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
Generation II reactor Generation II reactor A generation II reactor is a design classification for a nuclear reactor, and refers to the class of commercial reactors built up to the end of the 1990s. Prototypical generation II reactors include the PWR, CANDU, BWR, AGR, VVER and RBMK. These are contrasted to generation I reactors, which refer to the early prototype of power reactors, such as Shippingport, Magnox/UNGG, AMB, Fermi 1, and Dresden 1. The last commercial Gen I power reactor was located at the Wylfa Nuclear Power Station and ceased operation at the end of 2015. The nomenclature for reactor designs, describing four