Manhattan Project by Goodyear Tire to encase the reactor. On 2 December 1942, a team led by Enrico Fermi initiated the first artificial self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in an experimental reactor known as Chicago Pile-1. The point at which a reaction becomes self-sustaining became known as "going critical". Compton reported the success to Conant in Washington, D.C., by a coded phone call, saying, "The Italian navigator [Fermi] has just landed in the new world." In January 1943, Grafton's successor, Major Arthur V. Peterson, ordered Chicago Pile-1 dismantled and reassembled at Red Gate Woods, as he regarded the operation of a reactor as
S1W reactor S1W reactor The S1W reactor was the first prototype naval reactor used by the United States Navy to prove that the technology could be used for electricity generation and propulsion on submarines. The S1W designation stands for The land-based nuclear reactor was built at the National Reactor Testing Station, later called Idaho National Engineering Laboratory near Arco, Idaho. The plant was the prototype for the USS "Nautilus" (SSN-571), the world's first nuclear-powered submarine. The specific location within the vast Idaho National Laboratory where the S1W prototype was located was the Naval Reactors Facility. Under the leadership of Admiral Hyman G.