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 Generating Station a companion unit identical to Fermi 2. It was ordered in 1972 and cancelled in 1974. See DOE data page 67 and WNA Fermi 3 data. In September 2008, Detroit Edison filed an application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a Combined Construction and Operating License (COL) for a third reactor. The new unit is supposed to be built on the same site, slightly to the southwest of Fermi 2. The reactor design selected is the 1,550 MWe GE-designed passive Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR). Review of the 17,000-page application could take four years, after which construction could