{"id":10220,"date":"2011-07-11T09:01:28","date_gmt":"2011-07-11T13:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=10220"},"modified":"2020-07-13T11:02:56","modified_gmt":"2020-07-13T15:02:56","slug":"a-need-for-speed-in-1955-still-has-lingering-influence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/07\/11\/a-need-for-speed-in-1955-still-has-lingering-influence\/","title":{"rendered":"A need for speed in 1955 still has lingering influence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Black<\/a> discusses the start of commercial nuclear power:<\/p>\n

\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

And the world’s first commercial-scale nuclear station was the UK’s Calder Hall, opened the following year.<\/p>\n

The race for nuclear power — and with it, political influence — was underway.<\/p>\n

“[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.<\/p>\n

“You see a rebirth of hope that there will be a glorious communist future, perhaps a nuclear-powered future.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,16,15,13],"tags":[1386,433],"class_list":["post-10220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-science","category-technology","category-usa","tag-nuclearpower","tag-sovietunion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2EQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10220"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58768,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10220\/revisions\/58768"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}