X-10 nuclear reactorIn 1943, the X-10 nuclear reactor at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory went "critical" with a self-sustaining fission reaction - the world's second reactor to achieve one. The reactor took just nine urgent months to build. Over the next year, the reactor performed flawlessly, irradiating thousands of fuel slugs, which were disassembled and dissolved so the plutonium could be extracted, bit by precious bit. It was an experimental reactor far larger and more advanced than Fermi's Chicago pile: a graphite cube 24 feet on each side, with seven-foot-thick concrete walls for radiation shielding. By the end of 1944, the reactor's most urgent mission had been completed and its focus shifted to radioisotope production for medicine and research.[Image: X-10 control console] |
