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
Anti-nuclear movement in the United States Malibu were similar to those at Bodega Bay and were also abandoned. A small military test reactor exploded at the Stationary Low-Power Reactor Number One in Idaho Falls in January 1961, causing 3 fatalities. This was caused by a combination of dangerous reactor design plus either sabotage, operator error by experienced operators. A further partial meltdown at the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan in 1966. In his 1963 book "Change, Hope and the Bomb", David E. Lilienthal criticized nuclear developments, particularly the nuclear industry's failure to address the nuclear waste question. He argued that it would be "...