Leona Woods Leona Woods Leona Harriet Woods (August 9, 1919 – November 10, 1986), later known as Leona Woods Marshall and Leona Woods Marshall Libby, was an American physicist who helped build the first nuclear reactor and the first atomic bomb. At age 23, she was the youngest and only female member of the team which built and experimented with the world's first nuclear reactor (then called a "pile"), Chicago Pile-1, in a project led by her mentor Enrico Fermi. In particular, Woods was instrumental in the construction and then utilization of geiger counters for analysis during experimentation. She was the only
Nuclear reactor power plant accidents include the SL-1 accident (1961), the Three Mile Island accident (1979), Chernobyl disaster (1986), and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster (2011). Nuclear-powered submarine mishaps include the K-19 reactor accident (1961), the K-27 reactor accident (1968), and the K-431 reactor accident (1985). Nuclear reactors have been launched into Earth orbit at least 34 times. A number of incidents connected with the unmanned nuclear-reactor-powered Soviet RORSAT radar satellite program resulted in spent nuclear fuel re-entering the Earth's atmosphere from orbit. Although nuclear fission reactors are often thought of as being solely a product of modern technology, the first nuclear