Enrico Fermi of his life, Fermi questioned his faith in society at large to make wise choices about nuclear technology. He said: Fermi underwent an exploratory operation in Billings Memorial Hospital on 9 October 1954, after which he returned home. 50 days later, Fermi died at age 53 of stomach cancer in his home in Chicago. His memorial service was held at the University of Chicago chapel, where colleagues, Samuel K. Allison, Emilio Segrè, and Herbert L. Anderson spoke, mourning the loss of one of the world's "most brilliant and productive physicists." His body was interred at Oak Woods Cemetery. Fermi received
Experimental Breeder Reactor I Arco, Idaho in 1955, the first time a city had been powered solely by nuclear power. Besides generating the world's first electricity from atomic energy, EBR-I was also the world's first breeder reactor and the first to use plutonium fuel to generate electricity (see also the Clementine nuclear reactor). EBR-1's initial purpose was to prove Enrico Fermi's fuel breeding principle, a principle that showed a nuclear reactor producing more fuel atoms than consumed. Along with generating electricity, EBR-1 would also prove this principle. EBR-I was deactivated by Argonne in 1964 and replaced with a new reactor, Experimental Breeder Reactor II.