Origins

e-3D — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 18:46:35 GMT

Origins

As the father of nuclear physics,^[11] Ernest Rutherford is credited with splitting the atom in 1919.^[12] His team in England bombarded nitrogen with naturally occurring alpha particles from radioactive material and observed a proton emitted with energy higher than the alpha particle. In 1932 two of his students John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton, working under Rutherford's direction, attempted to split the atomic nucleus by entirely artificial means, using a particle accelerator to bombard lithium with protons, thereby producing two helium nuclei.^[13]

After James Chadwick discovered the neutron in 1932, nuclear fission was first experimentally achieved by Enrico Fermi in 1934 in Rome, when his team bombarded uranium with neutrons.^[14] In 1938, German chemists Otto Hahn^[15] and Fritz Strassmann, along with Austrian physicists Lise Meitner^[16] and Meitner's nephew, Otto Robert Frisch,^[17] conducted experiments with the products of neutron-bombarded uranium. They determined that the relatively tiny neutron split the nucleus of the massive uranium atoms into two roughly equal pieces, which was a surprising result. Numerous scientists, including Leo Szilard who was one of the first, recognized that if fission reactions released additional neutrons, a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction could result. This spurred scientists in many countries (including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the Soviet Union) to petition their governments for support of nuclear fission research.

In the United States, where Fermi and Szilard had both emigrated, this led to the creation of the first man-made reactor, known as Chicago Pile-1, which achieved criticality on December 2, 1942. This work became part of the Manhattan Project, which built large reactors at the Hanford Site (formerly the town of Hanford, Washington) to breed plutonium for use in the first nuclear weapons, which were used on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A parallel uranium enrichment effort also was pursued.

After World War II, the fear that reactor research would encourage the rapid spread of nuclear weapons and technology^[vague], combined with what many scientists^[who?] thought would be a long road of development, created a situation in which the government attempted to keep reactor research under strict government control and classification. In addition, most^[which?] reactor research centered on purely military purposes. There was an immediate^[when?] arms and development race when the United States military^[who?] refused to follow the advice of its own scientific community to form an international cooperative to share information and control nuclear materials^{[citation needed]}. By 2006, things have come full circle with the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (see below.)^{[citation needed]}

Electricity was generated for the first time by a nuclear reactor on December 20, 1951, at the EBR-I experimental station near Arco, Idaho, which initially produced about 100 kW (the Arco Reactor was also the first to experience partial meltdown, in 1955). In 1952, a report by the Paley Commission (The President's Materials Policy Commission) for President Harry Truman made a "relatively pessimistic" assessment of nuclear power, and called for "aggressive research in the whole field of solar energy."^[18] A December 1953 speech by President Dwight Eisenhower, "Atoms for Peace," emphasized the useful harnessing of the atom and set the U.S. on a course of strong government support for international use of nuclear power.

Nuclear use

e-3D — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 18:45:50 GMT

As of 2005, nuclear power provided 6.3% of the world's energy and 15% of the world's electricity, with the U.S., France, and Japan together accounting for 56.5% of nuclear generated electricity.^[2] In 2007, the IAEA reported there were 439 nuclear power reactors in operation in the world,^[3] operating in 31 countries.^[4]

The United States produces the most nuclear energy, with nuclear power providing 19%^[5] of the electricity it consumes, while France produces the highest percentage of its electrical energy from nuclear reactors—80% as of 2006.^[6] In the European Union as a whole, nuclear energy provides 30% of the electricity.^[7] Nuclear energy policy differs between European Union countries, and some, such as Austria, Estonia, and Ireland, have no active nuclear power stations. In comparison, France has a large number of these plants, with 16 multi-unit stations in current use.

In the US, while the Coal and Gas Electricity industry is projected to be worth $85 billion by 2013, Nuclear Power generators are forecast to be worth $18 billion.^[8]

Many military and some civilian (such as some icebreaker) ships use nuclear marine propulsion, a form of nuclear propulsion.^[9] A few space vehicles have been launched using full-fledged nuclear reactors: the Soviet RORSAT series and the American SNAP-10A.

International research is continuing into safety improvements such as passively safe plants,^[10] the use of nuclear fusion, and additional uses of process heat such as hydrogen production (in support of a hydrogen economy), for desalinating sea water, and for use in district heating systems.

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Origins

Origins

Nuclear use