Chicago Pile-1 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 a team that
National Atomic Energy Commission reactor was built (1957), the RA-1 Enrico Fermi. The 335-MWe Atucha I designed by Germany's (Siemens) was completed in 1974. In 1984 the 600-MWe Embalse designed by Canadian CANDU started its commercial operation. In 1995 CNEA's functions where divided into newly created separate organizations such as the Nuclear Regulatory Authority ("Autoridad Regulatoria Nuclear - ARN"), which supervises nuclear safety in the country, and the "Nucleoeléctrica Argentina - NASA", the company that operates the two completed nuclear power reactors. Today, CNEA mainly focuses on research and development of nuclear and related technologies. In 2001 the original 1956 Directory structure of a