Oak Ridge National Laboratory was completed, later renamed to "Oak Ridge National Laboratory". The site was chosen for the X-10 Graphite Reactor, used to show that plutonium can be created from enriched uranium. Enrico Fermi and his colleagues developed the world's second self-sustaining nuclear reactor after Fermi's previous experiment, the Chicago Pile-1. The X-10 was the first reactor designed for continuous operation. After the end of World War II the demand for weapons-grade plutonium fell and the reactor and the laboratory's 1000 employees were no longer involved in nuclear weapons. Instead, it was used for scientific research. In 1946 the first medical isotopes were
Natural nuclear fission reactor between the Moon and the Earth, the giant impact hypothesis remains more commonly accepted, as it may arguably explain both the similarities and certain differences in the composition of the Moon. Natural nuclear fission reactor A natural nuclear fission reactor is a uranium deposit where self-sustaining nuclear chain reactions have occurred. This can be examined by analysis of isotope ratios. The existence of this phenomenon was discovered in 1972 at Oklo in Gabon by French physicist Francis Perrin. The conditions under which a natural nuclear reactor could exist had been predicted in 1956 by Paul Kazuo Kuroda. The conditions found