Led by Enrico Fermi, one of many scientists who had fled fascism in Europe, they worked day and night to build the world’s first nuclear reactor—a 20-foot-tall structure of graphite and uranium known ...

The reactor itself, nicknamed “Chicago Pile-1” or CP-1 for short, was a 20-foot-tall pile of graphite blocks studded with hundreds of smaller blocks of uranium. Crews worked round the clock for two ...

with a natural uranium device moderated with graphite. Fermi conducted the process using the first demonstration reactor, known as Chicago Pile 1. August — The United States, at the order of ...

1 / 5 | Though X described the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor as a “crude pile of black bricks and wooden timbers”, Chicago Pile-1 was actually quite safe — a reputation it had ...