B Reactor can take a tour of the reactor by advance reservation. The reactor was designed and built by E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company based on experimental designs tested by Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago, and tests from the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It was designed to operate at 250 megawatts (thermal). The reactor occupies a footprint of (about and is tall, occupying a volume of . The reactor core itself consisted of a graphite box measuring occupying a volume of and weighing . It was penetrated horizontally through its entire length by
Enrico Fermi He made significant contributions to the development of statistical mechanics, quantum theory, and nuclear and particle physics. Fermi's first major contribution was to statistical mechanics. After Wolfgang Pauli formulated his exclusion principle in 1925, Fermi followed with a paper in which he applied the principle to an ideal gas, employing a statistical formulation now known as Fermi–Dirac statistics. Today, particles that obey the exclusion principle are called "fermions". Pauli later postulated the existence of an uncharged invisible particle emitted along with an electron during beta decay, to satisfy the law of conservation of energy. Fermi took up this idea, developing