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A short history of nuclear fission

An Italian physicist, Enrico Fermi, was the first to
achieve it but just recently nuclear fission’s
popularity has been decreasing

It beganMonaghan
Angela in 1789 when a German chemist named Martin Klaproth discovered uranium but
it was
Thu not
28 Jul until
2016 1934 that nuclear fission was first achieved following a series of
20.15 BST
experiments by Enrico Fermi, an Italian physicist.

The discovery opened the door to research by scientists around the world and in 1942
the first nuclear reactor was successfully tested at the University of Chicago.

Most early atomic research was focused on developing weapons for the second world
war, under the code name Manhattan Project. On 6 August 1945 an American B-29
bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of
Hiroshima. The bomb immediately killed about 80,000 people and tens of thousands
would later die of radiation exposure.

After the war, the US government backed the development of nuclear energy for civilian
purposes.

The Atomic Energy Commission was created in 1946 and approved the construction of
an the experimental breeder reactor I in Idaho. The reactor generated the first electricity
from nuclear energy on 20 December 1951.

The UK’s first nuclear reactor was built in 1947 at the Atomic Energy Research
Establishment in Harwell, to demonstrate the viability of commercial reactors. In 1954
Britain established its own atomic energy authority, to carry out nuclear research,
develop nuclear deterrents and reactor technologies.

The UK’s first commercial reactor, Calder Hall in Cumberland, was opened by the Queen
in 1956 and the UK government claimed it was “the first station anywhere in the world to
produce electricity from atomic energy on a full industrial scale”.

But since then a number of nuclear disasters around the world have blighted the
industry.

On 28 March 1979 a reactor was damaged at Three Mile Island nuclear power station near
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and radiation leaked from water that spilled out of the
primary cooling system. The accident was caused by a combination of mechanical failure
and human error. It triggered fear and confusion but no one was hurt.

Less than a decade later, however, disaster struck in Ukraine at Chernobyl power station.
In the early hours of 26 April 1986 one of four nuclear reactors exploded. The fallout
forced tens of thousands from their homes and many were killed at the time and in
subsequent years by radiation.

It was the only event classed as a “major accident” by the International Atomic Energy
Agency until the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan, in March 2011. A powerful
earthquake and tsunami struck Japan’s north-east coast and triggered a triple meltdown
at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Almost 19,000 people died in the
tsunami, while 160,000 people fled radiation in Fukushima. Afterwards Germany
decided to end all nuclear power generation.

In the 32 years before Chernobyl, 409 reactors were opened but only 194 have been
connected in the three decades since.

EDF’s decision to press ahead with the £18bn Hinkley Point C project means Britain will
get its first new nuclear power station in a generation. It took a decade of debate to reach
this point and will be another decade before the project on the Somerset coast is
complete.

Topics
• Nuclear power
• Nuclear weapons
• Energy
• analysis