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
Nuclear power in the United States Low-Power Reactor Number One in Idaho Falls in January 1961 and a partial meltdown at the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan in 1966. In his 1963 book "Change, Hope and the Bomb", David Lilienthal criticized nuclear developments, particularly the nuclear industry's failure to address the nuclear waste question. J. Samuel Walker, in his book "", explains that the growth of the nuclear industry in the U.S. occurred in the 1970s as the environmental movement was being formed. Environmentalists saw the advantages of nuclear power in reducing air pollution, but were critical of nuclear technology on other grounds. They