World War II. It was built by the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago, under the west viewing stands of the original Stagg Field. Fermi described the apparatus as "a crude pile of black bricks and wooden timbers". The reactor was assembled in November 1942, by
Enrico Fermi Nuclear Power Plant (Italy) Enrico Fermi Nuclear Power Plant (Italy) Enrico Fermi Nuclear Power Plant was a nuclear power plant at Trino (often referred to as ‘Trino Vercellese’, meaning ‘Trino in the Province of Vercelli’), in north-west Italy. Consisting of one 260 megawatt pressurized water reactor (PWR) from the vendor Westinghouse Electric Corporation, it operated from 1964 until 1990. Trino was in 1964 the third ever commercially operated PWR worldwide, and it had the second highest megawatt-capacity of them. It was closed down following the Italian nuclear power referendum, 1987. The experimental enrichment plant, EUREX, near the power plant, was closed down in 1984.