Albert Einstein layed the foundations for Nuclear Energy, or more generally Nuclear Physics. His research in the early 20th century gave birth to the famous equation E=MC2, relating Energy to Matter.
The first attempt at creating and controlling a nuclear reaction was attempted in June of 1942, in the middle (for some) or World War 2.
After the USA entered the war in December of 1941, after the attack on Perl Harbour, and due to fear that the Nazis were also attempting to create a nuclear weapon, the US government began to fund a top secret project which would later become known as The Manhattan Project.
This secret project took place under an abandoned American football pitch at the University of Chicago, and this is where the first controlled nuclear reaction was to later take place.
It was around the same time as the Manhattan project that research was also being conducted by a physisist called Edward Teller. He had proposed that it would be possible to fuse to elements together to create a new element, and in the process create a large amount of energy. His theory was that if you could give two different isotopes of Hydrogen (Duterium and Tritium) sufficient energy to overcome the electrostatic repulsions between they would join together to form a Helium atom and eject a neutron.
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Critised by many, the first use of an nuclear weapon as an act of aggresion was made in 1945, after years of "island hopping" in the South Pacific, against the sheltered bay city of Hiroshima. This attack was supposedly made as a "lesser of two evils" way of bringing the war to a quick end, and minimising casualties after the huge losses suffered by both sides in the campaigns of the South Pacific. The bomb was given the somewhat inappropriate name "Little Boy". |  |
The first nuclear power plant started generating power in July of 1954, at Obninsk in Russia. This event recieved little to no press exposure in the western news due to the Cold War.
The first western plant began commercial operation in 1957 in the Pennsylvania, USA.
On April 25th 1986 a nightmare scenario occured at Chernobyl in the U.S.S.R. (modern day Ukraine). During the testing of one of the reactors at the Chernobyl site, several saftey procedures were ignored. The result of this was a chain reaction (discussed later), creating a fireball and sending radioactive debris high into the atomosphere. The explosion, as well as causing huge damage to the "local" area, had far reaching effects. Reindeer in Norway still suffer from Cadmium poisoning from eating contaminated mushrooms (mushrooms absorb cadmium very easily). There are also concerns about British livestock.
