Richard Black discusses the start of commercial nuclear power:
An experimental US reactor called EBR-1 generated the first nuclear electricity at its home in Argonne National Laboratory, sending current through a series of lightbulbs in 1951.
But the US did not open the world’s first civilian nuclear power station; that honour went to the USSR, whose tiny Obninsk reactor opened in 1953.
And the world’s first commercial-scale nuclear station was the UK’s Calder Hall, opened the following year.
The race for nuclear power — and with it, political influence — was underway.
“[Soviet President Nikita] Khrushchev… recognised that achievements in nuclear power made it possible to compete with the United States in the world arena — to say ‘our system, the socialist system, is the best — look who is first in areas of science and technology’,” relates Soviet historian Paul Josephson.
“You see a rebirth of hope that there will be a glorious communist future, perhaps a nuclear-powered future.”
All of these early reactors used different designs, with everyone except US scientists forced to work with natural uranium rather than the enriched variety developed during the Manhattan Project.
