Last month, B Reactor, the world's first major nuclear reactor and the source of plutonium for the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, was designated a national historic landmark.
PAGE A21 CLEANING UP A NUCLEAR MESS Last month B Reactor, the world's first major nuclear reactor and the source of plutonium for the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki in World War II, was designated a national historic landmark.
The control room of the X-10 graphite reactor, the world's second reactor after the Chicago Pile, is seen at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
The loading face of the X-10 graphite reactor, the world's second reactor after the Chicago Pile, is seen through the window of the control room at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
It is estimated that, with the current reactor technology, the world's supply of uranium will be consumed in about a century.
If all goes to plan, by the end of the decade this rocky outcrop will house the biggest and most powerful nuclear reactor in the world.
Cost cutting has been the name of the game for Osamu Motojima since he took the reins of the ITER fusion reactor project, the world's most expensive science experiment, in July.
ITER (Latin for "the way"), the largest fusion experimental reactor in the world, is designed to demonstrate the technological feasibility of nuclear fusion energy conversion, at plant scale, from high temperature deuterium tritium plasma using the Tokamak magnetic confinement arrangement.
Answers to these vexing questions and lessons learned are important for every operating and under-construction nuclear reactor in the world.
The plant's staff has withered to just 200, though at one time 5000 people went days on end without seeing the sun as they made sure the most powerful nuclear reactor in the world didn't spew its filthy green muck all over the Eastern bloc.
