Enrico Fermi to be nuclear fission products. Fermi left Italy in 1938 to escape new Italian racial laws that affected his Jewish wife, Laura Capon. He emigrated to the United States, where he worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. Fermi led the team that designed and built Chicago Pile-1, which went critical on 2 December 1942, demonstrating the first human-created, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. He was on hand when the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, went critical in 1943, and when the B Reactor at the Hanford Site did so the next year. At Los Alamos, he
Nuclear power in the United States As the industry continued to expand, the Atomic Energy Commission's development and regulatory functions were separated in 1974; the Department of Energy absorbed research and development, while the regulatory branch was spun off and turned into an independent commission known as the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC or simply NRC). There has been considerable opposition to the use of nuclear power in the U.S. The first U.S. reactor to face public opposition was Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station in 1957. It was built approximately 30 miles from Detroit and there was opposition from the United Auto Workers Union. Pacific Gas